Lessons From a Bipolar Artist

When you have a bipolar friend, your feelings about that friend are also kind of bipolar, too. Your feelings are usually not in sync with their cycle, but you definitely experience your own feelings about your friend that range from love and concern to, at best, indifference to downright revulsion. No matter how many times you tell yourself, "It's their disease that's doing this" you still can't separate the disease from this person that you care about and love who is saying and doing hurtful things to you, their family and friends. And so, to protect yourself, you attempt to cut them out of your life (which ultimately fails, because you still know that the person you care about is still in there, still fundamentally has a tender heart, and is suffering). 

And when your bipolar friend dies, have these words/phrases at the ready to explain your feelings to people who either didn't know them, or didn't share your experience with them: "conflicted" "I have to process this" "I'm glad he's finally at peace" and others, because, well, you do need to process your bipolar feelings about your bipolar friend. 

My friend, my son's godfather and drumming teacher, my husband's friend, and overall Milwaukee force of nature, Rob McCuen, died this week. As far as we know, it was peacefully (the local medical examiner told family he didn't believe it was suicide), and he was at home. Not home in his last apartment in Milwaukee, not home with his partner in Minnesota, but in his home state of Iowa, near where his heart probably beat the strongest: the Knoxville Raceway right at the beginning of the Knoxville Nationals, sprint car racing's biggest annual event -- the Indy 500 of sprint car racing.  If Rob could have picked his exit point, I'm thinking this would have been high on his list (or the Indy for that matter). 

I have many wonderful stories and photos of Rob that I'll share, but please remember, this was my bipolar friend, and I'm conflicted. Before I can celebrate the great things about his life, I have to expunge the hurt his disease brought upon many of us who have cared for/about him for years. This past year has been especially difficult for his family and friends. He entered a manic phase and his stubbornness ( a trait that generally served him well, but not in this situation) led him to address it in unhealthy ways. Rob himself eloquently explains in a Milwaukee Magazine article what's going on in his head when this happens, and he admits he loses friends along the way.  He flat out admitted that when he wrote that piece for Milwaukee Magazine ten years ago: 

"If you had the misfortune of crossing my path between last April and September, I more than likely pissed you off, scared you, insulted you, offended you or repulsed you. At least you could avoid me, block me on Facebook, not take my calls or throw me away altogether. I can’t say I blame you. The many people I’ve wronged don’t care why. You can’t expect to get a pass just because you happen to be in the clutches of an illness that you have no control over, but I still wasn’t quite ready to admit that treatment was the only option I had left."

Well, yeah, Rob, it wasn't "more than likely" this past year. You did piss me off, scared me, insulted me, offended me, and repulsed me. And you did this to your other close friends and family, people who still loved you in spite of all this. And we did avoid you, blocked you on Facebook (and, being this is 10 years later, all other social media), refused to take your calls, and in a few cases (mine being one), threw you away. Well, sort of. I didn't block you on FB, and I listened to your voice mails, because goddammit Rob, I still cared and I still had this slice of optimism that a shred of that guy left that might come through in one of those VMs, that might be able to punch through your horrible, painful disease, and show your generously huge heart to us again. I'd brace myself and click "play message" hoping maybe one of those messages might indicate you're finally going to get the longterm help you need, not some temporary relief from a bottle of vodka. 

On the advice of a friend who is a mental health professional, I began to accept that this time around, it might not happen. And so a few months ago, I sat down with my 17 year old son, who had been taking drum lessons from Rob since he was 10, and had a difficult conversation with him. After all, Rob wasn't just his drum teacher. He was his friend too, and he took (as much as he could) seriously his unofficial role as Sam's godfather. He showed up at Sam's soccer, baseball and football games (since Brian worked 2nd shift) and cheered him on. He drove Sam to practice when I couldn't get out of work in time, and took him out for ice cream afterwards. He praised Sam for his technology knowledge when Sam helped him fix whatever computer issues Rob had. He turned up at his birthday parties with gifts and sometimes would just stop by and take him out for some kind of treat. He taught Sam his favorite meatloaf recipe as well as how to make his favorite pork chops. 

