Loudon Wainwright III

Biography

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×Dead SkunkNovember 1972 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 2 tracks1Dead Skunk3:082Needless to Say3:14", 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." 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.

Early life

Wainwright was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the son of Martha Taylor, a yoga teacher, and Loudon Wainwright Jr., a columnist and editor for Life magazine. His great-great-grandfather was the politician and diplomat A. Loudon Snowden. He is a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of New Netherland.
Wainwright's father was not a professional musician, but he played the piano and wrote some songs, exposing his children to musicians such as Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg, whom Wainwright later cited as influences. Wainwright grew up in Bedford, New York, in Westchester County. Among his sisters is Sloan Wainwright, also a singer. Like his father, he attended St. Andrew's School near Middletown, Delaware.

Career

Wainwright began writing songs in 1968, while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first song, "Edgar", was about a lobster fisherman he had met while working in a boatyard on Rhode Island. He had previously studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University, before leaving to participate in the Summer of Love in San Francisco. After writing his first songs, he performed in small rooms and folk clubs in Cambridge, Boston, and New York City. He was soon noticed and obtained a recording contract. Wainwright signed with Atlantic Records in 1969, and the label 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).
Using a witty, self-mocking style, Wainwright has recorded over twenty albums on eleven different labels. Three of his albums have been nominated for Grammy Awards: I'm Alright×I'm Alright1985 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracks1One Man Guy4:162Lost Love3:233I'm Alright2:234Not John4:265Cardboard Boxes3:156Screaming Issue4:527How Old Are You?2:098Animal Song2:169Out of This World3:1710Daddy Take a Nap4:0011Ready or Not (So Ripe)4:1712Career Moves3:16 (1985), More Love Songs×More Love Songs1986 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1Hard Day on the Planet4:492Synchronicity3:113Your Mother and I2:354I Eat Out1:555No3:446The Home Stretch3:517The Acid Song4:358Unhappy Anniversary2:589Man's World5:2710Vampire Blues2:5711Overseas Call4:0612Expatriate2:1913The Back Nine4:03 (1986), and High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2009), for which he won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in January 2010.
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. 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). 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 on his show Carrott Confidential.
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".
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×History1992 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 14 tracks1People in Love3:002Men3:383The Picture2:334When I'm at Your House2:315The Doctor4:026Hitting You3:057I'd Rather Be Lonely2:518Between1:289Talking New Bob Dylan3:3610So Many Songs3:53114 x 103:0712A Father and a Son3:2113Sometimes I Forget5:5314A Handful of Dust3:25 (1992).
Wainwright was a judge for the fourth annual AIM Independent Music Awards.
Following the death of his mother in 1997, Wainwright went through a period of severe depression and stopped writing music. He returned to the family home in Katonah, New York, where he remained for about 18 months. He later said that therapy and medication helped him recover, after which he began writing songs again. The songs he wrote following his mother's death became the basis for his album Last Man on Earth×Last Man on Earth25 September 2001 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1Missing You3:302Living Alone2:373White Winos2:594Fresh Fossils1:505I'm Not Gonna Cry2:066Out of Reach2:587Bridge1:438Surviving Twin3:419Donations2:0210Graveyard2:1411Bed2:5312Last Man on Earth5:0113Homeless4:14, which was released by Red House Records in 2001.
Wainwright and musician Joe Henry composed the music for the 2007 Judd Apatow film Knocked Up. In addition to composing the soundtrack, Wainwright appeared in the film in a supporting role as the protagonists' obstetrician. He has also composed music for the new theatre production of Carl Hiaasen's Lucky You, which premiered at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
In 2017, Wainwright released his autobiography, Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, and a Few of My Other Favorite Things.

Relationships and family

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.
Wainwright later had a relationship with singer Suzzy Roche, during which they had a daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche, who is also a musician. The relationship ended, although Wainwright and Suzzy Roche remain on good terms and occasionally appear onstage together, sometimes with Lucy.
Wainwright's second marriage was to Ritamarie Kelly, and the couple lived in Los Angeles. This marriage also ended in divorce. They have a daughter, Alexandra (Lexie) Kelly Wainwright (born 1993).
Since 2015, Wainwright has lived with Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker.

Mutual inspiration for songs

Wainwright's first wife, Kate McGarrigle, wrote her song "Go Leave" about him. In it, she recounts how in the 1970s, he, her then-husband, ran off to Europe with performance artist Penny Arcade. McGarrigle, who was pregnant at the time with what would have been their third child, 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. Their daughter, 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".
Wainwright's son, Rufus, was the inspiration behind two of his songs: "Rufus Is a Tit Man" (referring to his breastfeeding) and "A Father and a Son", a retrospective. Rufus has written the song "Dinner at Eight" about his conflicted relationship with his father.
Martha and her father sang a duet on "Father Daughter Dialogue" (on Loudon's 1995 album, Grown Man×Grown Man1995 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 15 tracks1The Birthday Present1:532Grown Man3:523That Hospital3:594Housework4:385Cobwebs3:086A Year3:557Father/Daughter Dialogue2:36819943:319IWIWAL3:0710Just A John4:1711I Suppose2:2812Dreaming3:1413The End Has Begun4:0414Human Cannonball3:1015Treasures Untold2:20) and collaborated on the song "You Never Phone" (on Loudon's 2003 live album, So Damn Happy×So Damn Happy2003 · Album · LiveSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 17 tracks1Much Better Bets3:052So Damn Happy2:543Between1:244The Picture2:495Cobwebs3:106Heaven2:537Something for Nothing4:118Dreaming4:069Westchester County4:2010Tonya's Twirls4:4811A Year3:3812You Never Phone3:06134 x 102:2614The Shit Song4:1815Primrose Hill4:1716The Home Stretch5:1017Men3:36). Wainwright's songs inspired by his first daughter, Martha, are "That Hospital" (about visiting a hospital during her gestation for an attempted abortion) "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'." 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".
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 her. 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". 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".