Jake Brennan (3:10)
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about obsession, about art, about death, about a high stakes search in low down hate. It's also about love, mercy and creativity. This is a story about a deranged fan and the musician he obsessed over. Bjork, a musician who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron called grease paint assassin mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Macarena by Los Del Rio. And why would I play you that specific slice of Come on man, not this song again. Cheese could I afford it because that was the number one song in America on September 12, 1996. And that was the day that Ricardo Lopez went to his local post office with a gun in his pocket and a package in his hand, setting off one of the weirdest and potentially disastrous chapters in music history. On this episode. Obsession, Hate, Creativity. A deadly package. Ricardo Lopez and the Icelandic drum and bass Princess Bjork. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Sam. All Bjork wanted to do was create, and sometimes it seemed like all the world wanted to do was prevent her from doing so. Especially in 1996. Buzzing about her London apartment, the 30 year old singer was attempting to piece together music that would bridge the excellence of her first two solo albums, debut from 1993 and post from 1995 to some sort of as yet unimagined artistic evolution. Drum and bass music blared throughout the apartment and CD jewel cases were scattered about most of the flat surfaces. A giant projector screen was set up for feature film viewing. Japanese Independence and Ren and Stimpy cartoons, video cassettes and books were strewn about everywhere and her bed was upstairs, as was the bed belonging to her 10 year old son. The dad wasn't in the picture Speaking of pictures, Bjork's face adorned the covers of numerous magazines, laying about Vox, NME and CMJ from the States. Also from America, Interview magazine with an ageless Goldie Hawn on the COVID and a Bjork interview within. On the wall, a telephone, which Bjork made a habit of not answering. In most stories about artists, this is the point where the storyteller would say, since breaking onto the scene in the year, blah, blah, blah, Bjork had blah blah, blah and blah, blah blah. But Bjork was practically always on the scene. She'd broken through at the age of 11 in her home country of Iceland. Granted, Iceland, back in the time of Bjork's breakthrough in 1977, had only a population of about a quarter million people. But still, fame is fame, and no matter how atomized pressure is pressure, Bjork's hippie parents recognized early on that their daughter could sing. And soon after, a performance of young Bjork's, the recording of which was arranged by her parents to be broadcast on national Icelandic radio led to a recording contract and an album was released in December of 1977. A series of punk bands followed for Bjork as she developed her voice, a voice like no other. As the teenage Bjork strolled through her Icelandic homeland, bundled up on her way to and from school, she'd cut through the raw, frozen landscape and the icy mountains shooting up out of nowhere and along the jagged coastline and past the bulging glaciers and floating icebergs and through the fertile lowlands and over the black sand beaches, this dramatic landscape gave way to wild, wicked winds. Winds that whipped up in sneaky fits and starts that were there in an instant and then gone as soon as they arrived. As Bjork walked through this maze of natural drama, she sang to herself. And when the winds gusted, she'd have to raise her voice to hear herself. And when the winds disappeared, she'd drop her voice to a whisper so as to not be heard by any curious passersby. In this way she developed one of the most unique singing styles in all of pop music. To hear Bjork sing is to hear the voice of a true original. And that originality was born of Iceland's dynamic terrain. Just like the singer herself, Bjork's voice soars. It shoots up out of nowhere like an iceberg and then quickly sinks below the waterline, submerging itself in the mystery of the deep. You could hear this style rounding into form in Bjork's first real project of international consequence. Her band the Sugar Cubes, a band that garnered critical acclaim in the UK and in the US with their single Birthday and their Electra Records distributed album Life's too good. In 1988, the sugar cubes appeared on Saturday Night Live in the states, but by 1990 the band was broken up and Bjork was now a young single mother, having given birth to a son by the Sugar Cube's guitarist Thor Elden. She soon launched a solo career through a creative collaboration with Soul to Soul alum and Massive Attack co conspirator Nellie Hooper. And the fruit of this