The Jeff Mangum Truther Movement Begins Here

It's a hell of a lot easier to believe than the-earth-is-flat or the-moon-landing-was-a-hoax or Paul-McCartney-is-dead. In the process of tumbling through a squirrel-hole of 90's altrock/powerpop, I experienced a revelation, what short story theorists like to call an epiphany.

There is no such person as Jeff Mangum. It's possible there never was.

The person people call Jeff Mangum, known as the leader/mastermind of iconic underground band Neutral Milk Hotel was the creation of one Matthew Sweet. Taking a cue from the way  multi-platinum megastar Garth Brooks created a Chris Gaines persona in order to explore different creative avenues and ideas that were impossible for him to follow as Garth Brooks, Sweet--a not-quite-platinum, person-who-occasionally-appeared-on-Mtv-after-11pm, created Jeff Mangum as a way to get out from under the burden of being Matthew Sweet.

First, let's look at Sweet in action.



Yes, that is Dennis Miller, whose early 90's talk show, and the curiously good quality of his musical guests, to say nothing of Miller's descent into knee-jerk right-wing hackery, is worthy of its own article. But we don't have the energy for that. Instead, notice Matthew Sweet's physical appearance, his mannerisms & haircut & voice. Now watch this clip of Jeff Mangum, or should we say "Jeff Mangum."



You can't tell me that's not the same guy. Well, I guess you can tell me. But I won't believe you. Because I believe that my theory makes sense.

Some more evidence:

Did you know that Matthew Sweet used to live in Athens? It's true. He moved to the town in the early/mid-80s to pursue his musical dreams of fame & fortune. He quickly joined (the wonderful, outstanding) Athens group Oh-Ok, a position that he just as quickly turned into a solo major label deal with A&M records and moved to NYC. After two shitty records on A&M, he signed to something called Zoo Records, he assembled a dream backing band (the clip above features Robert Quine, Sara Lee, and a person who looks like Peter Holsapple but may be the guy from Guadalcanal Diary, who between them had a resume that included Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Gang of Four, B-52's, and possibly, uh, Guadalcanal Diary. The drummer played in Mr. Mister and on XTC's Oranges and Lemons, an album that XTC fans either love more than it deserves or hate more than it deserves.

But we're getting off track. By 1995, Sweet as a fixture on alternative radio, tied to a major label deal. That year he had a hit that signaled, loudly & clearly, that he was tired of being..well...himself.


He was tired of washing his hair (look how shiny it is!). He was tired of playing with NYC pros (that's Ivan Julian on guitar! and a drummer who definitely showed up for the gig!). Watch the clip all the way to the end and see how Sweet cranks up all his pedals at the end to create some psychedelic pulsating noise. This is a man yearning to break free from the constraints of conventional pop/rock three minute direct commercial communication. He knew Zoo Records wouldn't indulge his experimental tendencies, his anxiousness to pull a reverse Dylan and "go acoustic." He needed to find a small label, one that would let him do whatever he wanted, one that would be able to keep a secret.

So he contacted Merge Records, knowing that label owner Mac shared his disdain for major labels, to the degree that Mac's band Superchunk left Matador Records because the label signed a distribution deal with Atlantic. Then Sweet returned to Athens and put a band together for his new project, dubbed Neutral Milk Hotel.



It was a good prank. His first album, On Avery Island, garnered good reviews. The backstory he had constructed--this eccentric guy Jeff had grown up in a place called Ruston, Louisiana and made music with his friends--was both believable enough and implausible enough that no one would question it.  Even as Sweet continued to fulfill his contractual obligations to Zoo with the 1997 album Blue Sky On Mars, he was simultaneously crafting the next Neutral Milk Hotel album. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea turned out to be more than Sweet had bargained for. Oscar Wilde once said, "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." ItAOtS catapulted Sweet into a different place altogether, beloved cult artist. The album created a kind of obsession among its fans, a desire to know more, to know everything, about the person who create such an incredible, moving piece of work. People began to dig. They began to ask questions.

Matthew Sweet knew that if people uncovered the truth, that the album would lose some of its magic. He had a hard choice to make. The situation had become untenable. His desperate bid for creative freedom had turned out to be yet one more trap.

Neutral Milk Hotel would never make another album. It would be nearly 15 years before Sweet, heavily bearded and paranoid about being photographed, would play another show as "Jeff Mangum." In the meantime, he left Zoo Records, continuing to release albums. 1999's In Reverse feels like Sweet's attempt to shoehorn elements of his "Elephant Six" experiments--horns, backwards guitars--into the fuzzy power-pop he was better known for. It was a compromise that satisfied no one, least of all Sweet. In his attempt to create a second identity for himself, he merely found himself more confused than ever. Here's one of his later songs, featuring a facial-haired Sweet singing a song called Hide that could easily be interpreted as being about his experience as Jeff Mangum. As the chorus says, "You hide everything you can / But the world keeps breaking through / Anywhere you run, and it always will."




To borrow one more line from Matthew Sweet, you cannot hide from the ugly truth. Matthew Sweet is/was Jeff Mangum.