Tag: Flare

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LD Beghtol remembered by Jon De Rosa

In 1997, I left the Jersey Shore for NYU, where my intention was to get an education in Music Technology. Upon meeting LD Beghtol within my first year or so of living there, I quickly figured out that I would now be getting two types of musical education: my formal training at NYU and the special sessions from LD that commenced nearly every night at various dimly lit bars with great jukeboxes across the city. 

I believe my first interaction with LD was when he invited me to back him up at a solo show of his in the late-90’s / early 00’s. This was around when 69 Love Songs came out, and we performed some of the songs he sang on the album. This invite quickly turned into being asked to join his band Flare as a guitarist/vocalist/banjoist/etc. It was then that my musical world began to expand in amazing and exponential ways. So many of the composition theories I was studying by day at NYU became put to good use in the studio at night. I felt appreciated there, amongst a very talented cast of characters and world class musicians.

LD and I were very close for many years. My fondest memories of my twenties were hanging out with him and Stephin and Dudley at Dick’s or The Phoenix, or our chats at Veselka or any number of diners throughout the city. We never seemed to run out of things to talk about. It’s true LD was always at his best holding court and educating the “noob,” as he was so generous with his knowledge, but he was also very enthusiastic about hearing new music and things that I was bringing to the table as well. We had a very good friendship. In 1999, we pioneered the Morgan Ave stop in Bushwick, moving into a pretty amazing apartment together. I recall many humorous instances of LD—always the nudist at home—wandering into my room wearing only a ukulele, excited to play a new song for me.

Over the years LD would design album art for me and we’d collaborate on lots of music together. We’d play shows together with Flare in different states, SXSW, opening for Low in Philadelphia, Luna in NJ, so many shows. He became a very dear friend, even coming to a family holiday or two (my family loved him).

I’m sad to say that we hadn’t been in touch in many years. But I always had immense respect for him and I thought about him all the time. His passing has left me very saddened and nostalgic for the beautiful music we made and the wonderful friendship we had forged. My wish is that he lives on in the music and art he leaves behind.

Photograph by Gail O’Hara; please do not borrow or use

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LD Beghtol remembered by Bryce Edwards

I met LD sometime shortly after 9/11 at Dick’s Bar over many drinks and likely some jukebox New Wave. I am pretty sure we discussed the merits of Bow Wow Wow and probably bonded over our mutual love of Ultra Vivid Scene, graphic design and Baroque ’60s pop. He gave me his music, which I loved and we collaborated on a number of things over the years and always discussed doing more, sadly never to be. LD always had an opinion about everything so he was good for a long conversation and I had many, many great ones with him in the nearly 20 years I knew him. He was utterly brilliant. Very much a creative renaissance man with a bottomless curiosity and a deep knowledge on so many topics. As a Village Voice art director, he outfitted me like a turn-of-the-century devil for a photo of the Isotoners, a band I once played in. He also produced our album and added many layers of bassoon, stylophones, keyboards and finger cymbals. The “more the merrier“ seemed to be his production motto. His own music was lovely and I consider his song “(Don’t Like) The Way We Live Now” to be one of the very best songs about gay life in the 21st century. No one discusses his fantastic songs enough and I expect there to be a reissue compilation of them some day. At times LD could be incredibly bitter and difficult and I’m not going to lie and say he was always the nicest person in town. He held people to a very high standard and did not suffer fools at all. I definitely saw him read a bitch hard a time or two. But he also once brought me to an orphan Christmas party when I was at my loneliest and saddest, always told me how much he loved my singing voice and aside from his occasionally difficult personality, he was kind of a softy — a caustic softy.  He was a complex person, the very kind I moved to New York City to know and I’m sad to see him go.

Three Terrors photographs by Gail O’Hara; design by LD Beghtol

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LD Beghtol remembered by Charles Newman

I met LD in 1996 when we got referred to me to record the first Flare album Bottom. It was out of my scope of my normal alt-rock production style, but he happily turned me on and taught me about an entire world of music, art, literature and sounds that changed my way of thinking about songwriting and record making.  His lyrics all had stories that ran deep from obscure historical references to snarky stories of ex-boyfriends and day-to-day life.

I eventually became a full-time band member when Damian left the band and a 25-year collaboration continued. We spent endless hours in the studio together recording, rehearsing and hanging out with an array of people who came in and out of the band over the years. LD introduced me to some of the people who are some of my best friends to date.

We were in the middle of finishing a new record and expect that I will continue to keep his music alive and help have his legacy live on.  

The last thing he gave me was “The Happy Apple” kids toy. We recorded it on the song and now my kids play with. Every time I look at that now, I think it’s LD smiling back at me.

