After returning from Boston I came to find out my friend and occasional boss, Brendan Mullen, had died. He had just emailed me while I was away, so to find he was gone the next day from a stroke has been surreal. I’m also getting really tired of my friends dying the past few years!
You can read more about Brendan and his contributions in both the Los Angeles punk scene and his writing here and here.
For about 8 years I have been doing transcribing work from Brendan for his articles appearing in the LA Weekly and various magazines, my husband and I also helped with the book Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction. Brendan and I had been working on the forthcoming Red Hot Chili Peppers oral history/photo book, the 1st draft complete, but more interviews had been done since and I was about to begin work on those. The amount of interviews and work put into it is astounding, I’m unsure of the fate of the book, but there is enough for it to be released eventually; it was almost finished other than perhaps the gathering of photos and layout. As tedious as all these assignments could be, they were also fascinating for an old punk like me, and I’m grateful I was able to be a part of them and to work with Brendan. He, much like myself, had the gift of gab and was always fun to have at parties or bump into. There wasn’t a thing about music — it seemed — that he didn’t know and I will miss our phone conversations that used to go on for hours sometimes.
RIP Mr. Mullen.
Arty Farty 