Meric Long of the Bay Area band The Dodos found that his voice has a unique guitar style. When writing his new album Grizzly Peak, he watched as this ability began to disappear. Shane Tolentino of NPR hide caption

Meric Long of the Bay Area band The Dodos found that his voice has a unique guitar style. When writing his new album Grizzly Peak, he watched as this ability began to disappear.

Meric Long has been playing guitar for three years. When he realized that musical instruments may not only be his hobby—it may also be his way of communication, he felt that he had important things to say.

At a family gathering of high school friends, Lang, an anxious California teenager at the time, smoked too much marijuana and twisted and twisted on the acoustic guitar for several hours. He believes that he did not improvise for anyone. But when people listened, they were attracted by the sudden indiscretion of a 16-year-old young man who thought he was embarrassed and disturbed.

"I always thought that if I said anything, I would say something stupid," Long recalled with a smile. "I realized that the moment was the feeling of speaking, making people value what you said." Even now, when he talks with other parents in the daycare center of his 5-year-old daughter Tegra, the guitar gives him something to discuss Something, a "cool job"-an icebreaker. "If I could walk into every socially awkward situation with a guitar," he admitted, "I will."

When Long started working with drummer Logan Kroeber in the Bay Area duo The Dodos in the mid-2000s, this feeling still drove him. When he was in his early 20s, he fell in love with fingerstyle guitar—playing the strings directly without the use of picks—he decided to take it to an unconventional extreme: as he said before a recent workday rehearsal In that way, he wanted "every string to sound like a different drum." This idea became the mission of the animation pair, the spiritual center of ecstasy songs, and it felt too powerful to be called "acoustic rock." When Long roared about sleeping, breaking up, or questioning the letter of God, he grabbed and struck the strings, and Krober threw jabs at each pluck like a welterweight bullying his opponent.

Towards the end, these powerful songs briefly turned the Dodos into independent rock stars. Their unique concerts — sitting for a long time, his body twisting unnaturally around the guitar, like a tree swallowing an old metal sign — make them a favorite of the festival, playing 100 times a year at peak Show. But despite being so popular and releasing seven full-length records, Long felt he never really caught his guitar as he hoped. In August 2019, a month before his 39th birthday, he realized that he might only have one chance.

Dodo on stage in 2018. Chandler Gagne/artist provides hidden title bar

He and his wife Noela took Tegra to Spain and spent a summer in his in-laws' forest hut, where he has been playing guitar in the woods. He is creating "Annie", a tragic new figure that is about seeking forgiveness in a doomed relationship when his left pinky refuses to extend his character. "I had experienced pain there before, but I always forced myself to get through it," Long recalled. "It's not just an injury. It's a restriction." Returning to my home in Oakland a month later, a blood test confirmed rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that adversely affects the joints. More importantly, it is almost certain that his active guitar performance for more than a decade has quietly exacerbated the damage.

In mid-November, the Dodo Band released the action-packed Grizzly Peak, which is their eighth album and probably their last album. The ending of the duo highlights a little-known truth about making music-it can and often destroys the body.

"I started to write about all the mistakes I could attribute to playing in Superchunk," said North Carolina bassist Laura Ballance (Laura Ballance). Ballance withdrew from the tour in 2013 after dealing with hearing loss and hyperacusis, some of the sounds became very harsh. Her overall disease index includes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, neck spurs, foot bunions, curvature of the spine, she quipped, and self-diagnosed brain injuries. She has been away for nearly ten years, but the passage of time has not magically repaired her. The hearing problem meant that it was still difficult to see the band perform live, which hindered her ability to run Merge Records, the record company she co-founded.

Hearing loss and tinnitus, tendinitis and arthritis, oral calluses and vocal cord nodules: these are just a few of the many diseases that can be brought about by music life. A 2017 study of more than 700 orchestras in Germany found that two-thirds of them suffer from chronic pain, and many suffer for at least five years. Although people know that the music business is an endurance sport that requires rigorous practice and a few days of rest, the physical consequences are often unknown. The performance that must be continued is hidden from fans. .

"We all abuse ourselves for performance, but no one talks about it," Ballance said. "I'm not the only one."

At the end of 1981, Max Weinberg felt that he might be the only person injured by music. By then, Weinberg had been a drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band for nearly ten years, earning the nickname "Mighty Max" for his passion for kits. When the group completed a huge tour of the arena and auditorium for The River, Weinberg noticed the space between the thumb and index finger of his hands—he held the stick for three hours every night—pain. Inflammation of tendons. For a while, his hand could not be opened at all, even if it was against his finger.

Max Weinberg first realized in the early 1980s that his drumming style might hurt his hands. "For musicians, in order to hide their pain, there is an obsessive prejudice," he said. "You will suck it and endure the pain." Collection by Max Weinberg/Provided by the artist hide caption

When Weinberg learned that Leon Fleisher, a classical pianist, had developed left-handed repertoire after losing the right to use his right hand, he realized that he also had a chance to recover. He went to ask for help. The first doctor he saw told him to look for another job. Richard Eaton, the second respected hand surgeon of St. Luke Roosevelt, knew better. A condition called the trigger finger has evolved into severe tendinitis and tenosynovitis; Weinberg performed seven operations in two years.

"As a drummer, I have an unusual requirement to play at very high intensity," Weinberg said. "But it's not because I played hard — it was because I made a mistake. I lack skilled skills."

After these operations, Weinberg became a preacher of the public's awareness of this kind of harm. He accepted an interview about his struggle, served on the board of the Miller Institute of Performing Artists in Healthcare, and became a fan of warming up, calming, and improving technical solutions. In 1986, U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. told Weinberg that he had endured severe pain for a year, especially when he played "Pride (in the name of love)". Weinberg sent him to his surgeon, who said that exploratory surgery might be needed.