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LD Beghtol remembered by Daniel Handler

I have spent all day trying to absorb the death of LD Beghtol, with whom I shared a stage and a cognac many a time. His extravagant voice and personality lent charm and drama to his bands Flare, The Moth Wranglers, and the New Criticism, as well as his unforgettable vocals on The Magnetic Fields’s 69 Love Songs. In lieu of a photograph I am posting what may as well have been a portrait, from a book by Edward Gorey we both admired. Listen to something gloomy tonight, with a touch of melodrama and panache, to remember a man who turned every room into a velvet-draped literary salon. Mr. Beghtol, the world is diminished.

What I keep remembering is at the first Three Terrors show, where Stephin, Dudley and LD were singing the saddest songs they could think of. LD sang “Pretty In Pink” with me on synthesizer and I screwed up the intro, so he only sang a few words and the we had to stop.  But the few words, “Caroline laughs and it’s raining all day” gave away the surprise.  So the start-over was particularly awkward.  LD waited for the murmurs to die down—he did always hate a chattery audience—and then we started again and his vocals were so sad and relentless that everyone was transfixed. Everyone made the journey with LD to the place where this was indeed the saddest song.  That’s what he did: he brought the theatrical moment, the drama, the gesture.  And he could transfix you.

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LD Beghtol tribute by Dana Kletter

LD in SF with DK and DH

Dana Kletter remembers her friend and collaborator

When I met LD, I felt he knew me, and I think he felt I knew him. 

The first time I recorded with him he instructed me to be the murdered girl.

He was a great writer of some crazy antic fiction. 

“Maybe this time, you think to yourself: ‘Lady peaceful, lady happy.’ That’s the new me! Giddy with it all, you plant a big wet kiss on Not-So-Little Red’s startled, becollagened mouth, pinching what’s either a third nipple or an ill-concealed on/off switch slightly misaligned on the bead-encrusted bodice of the creature’s gaudy gown as a fan organ wheezes soothingly above the thrum of hypnotic snares.”

When I told him I found a new psychiatrist, he wrote, “I sometimes wish I were much more fucked up so I could do that.” 

He was the most cynical romantic I’ve ever known. 

He meant to make a record this summer but was thwarted by everything. He sent me some demos for possible songs. Hell is other people’s boyfriends, one began. 

We texted and called each other regularly. I’m sorry I cannot text him now to complain about this. 

I loved him dearly and will miss him forever. 

Photo by Dana Kletter. Taken while we were in the studio recording “Morgantown.”
Listen to the song here. Recorded San Francisco, 2012,  Doug Hilsinger on guitar, LD and I on vocals, and backing tracks LD brought from New York. Mixed by Kramer.

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RIP LD Beghtol, splendid butterfly

LD Beghtol (December 1964–December 2020)

Oh LD. I don’t remember exactly when I met LD but he just twirled into the Magnetic Fields universe around the time that 69 Love Songs was being designed and recorded. He was in a band called Flare. He sang on 69 Love Songs. He was a graphic designer who became instrumental in bringing chickfactor’s design to another level; his photoshop expertise also elevated the quality of my photography in the print publication. He became our designer in chief; I usually chose the art but he made it all work in chickfactor issues 12 to 15, our chickfactor mixtape, many event posters, and even a book of my photography that was published (limited edition, 7-inch size) in 2012.

When the rest of the city left town on holiday weekends, LD and I would hole up in my Manhattan apartment and/or his office on 23rd street and work work work on chickfactor. We would spin many singles. We would sit on the floor eating pad thai. We would plot upcoming shows. We both had extremely busy day jobs and yet we were productive AF during all of our free time. Other times we’d be communing with Stephin at St Dymphna’s over tea (Stephin’s chihuahua Irving Berlin would often eat the entire Irish breakfast) or later at Dick’s Bar on Second Avenue or the Phoenix where we would watch show tunes, sip Courvoisier and talk endlessly about people and music and art and life. I would often try to leave to go home and the boys would buy me another drink and set it in front of me.

LD was a force of nature. If he loved you, he *REALLY* loved you. But if you crossed him, it was murder. If he cared about you, his loyalty knew no bounds. He once wrote a set list that was built to torture a certain musician who LD believed had wronged me. He felt everything extra deep. Some of his creative partnerships didn’t last: If he burned the bridge, that was it. But he lived a creative life through and through; whatever day job he was doing, you can bet he spent every free moment doing a million small creative things. His grand moments in the spotlight with the Magnetic Fields in New York and London were among his proudest moments; as a featured singer he would come out with all the drama one would expect in such moments. He made you believe he *was* the King of the Boudoir all right.

Our relationship was complicated but we mostly got on like a house on fire. He found community with both the Magnetic Fields and chickfactor (among others), along with New York music culture in general. He and Dudley and Stephin were like a trio of charming, sulky sweethearts, and LD was like a bitchy-diva sibling to me. We mostly got along well but struggled with creative differences. Although the vile and brutal year 2020 took him along with many other cultural icons and American lives, his art will live on, and you can bet he had a million new projects simmering away that we’ll never get to see. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, but I won’t forget him because he was unforgettable. RIP, LD.

interview and photograph are from chickfactor 15, 2002, by Gail O’Hara

Here are a few things we designed together: