Not Fade Away

Obituaries

I’D known David since September of 1985. We met in Charlottesville in our first year at the University Of Virginia, when we were both 18. I got a little job posting handbills for cool gigs from a local promoter. David came to plenty of the gigs and had noticed I was doing the dormitory advertising. We soon became fast friends, a friendship built around our record collections.

After college, we lived together in Jersey City and Hoboken, starting in 1989. Stephen [Malkmus] moved in with us soon after. Their friendship really started then, though they’d known each other at university. We depended on each other a lot. We were outsiders. We had so much fun running around New York in those days. I drove a bus and David and Stephen were museum security guards. We worked hard and played hard.

Silver Jews were very loose about everything. We just made noise in our basement apartment in Willow Avenue in Hoboken. We had a beneficial set of neighbours above us, they were a fullblown Puerto Rican party machine. We’d never complain about them and they were fine with our racket. David and Stephen barked lyrics into a $2 tape recorder’s condenser mic. We’d gotten Kim [Gordon] and Thurston [Moore]’s home phone number from a dear friend. We punished them with anonymous phone messages by playing our scree into their answering machine. We never thought Silver Jews would amount to much, and it wouldn’t have done without the support of Drag City and [label co-founder] Dan Koretzky.

David and I lived together off and on until he got married. I introduced him to his wife, Cassie, in Louisville. They moved into my house there in the early 2000s. After we’d gone our separate ways, we always kept in touch. We were close. There were some years when it was long distance, but we exchanged ideas and laughs, regardless of proximity. David was always fun, with a unique sense of humour. He always made me laugh.

I love Silver Jews, but I’m biased. He was a great lyricist and such a gifted poet and cartoonist. It was enlightening to have such a talented friend at a young age and realise that the talent wasn’t always a blessing. David battled mental illness for nearly all of his life. I think when you suffer from treatment-resistant depression it effects almost everything you do. He had professional help and the unyielding support of so many good friends.

He worked on Purple Mountains for five years, but the moniker became official in the last 18 months. Favourite memories of him? I have too many. It was a pleasure knowing and being associated with David for over 30 years. Bless him.