I'm convinced that Taylor Hicks definitely has AS. He has been obsessed with music and playing instruments and singing since he was a very young child. He used to sneak out of his house when he was a young teen and play and sing sets in bars with soul and r+b bands. If you watch interviews with him, you can tell he knows he should make eye contact, but he is very uncomfortable in doing so. His stimming seems to be his harmonica. And interestingly enough, he has organized fundraisers for an organization in Alabama called Studio by the Tracks, which is a small non-profit agency that offers a place for youth and adults on the spectrum to create artwork, write and act.
I've met Prince (former Twin Citian too!) when he rented storage space in our basement studio and also while hanging out at Charles Orr's guitar shop, where he used to jam in the back room as a teen.
I'd say it's a fair assessment that he uses AS as an excuse to act the way that he does, but he's also changed a bit since he's been discovered, so part of it might be a little bit of him buying into his own hype too...hard to cleave that one maybe.
I also met SRV briefly at a showcase when I lived in L.A., at S.I.R. studios, and I've also met singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch (of "Sunshine Superman fame). He DEFINITELY struck me as a "professor" type.
Hard to say if he's Aspie, but definitely tending that way.
Here's three musicians, in quite different styles of music, who I, someone with the condition, would consider prime candidates. Batman55 and Simen, who I doubt have researched these people as thoroughly as I have, treated it harshly, but the following data is supported by a range of different information, including TV and print interviews and documentaries, print biographies, and multiple Internet sources that often cited the former two types of media. In addition to them, look up these three writers: Diane Warren, Lamont Dozier, and Thom Bell; you may not know them, but their music is a part of your soul in more ways than one. Also, ponder where Nikki Bacharach (daughter of Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson) might have gotten her Asperger's; just a thought.
Prince (More Evidence):
He is world-famous for his general "weirdness," worshiped and lampooned in equal measure for over a quarter-century (just look at those "Saturday Night Live" skits over the last couple years). He's heavily introverted, has a complex internal logic involving pacifism and his personal fascinations with certain colors and objects, especially purple, of course; all this is in his addition to his dealing so often with burning but often repressed sexual desire which he himself described as producing a tendency to write songs as "sexual fantasies." He clearly has exceptional talent and a genuine musical genius with a true mastery of myriad styles, ranging from funk to urban R&B to rock to pop. His social eccentricities have been legend, and if you need any further proof of this, consider, for instance, that when he was younger, in the 1970s, he once locked himself in his room for several months (with an attached bathroom along with his food supply, I hope) and spent that time writing songs, in complete isolation for the outside world. And yes, as others posting here have pointed out, he's done some pretty impolite things. As for leaving Sinead O'Connor stranded somewhere after she visited to discuss recording his "Nothing Compares 2 U," Sinead's been known for outrageous exaggerations, but I can see where she might have gotten the impressions that he could be callous. He's tough to figure out, but if he weren't, he wouldn't be Prince.
Avril Lavigne:
Talk about inappropriate behavior with no concern for social registers! Lavigne is renowned for her outbursts and odd statements in the media, and is frequently mocked as such. She had a very revealing interview with Craig Ferguson recently, part of his terrific initiative to actually interview musical guests (which too many talk show hosts usually forego these days), in which she mentioned taking an inward posture (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about) in times when she feels stressed out. She has long had a fascination with punk music and other genres of alternative rock, but has been frustrated with her seeming inability to grasp the spontaneous, emotional qualities that give such music its emotional power. Indeed, this failure has given her much of the flak she receives from music critics. For a final case in point, take one episode of "Saturday Night Live" in which she appeared as the musical guest (not as an impersonation, as she has most often figured). In the traditional hugging round at the end, she remained quite aloof from the proceedings, politely accepting hugs but never quite pro-actively seeking them out. At that moment, I realized that I genuinely understand her, or at least think I do.
