Loudon Snowden Wainwright III (born September 5, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actor. He has released twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, and six compilations. Some of his best-known songs include "The Swimming Song", "Motel Blues", "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", "Dead Skunk", and "Lullaby". In 2007, he collaborated with musician Joe Henry to create the soundtrack for Judd Apatow's film Knocked Up. In addition to music, he has acted in small roles in at least eighteen television programs and feature films, including three episodes in the third season of the series M*A*S*H.
Reflecting upon his career in 1999, he stated, "You could characterize the catalog as somewhat checkered, although I prefer to think of it as a tapestry."[2] In 2017, Wainwright released his autobiography, Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, and a Few of My Other Favorite Things. He is the brother of singer Sloan Wainwright and has four children, including musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche. He has been married and divorced twice, including to folk singer Kate McGarrigle.
Wainwright's career began in the late 1960s. He had played the guitar while in school but subsequently sold it for yoga lessons while living in San Francisco.[citation needed] Later, in Rhode Island, Wainwright's grandmother got him a job working in a boatyard.[citation needed] An old lobsterman named Edgar inspired him to borrow a friend's guitar and write his first song, "Edgar".[citation needed] Wainwright soon bought his own guitar and in about a year wrote nearly twenty songs.[citation needed] He went to Boston and New York City to play in folk clubs and was eventually noticed by Milton Kramer, who became his manager.[citation needed] He signed a record deal with Atlantic, which released his self-titled debut album in 1970.
Wainwright is perhaps best known for the 1972 novelty song "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)" and for playing Captain Calvin Spalding (the "singing surgeon") on the American television show M*A*S*H. His appearances spanned three episodes in the show's third season (1974–1975).[6]
Wainwright has also appeared in a number of films, including small parts in The Aviator (with two of his children), Big Fish, Elizabethtown, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, 28 Days, and Knocked Up, and the television series Undeclared and Parks and Recreation.[6] In the UK, he recorded sessions for John Peel from 1971 onwards and appeared on a simultaneous broadcast on BBC TV and on Radio 1 in February 1978 (known as Sight and Sound in Concert).[8] However, it was in the late 1980s that he gained much wider popularity in Britain, when he appeared as the resident singer with comedian Jasper Carrott in his show Carrott Confidential.[citation needed]
He appeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in the first season's fifth episode, which was hosted by Robert Klein and broadcast on November 15, 1975. He performed "Bicentennial" and "Unrequited to the Nth Degree".[citation needed]
Wainwright has said that, like many of his contemporaries, he was inspired musically by seeing Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. He was one of many young folk singers tagged as the "new Dylan" in the early 1970s, a fact that he later ruefully satirized in his song "Talking New Bob Dylan" from the album History (1992).[7]
The singer entered a period of deep depression following the death of his mother in 1997 and believed he could never write again. Retreating to his mother's cabin in the woods, he underwent therapy and gradually recovered, eventually recording Last Man on Earth in 2001.
Wainwright's first marriage, to singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle, ended in divorce. During their marriage, they had two children: Rufus and Martha, both of whom are musicians.[12][13]
Wainwright had a relationship with singer Suzzy Roche, during which they had a daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche, who is also a musician.[14] The relationship ended, although Wainwright and Roche remain on good terms and occasionally appear onstage together, sometimes with Lucy.[15]
Wainwright's second marriage was to Ritamarie Kelly, and the couple lived in Los Angeles.[16] This also ended in divorce. They have a daughter, Alexandra (Lexie) Kelly Wainwright (born 1993).[17]
Wainright's son, Rufus, was the inspiration behind two of Wainwright's songs: "Rufus Is a Tit Man" (referring to his breastfeeding) and "A Father and a Son", a retrospective.[17][21][22]
Wainwright's songs inspired by Martha are "That Hospital" (about visiting a hospital during her gestation for an attempted abortion)[23] "Pretty Little Martha" (about her as an infant), "Five Years Old" (about missing her fifth birthday), the confessional "Hitting You" (about assaulting her), the duet "Father/Daughter Dialogue", and "I'd Rather Be Lonely". In 2005, Martha told The Guardian, "For most of my childhood Loudon talked to me in song, which is a bit of a shitty thing to do, especially as he always makes himself come across as funny and charming while the rest of us seem like whining victims, and we can't tell our side of the story. As a result he has a daughter who smokes and drinks too much and writes songs with titles like 'Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole'."[24][25]
Regarding "Hitting You", Wainwright has said, "I would never forget that event, that incident... hauling off and whacking my kid...it's not something I would ever forget. There was an interesting song there".[26]
Martha had originally presumed that "I'd Rather Be Lonely" was about an old girlfriend and was shocked when Wainwright told an audience that it was about his daughter. She revealed that she "always felt terribly sorry for the poor woman I thought it was about because of the line: 'Every time I see you cry you're just a clone of every woman I've known'. Then one time I was on tour with Loudon and he said to the crowd: 'I wrote this song about my daughter'. I had no idea. We lived together for one year in New York when I was 14 and it was a disaster, and 'I'd Rather Be Lonely' was about that year. He really crossed the line there".[24] In her memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, Martha wrote that when she heard the song's key lines, "You're still living here with me / I'd rather be lonely" and realized that the song was about her, "A part of me wanted to jump to my death from my tiny seat. Or, better yet, take off into the night, leaving him standing there waiting for me. But the show must go on, so I dried my tears and went down the stairs and on to the stage".[27]
Rufus has written the song "Dinner at Eight" about his conflicted relationship with his father.[28] Martha and her father sang a duet on "Father Daughter Dialogue" (on Loudon's 1995 album, Grown Man) and collaborated on the song "You Never Phone" (on Loudon's 2003 live album, So Damn Happy).
Wainright's first wife, Kate McGarrigle, wrote her song "Go Leave" about Wainwright. In it, she recounts how in the 1970s, her then-husband ran off to Europe with performance artist Penny Arcade. McGarrigle, who was pregnant at the time, traveled from Canada to England in search of him. After finding him, she lost the baby, and Wainwright informed her that he was leaving her. Martha has said that it is "the most gut-wrenchingly painful song ever. At the end, you hear the sound of a tear falling on to a string of her guitar. I used to listen to it as a child and cry my eyes out".[24]
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