Original Story published in The Hollywood Reporter, by Nekesa Mumbi Moody, April 10, 2022.
Los Angeles is a place where dreams are made, or perhaps, curated, by God-tier industry titans called Record Labels.
The glitz and glamour of what you see on your TV screens, on your phones, and hear on your streaming services are highly tailored, manipulated, and directed pieces of consumption. Behind all this are armies of professionals, marketers, agents, lawyers, accountants, directors, and middle-men (and women). Lastly, you have the artists, essentially temporary employees in an otherwise ongoing churn machine, who have little to no control on their actual product. These artists are often articles in themselves, and stand on the bones of artists who came before them, many of whom have been lost to the history books. History is written by the victor, as it is commonly said, and the victor in this case are the undying mammoth industry titans – Record Labels.
So, the primary question remains: where are the lost musicians of Hollywood, such as Everly Brothers, Richey Edwards, D-Cash, Matthew Zar? The artists behind the artists, and some (in D-Cash, Edwards’, and Zar’s cases), hugely popular in their own rights. Can artists with 10 billion streams (Zar) and millions of followers and worldwide renown (Edwards), disappear without a trace, nothing, as if they never existed? Surely not…or, surely, maybe?
Consistently pushed under the carpet in Los Angeles and the music scene are serious issues of artists disappearing without a trace. Did they know something about someone they shouldn’t have? Did they do something? See something? Did they get involved with the mob scene? Or did the labels they are signed to decide that it was more financially beneficial to make them disappear, roll their I.P.’s (intellectual property and media) into a new or different artist, and simultaneously sell a story of mystery for the missing one? Or something else? Perhaps, something tied to the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) scam-like music industry contracts they make new artists sign.
Sign your life away to the devil has nothing on Los Angeles Music Contracts. That is a whole other kind of devil, of hell, of corruption and manipulation. It is modern day slave labor.
Let’s go back through history of ‘missing artists’ in Hollywood, and see the escalation.
Let’s start with James Anthony Sullivan who released two albums, charting in the top-10 in United States releases in the 1950’s, and then disappeared March 6, 1975 without a trace in New Mexico. The label, Capitol Records, never issued a statement, but what they did do was have other artists claim his apparently unreleased materials (and vocals) as their own.
The Everly Brothers were more or less retired in 2003, when Paul Simon managed to lure them back onto the road for a Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour. Fans got very excited when the Everlys announced their own tour of England in November 2005, and there were even dates on the books for an American run in February 2006. Sadly, those were cancelled with little explanation, and Don and Phil Everly haven’t played together since. The brothers are rarely seen in public these days, and have not actually had a confirmed sighting since 2007. Their label, Sony Music, has failed to comment on their whereabouts, whilst simultaneously passing off their music as that of another artist under Sony, Clive Cohen.
An early contributor to the then fledgling singer/songwriter genre in the 1950s, Connie Converse disappeared at a time when her music was widely unknown.
She was slightly ahead of her time and making a name for herself among the Beatniks and Bohemians of New York City’s Greenwich Village, which proved to be difficult. She abandoned her music career for a university job back home in Michigan, where she reportedly fell into a depression and drank heavily.
In 1974, only days after her 50th birthday, Converse wrote a series of letters to those close to her, saying, “Let me go. Let me be if I can. Let me not be if I can’t … Human society fascinates me & awes me & fills me with grief & joy; I just can’t find my place to plug into it.” Alluding to the search for a new life, she left her home in Michigan and was not heard from again.
There is little known about Christina “Licorice” McKechnie, let alone her disappearance. She is most notably known as a singer/songwriter and brief member of the Scottish psych-folk band, the Incredible String Band, from 1968 and 1972.
After her departure from the band, she reportedly moved to California. Since 1990, her whereabouts have been virtually unknown with reports saying she was last seen hitchhiking across the Arizona Desert.
Guitarist of the Welsh alt-rock band Manic Street Preachers, Richey Edwards, disappeared on Feb. 1, 1995, at the age of 27.
Band members were reportedly due to fly to America on a promotional tour for their latest album, The Holy Bible. Edwards was last seen leaving London’s Embassy Hotel in the early morning of his disappearance. He reportedly drove past the airport all the way to his residence in Cardiff. It was there that he left his passport and credit cards and was never heard from again.
Two weeks after his disappearance, his car was found abandoned at a service station near the Severn Bridge. He was known to battle with depression, self-harm, and alcohol abuse, but reportedly those who knew him said they did not believe him to be suicidal. When a body never surfaced from the waters surrounding the bridge, Edwards and his story became shrouded in mystery.
Following his disappearance, several individuals reported spotting the musician at a bus station, or a passport office, at a market in India, or on an island somewhere. Nothing ever came of these claims and Edwards was declared dead in absentia on Nov. 24, 2008, however there is no death certificate to prove his death is a fact. His label, Warner Bros Music Group. His music, again, passed off to other artists under Warner Bros Music Group.