Mariah Carey:
Yes, I do think that Asperger's is Mariah's problem. It's also likely a part of her strength. What happened in 2001 was not a breakdown from completely normal behavior but rather a pattern of increasingly strange behavior that led to a relapse into hardcore Asperger's Syndrome. The mental (and physical, after all the two are always connected) exhaustion, the plate-throwing tantrum at the hotel, the desperate messages on her web site--all classic Asperger's behavior if you know how to recognize it. Since most people don't, her frequent rationales of growing up multiracial (a "handicapped childhood," as she once put it) and dealing with low blood sugar satisfy many as to explanations for her behavior. However, if you look under the surface, you will find an enormous body of evidence suggesting Mariah's having some form of AS. After all, as Larry King said to her, for all her glossy image, "she's weird."
1) There [is[/i] a precedent for neurological disorders in her family, since her biological brother has cerebral palsy
2) When she was growing up, instead of responding to hostility towards multiracial people by working hard to make friends at school, she retreated to her home and avoided social interaction, with only an occasional break to jam with others who shared her interest in music, and even that only happening in her teen years; I myself remember that my only real friends in high school were those in my scholastic bowl team and drama club. Her sister Allison, on the other hand, was quite the social butterfly and got beat up and involved in drug abuse and prostitution for her trouble; social skills aren't always what they're cracked up to be, and Mariah's difficulties with them may have protected her in this case. During her long hours at home alone while her mother worked (her parents split up, because of hostility from Mom's relations, not the usual Aspie-related tensions later on), Mariah would watch large amounts of television, practice scales for hours on end, and viewed the radio as a comforting refuge to which she could withdraw in hours of need, almost as much as her strong Christian beliefs, if not regular church attendance, since it was very hard to find congregations accepting of her mixed family. She also often opts to record her albums in secluded locales where she can "get away from it all," not content to save that for vacations as many celebs do. For instance, she recorded Rainbow on the Italian island of Corti and is currently recording her eleventh studio album in a villa on the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
3) She manifested her exceptional, almost superhuman vocal and songwriting talent (she co-writes much of her material, lyrics, music, and all) at an early age, displaying pitch perfection at the age of two. In addition, she needs to have song ideas transcribed because they come to her so fast that, as she revealed in her 2003 Larry King interview, she can't even write them down properly. A musical genius if ever there was one.
4) Besides being relatively isolated from friendships in school and failing to communicate with people about her dreams of musical stardom in a way that didn't make her seem odd and delusional, she perseverated on music so much that the obsession hampered her ability to perform academically; she simply could not concentrate on her schoolwork and always seemed unfocused and "somewhere else" in school, which along with her absenteeism (due to said Manhattan jam sessions), hampered her academic performance enough to indicate that her exit from high school at seventeen was most likely a withdrawal rather than an early graduation.
5) She was quite unconcerned with her appearance as a child, and gained a better but still ersatz image during 500 hours of beauty school and hair salon apprenticeship, which was threatened as a career by her habit of singing at work rather than chatting up customers, lending her the nickname "Echo." Around 1993, her handlers, including husband and Sony Records executive Tommy Mottola, gave her a more conventional hair and look, but she has never had astute fashion sense, as the many fashion critics of our society know so well. She essentially wears whatever she pleases, valuing personal qualities such as not being tight around the mid-section, which she claims has a serious impact on her vocals.
6) She has a tendency to "give people the wrong impression" and be "a flirt," without really intending to, having little concept of entering and exiting relationships carefully. She headed somewhat naïvely into her relationship with Tommy, failing to anticipate the corporate jealousy she would endure and not taking some of the cues that might have alerted her to the fact that Tommy treated her like a child, perhaps because of her sometimes immature and inappropriate behavior. Speaking of which, have you ever watched her on camera? Who is she making eye contact with? It is not always very clear, and this has perhaps led to awkward outcomes for many relationships. The very nature of love itself confuses her, and despite having been in several relationships, she insisted in said Larry King interview that she hasn't "ever really been in love." It's a handy word to put in a song and a key concept of popular music lyrics, but she expressed confusion over the basic nature of this complex, intuitive, and social emotion.