relationship led to the release of Bjork's first proper solo album, debut in 1993 with its massive hit Human Behavior. And the album was an international commercial success, which quickly led to more success, including the Brit Awards and a collaboration with Madonna for her 1994 album Bedtime Stories. And before anyone could take a beat to appreciate the whirlwind swirling around Bjork, the artist continued creating, now in collaboration with producer DJ Tricky and 808 State's Graham Massey. And by 1995 Bjork had a second, even more successful solo album on her hands, called Post. Post was in a way, a perfect sophomore effort. It reinforced every promise made on Bjork's debut. It doubled down on the sounds Bjork first presented with excellent singles army of Me and it's oh so Quiet. And the album solidified Bjork as a one of a kind visual artist with her videos for those tunes, each one presenting a new vision imagined by the artist and the groundbreaking director she chose to collaborate with Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze among them. It was a vision that cast Bjork as a generational artist, a venerable pixie, five foot four but full of roar, and the slack generation's female answer to the man who fell to earth. But with beats and a total babe to boot. By this time, Bjork's fame was not atomized. By 1996, Bjork was an explosive international pop star. 1996 was a much different time for pop stars than 2025. Nowadays, artists pay a premium for people's attention. The premium they pay is their privacy in exchange for relevance. Artists open up their private worlds to show the public their authentic selves. And no moment is too sacred for some and for others. Even the most innocuous peek behind the curtain can result in millions of views, likes, shares and new followers. In 1996, it was very much the opposite. In the 90s, artists put a premium on privacy. Once an artist broke through. There was no need to open themselves up because the media at the time was completely different. Small armies of publicists and agents and managers and ships ensured that the public saw exactly what the artists and celebrities wanted them to see. Spoon feeding publications to keep their clients names in the public long enough to maintain continuous relevance. McCann photo ops and prearranged Q and A interviews could only go so far. It was then as now, natural, if you'll excuse the pun, human behavior to want to know more about the artists who inspire us. Enter the paparazzi. Pesky photographers and gossipy so called journalists still exist, as they always have. It's just that today they're more of a utility than a nuisance in this digital age war for our eyes and ears, artists and celebrities court attention and thus the paparazzi. For clicks follows and relevance in the navel gazing 90s artists loathe the attention of the paparazzi, going to extremes to avoid their cameras and questions, lest their raw comments and unwanted candids would end up in the pages of checkout line trash. So when itty bitty Bjork went full Sean Penn on a member of the paparazzi in a Bangkok airport in early 1996, attacking a reporter with her fists in front of her young son and also in front of numerous other cameras, this behavior was not seen as something beyond the pale. It was only a bad moment for Bjork, who had just completed an international flight and was likely sleep deprived and a bit beyond herself in the moment. Bjork eventually apologized and the incident wasn't in the least bit damaging to her career. Still, the images of Bjork's attack were broadcast all over the world. For culture vultures, this was a delicious peek behind the curtain at Bjork's authentic self. A young tiger mom defending her privacy. Most people could sympathize with that, including a fan all the way over in the United States. An obsessed fan. A fan whose obsession was bending toward derangement. A fan who was in love with Bjork. A fan who wrote countless letters to Bjork, letters that went unanswered. A fan who had to know that Bjork knew who he was. A fan who was sick. A fan who was racist. A fan who could not accept that his obsession, this Snow White picture of creative purity, was now in a relationship with the UK DJ Goldie, a black man. This demented fan believes he had to do something about this agreement, this insult. If Bjork wouldn't answer his letters, if Bjork wanted to debase herself. If Bjork wanted to embarrass fans of hers like him, well, then he would just have to introduce himself to Bjork. He'd have to make sure that Bjork knew who he was, and he'd do so formally with a letter. A letter inside of a package. A package that, come hell or high water, Bjork would open. And by doing so, Bjork would learn exactly who he was. And seconds later, Bjork will be violently blown to bits.
