I knew he could be a real asshole at times. He went to great lengths to be accessible to his fans, but at the same time, he treated a lot of his fanbase like shit. He would go off on them on social media over nothing, indiscriminately block them on Twitter, many times simply because they complimented him. There were all kinds of stories about how he treated fans in person after shows, or in private messages, and he seemed to burn a lot of bridges with musicians and people he worked with.
Oh well, he’s a temperamental artist, and he has substance abuse problems, so I was more than willing to give him a pass. A lot of us were.
By “a lot of us”, I mean other fans in the huge online community of Ryan Adams fans. Even before Facebook, there were message boards where fans would gather and talk about shows and songs and Ryan gossip. Ryan was even there with them, interacting and building up a whole facade and relationship with his fans, which turns out was just a way to manipulate people. Ryan would regularly lash out at fans on the boards, irrationally, saying some really awful things over minor disagreements. He was toxic, but still we all made excuses for him.
His songs were the soundtrack of our lives. That’s how it is with music. Your favorite songs get weaved into the fabric of your life, and they become part of your memories and the emotions attached to them. They helped us through hard times. They accompanied the pain and heartbreak of broken relationships and losing loved ones. They accompanied the joy of getting married and having children. They spoke to us and comforted us at times when no one or nothing else could.
We shared that all with each other as well. So many of us became such good friends. I am closer to some of the people I met on social media through my love of Ryan Adams than I am with some of the people I grew up with in real life. Throughout all the groups and offshoots that are associated with Ryan on social media, we have all been there for each other in times of crisis and times of joy. We took up collections for people in need. We helped each other through abuse and divorce. We collected money for charities when some of our community passed away, and sent a lot of money their way in our fallen friend’s names. There have been relationships and marriages that have come of it all. We have probably saved each other’s lives on occasion.
I know that was probably the case with me. About the time I really became a big part of that community, I was going through a very rough time. I had just lost the love of my life to mental illness, and there were a lot of other things in my life that were not going well at all. I was at a point in my life where the thought of killing myself brought me comfort. People picked up on it in the group, and messaged me and made sure I was okay. We all talked, and we all shared our experiences, and it helped me through a very tough time in my life. Would I have actually killed myself? Probably not, but I had tried it once many years earlier, so you never know. I do know that now I would never do it, and a lot of that mindset has come from the people I met through Ryan Adams and his music.
That is not enough though.
In February, the New York Times published an article detailing all the abusive things he had done to the women in his life, including his ex wife Mandy Moore. There were so many women in the article going on record with the horrible things he did. Promising record contracts and then withdrawing them when the women wouldn’t sleep with him, or ended their romantic relationships. Horrible, manipulative things like threatening to kill himself when they didn’t respond to his texts quickly enough, or gaslighting them by being loving one minute, then blaming them for his bad treatment of them. It always seemed to be young vulnerable women he preyed on.
In fact, the most egregious thing outlined in the article is about how he was messaging sexually explicit content to a minor, grooming her over the internet. She was 14 when he started contacting her, and was having phone sex and explicit video chats with her. The Times had over 3,200 texts between them, and although he would sometimes ask about her age, he knew how old she was. He told her things like “i would get in trouble if someone knew we talked like this,” and “If people knew they would say I was like R Kelley lol.” The girl in question, Ava, was a bass player, already known in musical circles and gigging in New York at 12 years old. At 13, she stopped all that, because of the death of her father and bullying at school.
And then Ryan swooped in. According to the article, he spent the next few years grooming her and having sexually explicit conversations and skype sessions. He was 40, she was 16. There is nothing anyone can say to defend this, but lord, do people try. More on that later.
The article has a long list of women who were treated very poorly by Ryan. Women who he made promises to get them in bed, and then attacked or ignored them when he got tired of them or didn’t get exactly what he wanted. His marriage to Mandy Moore was full of verbal and psychological abuse. He would lord his own musical success over her, and chastise her how she wasn’t a real musician because she didn’t write her own songs. He was controlling and insecure, and just plain nasty.
Once they were divorced, he would take to social media to trash her, usually deleting the posts soon after. He did the same with the women he dated, saying truly horrible things about them on twitter and in interviews. We in the community saw it all over the years, and thanks to smartphones, most of it was saved in screenshots and posted in the groups.
Even before the Times article, people in the groups started to show a clear divide. There were the misogynists and apologists, who victim blamed the women, and the people who were starting to see that their idol was a flawed and fucked up guy. There were huge blowups in the groups, where people would start attacking anyone who questioned Ryan’s behavior. There were real fanatics in there, who took it personally when they felt like you were attacking their hero. There were also a certain percentage of people who seemed just as damaged and fucked up as Ryan Adams, and I started to see why he appealed to them.
One of the most horrible things he allegedly did was use a woman’s sickness and death to help sell his good guy image and records. The story goes that he was dating Carrie Hamilton, a singer, actress and playwright, the daughter of Carol Burnett. She was stricken with lung cancer, and died about 5 months later. Ryan told his stories about how he wanted to stay there to take care of her, get a place with her, did everything he could, and he wrote his album Love Is Hell about losing her, whom he referred to as the love of his life, and how he would have been with her forever if only she hadn’t died.
