Mel Lyman

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Mel Lyman
Born March 24, 1938(1938-03-24)
Eureka, California, United States
Died 1978
Unknown
Occupation Musician
Leader, Mel Lyman Family

Mel Lyman (born March 24, 1938, Eureka, California — died 1978, exact date and location unknown) was an American cult leader and musician.

Contents

[edit] Musician

“ Mel Lyman played harmonica like no one under the sun / Mel Lyman didn't just play harmonica, he was one. - Landis MacKellar[1] ”

Lyman grew up in California and Oregon. Following some itinerant traveling he joined Jim Kweskin's Boston-based jug band in 1963 as a banjo and harmonica player.

Lyman, a skilled harmonica player, is remembered in folk music circles for playing a 30 minute improvisation on the traditional hymn "Rock of Ages" at the end of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival to the riled crowd streaming out after Bob Dylan's famous appearance with an electric band. Some felt that Lyman, an acoustic music purist, was delivering a wordless counterargument to Dylan's new-found rock direction.

[edit] The Mel Lyman Family

After moving to Boston, Lyman became involved with Timothy Leary's group of LSD enthusiasts and ingested large quantities of the drug, supplemented with morning glory seeds. At some point, Lyman began to think of himself as destined for a role as a spiritual force and leader.

“ I am singing America to you and it is Mel Lyman. He is the new soul of the world. - Jim Kweskin[2] ”

Lyman was by all accounts very charismatic, and he soon began to gather acolytes, including Kweskin, who devoted his sets to Lyman-centric sermons after the musician's departure. In 1966, Lyman founded and headed the Mel Lyman Family, centered in a few houses in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, a poor neighborhood of Boston. The Family combined some of the outward forms of an urban hippie commune with a religio-political structure centered on Lyman, who counted such avant-garde luminaries as Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and Bruce Conner among his friends.

In 1967, the Family gained control (apparently using strong-arm tactics) of the Avatar, a Boston underground newspaper. Later they founded their own short-lived paper, American Avatar. Lyman's writings in these publications brought him his first significant public notoriety, particularly as Lyman at various times claimed to be: the living embodiment of Truth, the greatest man in the world, Jesus Christ, and an alien entity sent to Earth in human form by extraterrestrials. Such pronouncements were typically delivered with extreme fervor and liberal use of the caps lock key.

“ Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU... through complete sacrifice of the personality... - Mel Lyman[3] ”

Because Lyman and the Family were seen to be part of the burgeoning Boston hippie community, they were able to attract recruits from amongst the many, mostly young, people in pursuit of an alternative lifestyle at that time.

But although Lyman and the Family shared some attributes with the hippies — use of LSD & marijuana and Lyman's cosmic millennialism — they were not hippies in appearance (male members wore their hair relatively short by the standard of the era) or beliefs (while Lyman himself fathered children by several women, polyamory was generally eschewed in favor of traditional, male-dominated relationships). Rather than the gentle and collectivist hippie ethic, Lyman espoused a philosophy that contained, among other things, strong currents of megalomania and nihilism.

“ I am going to burn down the world / I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone / I am going to shove hope up your ass / I am going to turn ideals to shit / I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble / and then I am going to burn the rubble / and then I am going to scatter the ashes / and then maybe someone will be able to see something as it really is / Watch Out - Mel Lyman[4] ”

[edit] Decline of the Family, and Lyman's death

In 1971, Rolling Stone magazine published an extensive and philippic cover exposé of the Family. The Rolling Stone report described an authoritarian and dysfunctional environment, including an elite "Karma Squad" of ultra-loyalists to enforce Lyman's discipline, and isolation rooms for disobedient Family members. Family members disputed these reports.

“ The only difference between us and the Manson Family is that we don't go around preaching peace and love and we haven't killed anyone, yet. - Jim Kweskin (perhaps in jest)[4] ”

The Rolling Stone article and the earlier trial of Charles Manson, who seemed to share some traits in common with Lyman, raised the Family's profile and — whether fairly or not — established Lyman in the public mind as a bizarre and possibly dangerous person.

But although Lyman admired Charles Manson and corresponded with him, and was followed as a Messiah-like figure by the Family, it would be inaccurate to overstate the similarities between the Manson Family and the Mel Lyman Family. Lyman's group was larger and more stable and productive than Manson's. Unlike Manson's group, Lyman's included many persons of accomplishment and note, such as Kweskin, the actor Mark Frechette, and the writer Paul Williams. And although the Family was often accused of strong-arm tactics in dealing with neighbors and alternative-community groups, they never killed anyone. Most importantly, Lyman himself never manifested homicidal intent.

However, in 1973, members of the Family, including Frechette, staged a bank robbery. One member of the Family was killed by police, and Frechette died in a weightlifting accident in jail in 1975.

Thus, unlike Manson's Family, Lyman's did not explode in a dramatic denouement. Rather, the Family took a lower profile and carried on, but ceased recruiting. Lyman died in 1978, at only 39 or 40 years of age, under unknown (but presumably natural) circumstances.

“ [The Family] was a highly intolerant, manipulative, and frightening place to grow up... we were taught to believe that we were being protected from the World. - Guinevere Turner [5] ”

After Lyman's death, the Family evolved into a conventional commune — small, low-profile, and prosperous. The skills and work ethic honed in refurbishing the structures of the Family compound led to the founding of the profitable Fort Hill Construction Company, and The Family acquired property in Kansas and other places. Many Family members went on to successful careers, and all or almost all current members still revere Lyman, as do many former members, although other former Family members have disowned and attacked him.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Discography

  • The Lyman Family with Lisa Kindred: American Avatar, (Warner Bros./Reprise 6353, 1970)
  • Jim Kweskin's America, (Reprise Records, 1971), producer (as Richard D. Herbruck) and performer. This is the only recording on which Lyman had creative control.
  • Lyman appeared as an instrumentalist on various tracks of other albums. See Mel Lyman: Recorded Music for complete list.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Song Mel Lyman, from album Bath, Michigan (Landis MacKellar, 1999)
  2. ^ Liner notes, Jim Kweskin’s America (see Discography)
  3. ^ "TO ALL WHO WOULD KNOW", American Avatar #2 (periodical, Boston, 1967
  4. ^ a b Mel Lyman (Felton, David, editor. Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America (1972, San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books) ISBN 0-87932-038-9)
  5. ^ Daly, Meg. Surface Tension: Love, Sex and Politics Between Lesbians and Straight Women ISBN 0-684-80221-X

[edit] References

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Lyman, Mel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Cult leader
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Eureka, California
DATE OF DEATH 1978
PLACE OF DEATH Unknown