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Nina Simone-- To Be Drunk, Angry and Broke

Filed under: Imported

It took me awhile to locate it, but here are some excerpts from a piece I read in 1999 about Simone by Precious Williams for The National Post (Canada).

"Nina Simone is furious that there is no alcohol left in the house. It's not even 11 o'clock in the morning, yet the 66-year-old jazz legend has already drunk a whole bottle of Baileys.

"[She] moves unsteadily around her squalid, cluttered villa in the south of France, hurling insults at Clifton, the gay, black, American male nurse who acts as the latest in a string of personal managers.

"'You have no idea of what I can drink, you damned fool! I once drank five bottles of champagne in one afternoon!' she bellows in the rough-edged voice that has sold millions of records. 'Gays like you ought to be lined up and shot. You go against God!'"

[snip]

"She is keenly observed by local French police today, who have kept their eye on her ever since she shot and wounded the teenage son of her next-door neighbour three years ago. Simone fired a bullet at the boy after his laughter interrupted her piano practice. The $7,000 fine and probation order she subsequently received appear to have done nothing to quell her aggression.

"'I'm itching to use my gun again!' Simone shrieks, her face lighting up with enthusiasm. [ . . . ] 'I'll do what I damned well like. I hate children. That child should have learned how to stay quiet when I'm playing my piano.'"

[snip]

"It's time to say goodbyes. As Simone shuffles up the rickety, winding staircase toward the unmade bed in her bedroom, she turns and says: 'Please tell my public that there aren't many of us geniuses still living. Hardly any of us left at all. It's down to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder. And Frank Sinatra.

'Except Frank's already dead,' she adds, almost as an afterthought."

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 23, 2003 7:51 PM

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