The problem with that is that her family says it’s not even remotely true. Carol Burnett has gone on record as saying she never even heard of him. Her sister has publicly stated that while they did date, he basically just left her when she got sick. He promised to take care of her and get a place with her, but did none of that. He was even dating someone else when she died. I will post a copy of the letter her sister wrote in the comments.
Still, to most of us, Ryan was this poor, sweet guy who constantly got hurt because he was just so giving and trusting and looking for love. We didn’t really know all the facts, we told ourselves. He was so romantic and vulnerable, and he was such a deep and thoughtful musician, how could he really be this bad? His songs were all about how he was the victim, and everyone did him wrong. For me, it is all summed up in the line from the song Two, “I got a really good heart, I just can’t catch a break.” He was the poor, empathetic, lovesick fool who got taken advantage of time and again by horrible women and fickle fate. He cultivated this image, and a lot of us bought it.
Until we didn’t.
And then the Times article came out, and everything was in turmoil in the groups. The admins had to keep out new members, because journalists were trying to join to get info on him. Everyone had an opinion. A lot of us were trying to digest all this information, and figure out just what we wanted to do about it. We had a lot of serious decisions to make. Were we going to stand by him or abandon him, and if not, could we separate the man from the music? What followed was months of intense discussion, emotionally charged posts, some name calling, and a lot of soul searching.
We were still a community, and most of us were there, as sounding boards, as fellow wounded souls, as people who weren’t sure how to give up something that was this big in our lives and navigate a different world than we were used to living in.
Some of that might sound crazy to you, but if you’re a music fan, you probably get it. Music plays such a big part in our lives. It gets wrapped around all the fibres that make up the rest of who you are. We form real bonds with songs and artists, and when that gets ripped away from you, it hurts. We all have those few artists who are really special.
People who defend Ryan like to bring up other rock stars who have done some suspect things. They talk about Jimmy Page and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis,as if two wrongs make a right. The thing is, while I’m not going to sit here and defend things that they did, I don’t have a connection with them like I did with Ryan Adams. By the time I discovered most of those artists, they were dead, or their groups broken up. Ryan feels like a personal betrayal. He went to great lengths to present himself as something he’s not. I championed him many times, and I now feel like a fool. Besides, a lot of the things people mentioned were isolated incidents. Ryan Adams was a lifelong predator and abuser.
The thing about Ryan is that he attracted a lot of people who related to the person he presented himself to be. A little broken, a little damaged, someone on the fringes who didn’t quite fit in with this world. Some of those fans were women, who suffered through some of the same abuse it turned out that Ryan was inflicting on the women in his life. It was so much worse for them. It was like reliving it all over again. Just talking about it was enough to trigger anxiety and PTSD. I can’t imagine what it was like for those women to have to read horrible comments in some Facebook music group about how the victims weren’t really victims and got what they deserved. That happened more often than you’d think, because so many fans would rather tear apart other fans than face some simple facts. When women in the group would share their personal stories of abuse or rape, the standard reply from the people defending Ryan was “I’m really sorry that happened to you, but …” which instantly invalidated whatever trauma the person shared. Many were using the Trump tactic of calling the New York Times fake news, so that right there should tell you all you need to know about them.
One of the most telling things about all this is that when the New York Times article broke, none of the people Ryan had worked with over the years came to his defense. Many of those close to him made statements to the press telling people to believe all the things you heard. Some came out with their own stories of his abuse. Other women came out of the woodwork to relate very plausible tales of abuse or strange behavior. Ryan has taken to social media quite often to bash most of the musicians he worked with in the past. He seldom has anything good to say about anyone, and is constantly downplaying any role they had in his career. He comes off like a raging narcissist and egomaniac.
I know people who have played in bands with him. I know people who have worked with him. I know people who have written books about him. None of them have defended him in any way whatsoever. In fact, some of them tell the same stories of abusive behavior and borderline sociopathic behavior. I’m not a journalist here. I don’t have any bombshell inside information. It’s all out there.
Since this happened, so many other people I know have told me personal experiences about their interactions with Ryan. Some of them are perfectly fine. They met him after a show, and took a picture with him. They messaged him on social media, and he was lovely.
The thing is, I have been hearing many other stories that are horrific. They almost defy belief, but like I said earlier, there are those screenshots … These were his fans, people who support him and buy his records and followed him from show to show. He abused them, belittled them, basically treated them like shit. Some he tried to groom and manipulate into sexual situations. They are not my stories to tell, though, but I definitely believe them.
The groups are still a mess. There is still fighting, although a lot of people just left in disgust. I’m not here to judge most of the people. If they can manage to separate Ryan from the music, good for them. If they want to continue to support him, that’s their decision, even if I don’t agree with it. There are a lot of people who just have a lot wrapped up in Ryan Adams. He is a part of their lives that they don’t want to let go of, now or ever. While some of us can’t separate the man from the music, they just can’t separate the music from their lives.