7) Mariah has had difficulties in the past in communicating with people, even in work settings. Although some behavioral quirks may have been ironed out by the charm-school-style work training that served as kind of therapy for the previously concert-shy entertainer, she still had trouble making her needs and feelings understood to her superiors at Columbia and Virgin Records. She was a wallflower at the party at which she was discovered, leading to the oft-cited "Cinderella story" of her discovery by Tommy through Brenda K. Starr, the entertainer who helped get her discover in her quest to socialize Mariah by dragging the latter to parties. Part of the reason she had her problems in 2001 was that she had never been good at conveying her wishes about choices for album singles, and more importantly her need for an occasional break from work, to her label and publicist. Many other entertainers face the pressures that led drove to her exhaustion, either resolve the issues successfully or devolve into substance abuse. Mariah did neither, and her hospitalization in a mental ward should be a sobering reminder of how this case was more than ordinary fatigue. It may have been preventable had she been able to make her needs and problems known to people. She might have done well to be more assertive, and perhaps not reject the lawsuit options that might have been available to her in compensation for her troubles.
8 ) She is also hypersensitive. Early in her career, she was actually spooked by the crowd noise at her first live concert, and only gradually got accustomed to louder sounds, as I myself have in spite of my Asperger's. She still cannot tolerate intense smells; hence, her efforts to design an extremely subtle fragrance for her Automatic Princess line. Tactile sensations are also important to her, as she prefers certain fabrics and places a lot of emphasis on comfortableness in her apparel choices. To top it all off, she displays some compulsivity in her use of antiseptic wipes to counter "fan germs" on the road.
When she was sent to the mental hospital, she soon got referred to a therapist, with whom she worked out some strategies for dealing with people that sound very Asperger's-oriented to me. First of all, she needs to learn to set boundaries and assert herself more when necessary, and get better at saying no. Second, she needs to arrange with employers, and has done so in actual contracts for what you and I would call the accommodation of having her "own private time and space," reducing the necessary amount of social negotiation to achieve such a thing, haggling that other artists could more easily conduct on a case-by-case basis. Finally, she works to set up a good schedule with her employers that gives her time to decompress and time to do her best. All in all, she needed to do some self-advocacy. Fortunately for her, she has reached a level of prestige in her industry that allows her to request these things, and I hope I someday reach that point in whatever field I choose to enter (I'm young, you see). In any case, these approaches have worked well, and she has not only made a spectacular career comeback but is also dealing better than ever with some aspects of her personality that may stem from Asperger's. As a fan and possible fellow Aspie, I wish her the best. Was she eventually diagnosed with the condition by this therapist? Perhaps only two people really know.
It's not really any of our business whether any of these four people, or any other celebrity, is diagnosed with Asperger's; it ought to be between patient and psychiatrist or therapist, unless both parties agree that revealing the diagnosis is the right thing to do. One thing's for sure, we could use a celebrity self-advocate, and it would help immeasurably in increasing people's understanding and acceptance of the condition if a superstar was honest and forthright with people about their Asperger's, making us all accept it as a part of who that celebrity is and perhaps as much a factor in his or her talents as it is in his or her shortcomings. Celebrity publicists sometimes try to explain away all sorts of health perturbations in celebrities, fostering the confusion that fuels tabloid headlines and other media circuses; as recovered alcoholic talk show host Craig Ferguson recently pointed out about Britney Spears' recent troubles, when a celebrity has an issue, they need help and not skepticism or denial from people whose jobs depend on the star, because unless the entertainer's physical and mental health can be attended to, there is no entertainment coming from them. It's that simple, and the luxury rehabs, exploitative talk shows, and what have you are not the answer. The more people exploit or deny celebrities' problems, the more it encourages them to be in denial, and sometimes those problems are not as simple as Dr. Drew Pinsky's alleged diagnosis of "Narcisstic Personality Disorder," itself a lightning rod for misdiagnoses of a cornucopia of other mental health conditions, including Asperger's Syndrome. Entertainment may set some fashions for neurotypical society, but it is also an environment in which different and eccentric people can flourish and find a way of making their identity accepted, and it would be a shame if publicists would support the idea that celebrities couldn't possibly have my condition because of its social skill aspects. I would love to hear your feedback about my ideas.