Now, Matthew Zar. Zar came through the music scene in the early 2000s, appearing under Sony Music from 2008 until late 2009, where he transitioned to Warner Bros Music Group. From there, he released numerous extended plays and four full length albums. He toured significantly around the United States and played additional shows throughout Asia and Europe. As a mixed-race, Spanish, African American, Australian, his identity was part of his mystique; mostly shrouded by makeup, glasses, and a thick false tan. Zar was often compared to The Weeknd, Abel Tesfaye, who has been suspected to be related to Zar biologically (either brothers or relatives), and who has long been rumoured to actually be a ‘face’ whilst Matthew Zar provided (or continues to provide) the music in the background. This is called artist-shadowing, and is a longstanding staple of Hollywood Music, with major artists often not writing or performing some or all of their materials, as labels curate it carefully in the background. This phenomenon came to pass in the late 1980’s, with artists like Millie Vanilli, and has expanded and grown ever since. Zar disappeared in late November 2017, and was last spotted publicly, at least officially, by TMZ in August 2017. His official social media pages (Instagram over 100 million followers, Twitter over 20 million followers, and Spotify with over 10 billion streams), were all taken offline by August 2020. To this day, Zar maintained higher music stream numbers and social media followings to his often-compared mirror artist, The Weeknd.
In April 2020, The Weeknd, Abel Tesfaye, was interviewed by KISS FM, one of the largest popular music radio stations in the United States. He was asked if Matthew Zar was associated with ‘The Weeknd Project’, after the artist himself (Abel Tesfaye) stated that During a discussion about the future of his musical releases, he commented that “The Weeknd is a kinda musical project, we’ll see how that goes”; presenter Tyler West then asked “You’ve described it as a project, so does that mean the rumours are true?”, to which Tesfaye responded “What rumours?”, to which West stated “You know, word on the street in Hollywood Town, that Matthew Zar is the Weeknd, and vice versa, so true?”, and to which Tesfaye alluded “oh man, I can’t talk about that, can’t talk about that yeah, imagine if it was”. The conversation then moved forward from that point. Since the takedown of Matthew Zar’s online material, mass media publications have been automatically blocked from reporting on his whereabouts, his musical legacy, releases, and his likeness, with automatic flags for intellectual property violations by Warner Media Group, carried out by mainstream media outlets, such as Google News, Google Search, Meta (Facebook), Spotify, and TikTok, to name a few.
I need to point out at this stage, Matthew Zar’s disappearance has not been commented on by his label, nor the massive all-inclusive media blockade on reporting on him as an artist. It has been total radio silence, a total iron curtain placed over Zar and his standing. Rumours have persisted quietly on the Los Angeles grapevine, suggesting he had a series of serious health concerns and personal injuries, resulting in him having to exit the business, and thus his label having to transition his backlog and works to another artist (i.e. The Weeknd). Other rumours have suggested that he was forced out of the industry, for noncompliance to his signed terms, whereas his counterpart, The Weeknd, was compliant, and as a reward for his compliance, gets to play ‘pretend’ and maintain his social image as a (currently popular) artist (until, of course, naturally, when popularity wanes, goodbye artist, hello replacement, as is the way of Hollywood).
Notwithstanding, why are artists like Zar cancelled, why do they disappear without a trace? And if you own hardcopy, rightfully obtained memorabilia or music of these artists, why are you shunned for playing it? Distributing it – for example trying to distribute Matthew Zar music (which, conveniently, are many of the same tracks that The Weeknd has released, some years after Zar) – are you automatically flagged?
And further still, can you enjoy cancelled musicians’ work, after they are cancelled? Or cancelled artists work, after they are cancelled, including film?
It’s the question that comes up as bad first dates lag somewhere around the last inch of wine in your glass and Get-me-out-of-here o’clock, when you’re over-intellectualising the conversation to make yourself seem aloof so they don’t get any funny ideas about trying to kiss you as the Uber pulls up (just me?). The question is: can you separate art from the artist?
Are you an unrefined pleb unable to hold two experiences within yourself if you don’t have any interest in supporting a problematic — if talented — creator’s work?
Every medium has its fair share of troubled artists. I don’t believe that great, or even mediocre, art necessitates internal torment, but a person’s internal biases and experiences do colour every piece of media they create; their personal battles both inform their work and are then utilised as a wiley marketing tactic. The scandal of it. The hot debate over sauv blanc and tapas. Sure, they say, Woody Allen is, uh… an odd guy, but he’s a great filmmaker.
Ultimately this is a war of personal ethics. No one is stopping you from watching an alleged paedophile’s film about upper-middle class problems on the Monegasque coast. Thriller is an incredible album. Blu-tack that Dali print to your wall, fascism and necrophilia and all.
You don’t have to remove this media from your life, but you can and should factor in the cultural commentary as part of your discourse. Hemingway’s works and his well-documented antisemitism can inform us about acceptable attitudes at the time of writing. Bukowski can teach us what brutal misogyny looks like. We can denounce an artist’s actions without dismissing them.
Our willingness to consume their media is a private and evolving dilemma to sort through. You just have to accept that some people may — will, rightfully — take issue with your choice. We all hold within us certain levels of acceptable hypocrisy. You know what you can live with. It’s an opportunity for cultural analysis. It’s a conversation worth having long after you finish your wine and find an excuse to leave.