And those drum lessons? I wish every kid could have a music teacher who loved the instrument, loved teaching the instrument, and made it fun like Rob did. So fun that at every lesson (which, by the way, he came to our house to do so I wouldn't have to drive Sam to yet another practice/rehearsal) he'd join him on the kit where the two of them would just have fun with it. 

So yeah, that difficult conversation, that I was sorting out myself as I was explaining back in May to a teenager what was happening to the man we selected to be his mentor, as all of our friends and family were watching a rapid and heartbreaking decline: "I want you to be emotionally prepared for the fact that it's very likely we're going to be going to his funeral sometime this year. Rob is suffering from his bipolar disease, but it doesn't look like he's following his medication and he is using alcohol to escape from it..... we need to remember the Rob we loved and cared about before this completely took him over..... the fun Rob, the Rob that taught you your instrument, the Rob that came over and helped when Dad was in the hospital."

And the heartbreaking conclusion I had to say to Sam: "That guy's been gone for awhile, and I think he died about a year ago. The guy inhabiting Rob's body is also very sick, and I don't think he's long for this world either." Sam understood. 

So when I got the call on Wednesday that indeed, Rob had left us, hmmmm, what was one of those words again? Conflicted. I needed to process this. Hadn't I already mourned "Wonderful Rob" and had taken "Shitty Rob" out of my life, like I claimed to Sammy that I did? No, I hadn't done either of these things fully. And I still haven't. But it's time to bury "Shitty Rob" and stop feeling guilty for kicking "Shitty Rob" out of our lives. We did what we could to help him, but we had to do what we could to protect ourselves emotionally (and for some people, physically) also. 

So now I'm going to celebrate "Wonderful Rob" as many people are doing on social media this week. Besides his kind relationship to my kid and my husband, he was genuinely my friend. I could call him to talk about stuff, both intense, and funny. We would run into each other and bounce ideas off each other. We could bitch at each other, and as a fellow self-centered Sagittarius, we could kind of understand what was going on. And because we could both be emotionally blunt, we could usually forgive each other and move on, and accept each other's foibles. 

And foremost, we can celebrate Rob McCuen the artist. He published three books of his prose, "Square Dancing in a Round House" (self published),  "Me vs. Me: Confessionas of a Bipolar Rock and Roller" (18% Publishing) and the follow up "Tales From the Crypt of a Working Class Hero (18% Publishing)." I'm totally distanced from the world of short track and other racing, but he was known in those circles as a keen and colorful chronicler of the circuit. 

He was a terrific drummer, who provided the beat for a number of great bands, including two of Milwaukee's best psychedelic/garage bands, Plasticland and Liquid Pink. The first song on this clip is "Life on the Rocks" - where they hand Rob the mike and he goes to town on his self-written contribution to the band.  "Life on the Rocks" fit perfectly with the rest of Peder Hedman's songs, but this was a taste of what would follow as regards Rob's songwriting. On drums, though, Rob was the master of the shuffle beat ("there goes the Rob McCuen beat again" I would say to myself as he would slip back into his go-to drum style) and his love of the merseybeat permeated so much of what he did behind the kit as well as his songwriting.  

There were many others, of course, (I'm so sorry I missed the trashy glam of the Dog Style Dandies, and I probably would have enjoyed the Red Ball Jets, but there you go). When I landed in Milwaukee during the late 80s, it was Plasticland and Liquid Pink that introduced me to the wonderful Milwaukee music scene and those two bands drew me into a deep and varied scene that I support and patronize to this day. 

But I will maintain his biggest strength as an artist was in his songwriting and delivery of those songs. When the vocal mike was focused on him, he was one of the best frontmen in town, propped up by those snappy, catchy, and intelligent songs of his. "I'm AJ Foyt" puts the listener behind the wheel of Car #14 and shows us how it's done. "Life Imitates Art" is resignation disguised as pop. I'm pretty sure "White Trash" is from his Dog Style Dandies days and perfectly captures the duality of his appreciation and revulsion of that sector. When I saw him perform it live at the old Unicorn, it was the set closer, and he nearly collapsed on stage as he took his over-exaggerated bow. "Brains in a Jar" is a high speed chase of a song that works best cranked to maximum volume. "My Elizabeth" could have very well been written by Sonny Bono and produced by Phil Spector, but being Rob, it's neither and yet brings to mind Bono's "Needles and Pins," which Rob often covered convincingly. 

