Personal Life
Merritt has never met his father, folk singer Scott Fagan, who had a brief affair with Merritt's mother. Merritt attended progressive Massachusetts high school The Cambridge School of Weston and briefly attended NYU before moving back to Boston. He has worked as an editor for Spin Magazine and Time Out New York. Merritt has a chihuahua named Irving, after Irving Berlin.
Merritt is known for having a dry personality, embracing a persona and life that is very different from the traditional rock star image. In a September 2005 interview conducted by The Onion's The A.V. Club, alternative rock musician Bob Mould was reminded of an interviewer who once referred to Mould as "the most depressed man in rock". Mould's response was, "He's never met Stephin Merritt, obviously."
Merritt suffers from a hearing condition known as hyperacusis; any sound heard louder than normal begins to "feedback" in his left ear at increasingly louder volumes. This has largely influenced the reserved live setup of The Magnetic Fields, which usually consists of acoustic instruments and little to no percussion. Merritt also wears earplugs during performances, and typically covers his left ear when the audience applauds.
Merritt is the subject of a documentary, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, which premiered in March 2010.
Merrit only wears brown.
Read more about this topic: Stephin Merritt
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“He hadn’t known me fifteen minutes, and yet he was ... ready to talk ... I was still to learn that Munshin, like many people from the capital, could talk openly about his personal life while remaining a dream of espionage in his business operations.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)