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L.V.S. Lead Vocalist Syndrome

Do you ride in a separate tour bus?

Is your wardrobe the sartorial equivalent of ordering off the menu? Does it make you uncomfortable when people tell stories about how you and your bandmates once toured together in a van, huddled together for warmth? Have you released more than three unsuccessful solo albums under your own name or a fanciful make-believe name that nobody but you truly understands? Does someone smoking a cigarette or running the air conditioner in the next room enrage you? Have your band mates discussed replacing you with the lead singer of a tribute band?

If so, you may be suffering from L.V.S., an ailment recently diagnosed by none other than Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in his autobiography, Life. “Mick [Jagger] got very big ideas,” Richards writes of his longtime band mate and song-writing partner. “All lead singers do. It’s a known affliction called L.V.S. Lead vocalist syndrome. There had been early symptoms but now it was rampant.”

Although he has employed a great many personal physicians over the years, Richards is not a doctor himself, which is why this, the first public diagnosis of L.V.S., is all the more remarkable. In his study, Richards cites the example of a shot in the Rolling Stones early-80s concert film Let’s Spend the Night Together, directed by Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Coming Home, Being There). The band is playing its hit cover of “Time Is On My Side” and a series of vintage 60’s images flash on the screen. One of them refers to the band—inaccurately—as “Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.” Richards suspected Jagger of approving this language, tacitly or otherwise, and demanded that it be cut from the finished film. “If you combine congenital L.V.S. with a nonstop bombardment of flattery every waking moment over years and years, you can start to believe the incoming,” he warns. “Even if you’re not flattered by flattery or you’re anti-flattery, it will go to your head; it will do something to you. And even if you don’t completely believe it, you say, well everybody else does - I’ll roll with it. You forget that it’s just part of the job. It’s amazing how even quite sensible people like Mick Jagger could get carried away by it.”

Yes, L.V.S. is real, and it’s been a bane to popular music since 1942, when Frank Sinatra was released from his contract with Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra with assistance from Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, Frank couldn’t help himself. His brain was being attacked by microscopic super bugs which tricked it into believing that the normal rules of social interaction, business and fashion etiquette, and sexual congress no longer applied to him.

One guitarist who has played in major rock bands (and who agreed to speak with me on the condition of anonymity) has first-hand experience of seeing the disease metastasize. Lead singers, he says, “definitely put themselves out there in a way that guitar players and drummers don’t have to. It’s easier to hide behind an instrument. The focus is generally on the lead singer and after a while you get used to be people looking at you for cues. It just kind of spills over into everything else, if you have that level of attention in a big rock band. It's like being a spoiled child or the quarterback in high school.”

With Keith’s discovery, scores of guitarists, drummers, bass players, keyboard players, managers, publicists and record company executives have exhaled in relief. “It’s not us, it’s them, and they can’t help themselves. They’re not horrible assholes. They’re just very, very sick.” And while there’s no widely accepted cure (Richards recommends self-disfigurement, “which I did by letting some teeth fall out”), the mere discovery brings us that much closer to a world where all rock bands, not just Huey Lewis and the News, will function together again, with humility and in harmony.

Of course for some it’s too late. One wonders how Kurt Cobain might have fared if he’d been diagnosed. Joe Strummer never would have fired Mick Jones from The Clash. The Jam would still be The Jam and not “From the Jam.” The Smiths would still be touring; the rhythm section never having filed suit. The Gallagher brothers would holiday together in Ibiza. Slash, Duff and Izzy would still be in Guns N’ Roses. James Iha and D’arcy (oh, and Jimmy Chamberlin) would still be Smashing Pumpkins. We wouldn’t have had to endure the prolonged absences of recently reunited Limp Bizkit and Creed—well, that was actually fine.

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Would Joe Perry have pushed Steven Tyler off the stage in August if there hadn’t been an embargo on Richards’s book? Only two months later and he surely would have said, “Man, I know it’s not you. It’s that damn cootie. Here, lean against my back with your back and I’ll play a solo.” Surely the other guys in Coldplay would have had the context and backbone to say to Chris Martin, “No, we don’t want to dress like we’re in the video for ‘Synchronicity II’ by the Police.”

L.V.S. is a tricky affliction; we are learning more about it every day. For example, you can be the lead vocalist of a band and find that you’re absolutely immune to L.V.S. symptoms (Dave Matthews), or be a solo artist and suffer them in extreme (Kanye West). It can be latent for years and then explode without any warning (90s Michael Stipe). It can also reverse itself naturally with minimal treatment (late-period Springsteen ). It even affects a few guitarists (Jimmy Page). Often you don’t even have to be an actual rock star. I realize now that I exhibited early-onset L.V.S. in college. The retroactive diagnosis has been healing. I had a band called Fruitslaw. (The name derived from an old Saturday Night Live skit starring John Belushi and guest host Sissy Spacek as The Newlyweds: “You always ignorin’ me when I ask you to buy fruitslaw,” Belushi rages. “You didn’t explain it!” Spacek pleads. “It’s fruitslaw! You buy it in the dairy case. It’ comes in a plastic thing. It’s like cole slaw only it’s made of fruit! It’s fruit slaw!”) Before rehearsal, I would go to the snack bar in the Commons building, order a large chamomile tea, and make a big flourish about asking for a dollop of honey “for my voice.” We never even made it to a house party. I now know the reason why I became a struggling rock journalist instead of a wealthy and world-famous rock star. It’s not because I exhibited a complete lack of musical talent or ambition. It was because I’d somehow contracted L.V.S.

Now, who can I sue?