Vines Frontman Decompensates

From the Guardian U.K.:

Australian rockers the Vines have cancelled their live commitments due to a deterioration in their frontman’s mental health. In a disarmingly frank website post, the band confirmed that they were withdrawing from live and festival appearances indefinitely.

In 2004 Craig Nicholls was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, after his behaviour became increasingly erratic. He received treatment and the band were able to continue recording, even returning to the road.

But the situation appears to have deteriorated. The band wrote: “It is with a great deal of regret that the Vines today announce that they have cancelled all of their Australian festival appearances – Homebake, Pyramid Rock and Big Day Out – and their forthcoming Japanese tour, scheduled for late November. Craig Nicholls’ mental condition has deteriorated to the point where he requires immediate help over an extended period of time.”

I don’t know a lot about treatment for Asperger’s but I do wonder what kind of behavior could have prompted such dramatic, acute need. He was diagnosed in 2004. According to an article written around that time:

Asperger’s also goes some way to rationalising the complete communication breakdown that could occur between Nicholls and journalists. During his very first UK interview, with NME at an American rock festival, he tried to smash the writer’s tape recorder. Then locked himself in the bathroom. For 90 minutes.

Nicholls’s erratic behaviour, then, ticks all the Asperger’s boxes. He’s not another messed-up rock star who’s an accident waiting to happen. He’s neuro-divergent. In other words, ‘rock star’ is the worst career Nicholls could have chosen.

‘That’s what the professor told me,’ Nicholls smiles, presumably referring to his therapist. …

Given his extreme behaviour, why wasn’t it diagnosed earlier? ‘I wondered the same thing,’ Nicholls says wryly. … What did smoking pot do for Nicholls?

‘Ahm. It just fit with my personality. I never drank alcohol. [Smoking] was just the thing I did. It made me calm. But it started not making me calm at all. It made me edgy, so that wasn’t good.’

Whether cannabis use caused Nicholls’s mental and emotional problems, or exacerbated existing ones, is unclear. But Robin Turner, the Vines’s A&R man and long-term confidant at their UK label Heavenly, always thought his habit was a hindrance, not a help. He witnessed the toilet incident with NME in America. ‘It just wasn’t rational behaviour,’ he recalls. ‘But because Craig was smoking such massive amounts of spliff, I wondered whether his behaviour was down to a schizophrenia caused by cannabis.’

This is a tough one. I think many people with Asperger’s would be uncomfortable with people saying Nicholls — who’s violent and hostile — is a classic case. Of course, I’m generally suspicious with diagnoses that are embraced as easily and eagerly as this one was, especially when, if you read this article, it sounds like no one really finds many commonalities between Nicholls and someone with Asperger’s.

Whatever the reason for Nicholls’ problems, it’s good that he’s getting help now rather than touring.

[Photo from twelvemajorchords.com]

liz | 12:24 PM | Uncategorized