The thing I can’t abide by is the people who are belligerent about it all. They attack anyone who criticizes Ryan in the slightest. They blame the victims. I have seen them refer to Mandy Moore and the other women as whores, opportunistic bitches who are trying to use Ryan to further their careers. They feel like every victim of Ryan’s deserved what they got. They defend his abuse and gaslighting as “normal relationship stuff.” I have seen plenty of instances where some of these people have attacked women in the group who have anything bad to say about Ryan, calling them cunts, and advocating physical violence. There are deplorables everywhere, and a certain amount of them have heard Ryans siren call. All they do is complain about how Ryan isn’t putting out records now, and how sad it is that he isn’t able to tour right now.
And Ryan Adams? Since this all happened, he’s just made it worse. He has shown no remorse. He has done no work to redeem himself. A few months ago, his manager shared some text messages with him where he told her that he wants his career back, and has no interest in “this healing crap.” After laying low, Ryan is now back on social media, and it’s a complete shitshow. He is posting at all hours of the day and night, and he doesn’t look good. While it’s impossible to truly analyze anyone over social media, it’s obvious he’s not doing well. He still posts weird and nasty stuff, then deletes it. He makes everything that happens to anyone remotely connected to him all about himself, completely self-serving, as he did recently with the death of his Cardinals bandmate Neal Casal. He refuses to address anything that happened in the past other than in weird, cryptic posts about upcoming revelations and how he will tell his own story, only to remove them soon afterwards with no explanation.
I really don’t want anything to do with Ryan Adams anymore. I found that once I stopped listening to Ryan’s songs, I have discovered a whole new bunch of artists to listen to. I am not a teenager anymore, I don’t have to have some slavish, blind devotion to some rock star to validate me or them. I am still in one of my Ryan groups because that community I spoke about is still there. It is still under attack by people who can’t accept anything but total allegiance to Ryan. In fact, we’re pretty positive Ryan is in there under some aliases, because he will sometimes tweet things that correspond with specific things from the group.
One of the tired tactics the more obnoxious fanatics will use is to question why any of us are in a Ryan Adams group if we don’t like Ryan Adams, which superficially seems like a valid point. I ask myself the same thing sometimes. What I realize is that there was always a big part of the group that had nothing to do with Ryan. We talked about all kinds of music. We made silly jokes and pun threads, we had all kinds of private jokes involving among other things, Ed Sheeran, flouncing, and some guy who ate croissants. I can still discuss his music and his place in history, and some memories of what his music meant to me at one time. Some of us have a lot of years in that group, and we still care about it, although to be honest, the trolls and deplorables are making it tough. It was never just about Ryan Adams, and it wasn’t a fan club in the least. Many of the people saying that weren’t even in the group that long.
There’s even a part of me that holds out hope that Ryan can get it together. I know it is extremely unlikely, but I believe in redemption. Right now, though, I don’t see it. I don’t necessarily believe in cancel culture. I don’t think that one mistake means you lose your whole career, and I’m not sure that is the case in every situation anyway. A lot of people like to rail against anything PC, and claim it is ruining the world, but most of it is pretty much in line with what it should be.
In Ryan’s case, it is more than just one thing. It is a life and a career filled with transgressions and bad behavior, and in his case, I think he deserves all the scorn and loss of revenue and ability to distribute music. It is part of how society polices itself. Consumers decide with their pocketbooks, and I don’t think any label or company wants to take on Ryan right now. The downside is too big, and who wants that hassle? The fact that Ryan can’t even understand this shows how much of a disconnect with reality he has. I don’t think he has people in his life who have his best interests at heart, most likely because he drove them all off. I’m not sure if he’s sober these days. He’s lied about it in the past, as addicts often do.
So that’s where it stands between Ryan Adams and me. This is all just my opinion, and how it has affected myself and my friends. I will always side with victims. I will always side with the people I know personally who have been hurt by him, and all this that he brought upon himself. He has not only tarnished and damaged his own image and career, he has hurt the people associated with him as well. He has hurt the people who worked for him, at his recording studio and merchandising company. It is clear he feels no allegiance to anyone, so why should I have any allegiance to him?
So really, all the stuff I have had to deal with is small, compared to what his victims have had to deal with. I feel the worst for them, and hope they can heal and move on. That’s hard to do when the person who hurt you refuses to acknowledge what they’re done. That’s becoming commonplace these days. Abusers just deny and wait it out. It works, people have short attention spans. For some, they get to be on the Supreme Court.
Which is why I don’t feel like I want to just let it drop and move on. I don’t want people to forget, and let it all fade into the background. I feel a little responsible in my own way. I bought his albums. I paid to see him live. I helped get other people to listen to his music and become fans. I enabled him as well. I helped a predator cause havoc in other people’s lives, no matter how small my part in it. I feel like I need to see it all through and do my little part to hold him accountable, as well as myself. After all, I should have paid closer attention. The signs were always right there, between Ryan Adams and me.
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