Hell, the entire Step On Your Neck album is a veritable "Rob McCuen's Greatest Hits," and while Rob stumbled through the years with backup bands like the White Hot Tizzies, Love Bully, Rob McCuen and the Ruins, it's the Animal Magnets that truly realized his vision for his pop machismo. As the Shepherd Express' Dave Luhrssen's Rob obiturary remembered when that record came out in 2013, it was “one of the most powerful rock ‘n’ roll records out this year—here in town and elsewhere.” Rob actually took issue with my review of their performance, because I had said "There's so much testosterone (both real and contrived) amongst this band that it almost makes Rob look like the wimp out of the bunch, and none of these guys are above it all." He focused on what he thought was an insult, and wouldn't back down until, over a few beers, I pointed out the word almost in the sentence. But that was Rob. Any slight directed toward him resulted in immediate defense, whether it was actually a slight or not. 

And when he belts out "If I don't love myself, nobody will," nothing could be further than the truth. I'm too conflicted to listen to this record right now, but it has been and always will be one of my top Milwaukee releases and should have gone a lot further than it did. 

I suspect a project he was working on with guitarist extraordinaire Dan "Myles" Mullen (also a good friend), "Rob McCuen's High Flying Ego Trip" will be released soon, the ol' posthumous release. He put it together in the past year, during these months where we weren't speaking. (Well, Rob was speaking to me; I wasn't answering.) Over dinner a couple of weeks ago, I asked Myles, "So, honestly, is it any good?" "Yeah, actually it is." I think the best word to describe my feeling about that was relief. Rob was so over-the-top (and not in a good way) this past year that it had the potential to be a trainwreck, but Myles (who can be counted on to be blunt when assessing a musical performance) assured me it was good stuff. I'm looking forward to this. Myles and Rob could often be a formidable pair: Myles can bring out the best of Rob's Beatlesque vision. Back when the pair started working together as the White Hot Tizzies, they did a show opening for "Fright Fest" -- a night of hell rock and gothy bands accompanied by sideshow mutilation -- and it was clearly a misbooking on the level of The Blues Brothers at Bob's Country Bunker. But like those brothers, they went on stage and delivered Rob's songs and his favorite covers. As I said at the time, "Rob was on top of his game, totally unintimidated by a crowd full of kids waiting to see the muitalation act that was to follow him. He went and belted out the Hollies "Bus Stop" anyway, in perfect harmony with Dan Mullen. That's right, he sang a song about innocent love at first sight in the pouring rain to a S&M crowd of sinister goth kids. Man, that guy's got balls, and that's why he rocks." Myles delivered the final masters to Rob just a week ago, and I'm hoping somebody puts it out soon. 

The general consensus among my mutual friends of Rob is that we are all hoping he's at peace. There was so much potential for disaster at this stage of the game that Rob's exit could have been way more tragic than it already is. Without going into specifics, nobody -- as much as he pissed us off this past year -- nobody wanted to see a Rob McCuen without his feet, without his cognitive abilities intact, without his ability to play music and charm us, and without that gigantic heart and soul we all knew he possessed and were lucky to be shown. Having to live with any of this would have broken his heart more than anything. I want to believe that he went to sleep in this hotel, excited as a little boy ready to go to the races the next morning.  As I posted on FB when I first heard the news, I really want to forget this past year. Instead, this is the Rob McCuen I want to remember, him just passing on his love of playing music to a kid. Rob's out of frame, but you can see that's he simulating a stage strobe light and shouting encouragement to his protoge. At the end of a lesson, it was FREAK OUT time: show off your skills, put it all out there, and have fun with it, which is a good lesson for anybody. Rob is out of frame indeed, but we'll be hearing that voice for some time to come, and that's the best thing you can say about any artist.