"Musicians have a compulsive prejudice to hide their harm. You will suck it up and endure the pain," Weinberg recalled. "No one is talking about it, so I put the spotlight on E Street Band on performance-related injuries. You can do a lot of conservative things to help you."

Nevertheless, nearly four years later, the 25-year-old guitarist Yasmin Williams encountered similar isolation and confusion as her right thumb began to ache, lock up, and spasm. Williams' star has risen rapidly last year. Despite the COVID-19, the demand for the schedule has increased exponentially. She thought she was just too busy. But when she was struggling to even open a bag of potato chips after a series of autumn performances, she posted on social media and wondered if other guitarists had experienced similar pain.

"I'm seeking advice, but I don't think other musicians have the same problem," she said, mocking her innocence. "It turns out that most of my musician friends have had surgery or have been unable to play or sing for a long time. I have never heard of it."

"We are treated like athletes, they should just make people happy through pain," said guitarist Yasmin Williams, who developed a tendon injury on her latest album. "But talking about pain shows that you are real." Zach Pigg/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

"We are treated like athletes, they should just make people happy through pain," said guitarist Yasmin Williams, who developed a tendon injury on her latest album. "But talking about pain shows that you are real."

However, even after the doctor diagnosed her with focal tendinitis, Williams himself was reluctant to talk about her symptoms in public. She worries that this will cause the booking agent, who is already under financial pressure due to the pandemic, to think twice when offering contracts, lest she become one of the notorious performers due to cancellations. Williams said: "We are treated as athletes. They should endure pain to make people happy." "But talking about pain shows that you are real."

The 76-year-old acoustic guitar giant Leo Kottke knows how much humiliation this pain can bring. As a veteran of the Navy who was discharged due to hearing loss, Kotke played in Germany for 23 consecutive nights. He had a fever and penicillin was flowing in his blood vessels. He believes that part of being a performer is hurting his work. In the late 1970s, he held a college concert for the blues legend Son House, when he was already in his seventies who was frail and unable to stand. Frustrated with his instrument, House threw down his heavy steel guitar with a bang and slowly got up from his chair. He improvised an unforgettable a cappella story, telling the bat. A story flying out of a deep well. Kottke, who is less than 30 years old, is both confused and inspired. "This is the perfect Greek tragedy," he said.

But ten years later, on a small stage in Denver, Kotke's right arm froze, and it felt like "playing a guitar with a baseball bat." He has been using fingertips for a long time-small metal or plastic pieces worn on the fingertips to strike the strings more easily-which means that his wrists are constantly turning inwards, which strains his forearms. Kottke put down the pick to save his wrist, but it took him three years to be satisfied with the sound. He never tells the crowd of his dissatisfaction or discomfort, worrying that they will not like any badly injured musician.

"This is the only time I acted as if I had a great time," Kottke said from his home in Minneapolis. A few weeks ago, he joined jazz drummer Dave King and Phish bassist Mike Gordon in a solo event. Duo stands. "The guitar saved my life as a kid, and the prospect of losing it drove me to continue to be a disaster."

For musicians, it seems almost counterintuitive to be ashamed to talk about their plight, because pain enjoys such a mythical status in the entire art, which is the driving force behind many tortured masterpieces. Frida Kahlo's fragmented skeleton prompted her to create many of her most acclaimed paintings. George Orwell passed the final stages of tuberculosis in 1984. Herman Melville’s many diseases and their impact on his work, especially after "Moby Dick", are still the subject of scientific debate.

Similar stories emerge from modern music, as if to prove that our hero possesses tenacity that we cannot understand. Neil Young's back pain is part of the reason for Harvest's acoustic jogging. Iggy Pop's war-torn body proves the harshness of rock. There is Bjork’s vocal cord polyp, and she insists that surgical removal has expanded her scope. When idols like Tom Petty or Prince died from an overdose of painkillers, fans gave the tragedy meaning-free from the torture of letting them help us.

But Chad Clark doesn't want artists to endure more pain than ordinary people in order to work. Pain is a necessary part of this process. In 2007, Clark, the leader of the Beauty Pill band in Washington, D.C., almost died when his heart began to tear from a virus infection. The doctor split his breastbone for emergency surgery. He was dumbfounded when he met fans dreaming of music that his death brush might inspire.

"I don't want people to see it in this romantic way," Clark said after a long walk with his dog Stanley. "This is offensive, the way people see artists as extraterrestrial creatures with special abilities. I did not survive the virus because I am a superhuman artist. I just want to live."

"I can easily take everything he does for granted," Logan Kroeber (right) said of his Dodos member Meric Long. "He is so talented, I don't think about physical limitations. But he has been racking his brains for decades." Sheila Gim/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

"I can easily take everything he does for granted," Logan Kroeber (right) said of his Dodos member Meric Long. "He is so talented, I don't think about physical limitations. But he has been racking his brains for decades."

When Lang's little finger froze for the first time in Spain, he was confused, then angry, and soon, he was more motivated than ever.

Stimulated by his arthritis diagnosis, he stopped drinking and changed his eating habits. He is happy to have health insurance, which is relatively rare for musicians conducting small and medium audiences. But he also understood that the window for Dodo’s original quest to make guitar music with every string sounding like a drum was quickly closing. For twenty years, fingerstyle guitar has been his identity. Knowing that he might be about to lose this ability, he wants to do it right, no matter how much effort he puts in.

He surveyed almost all audio engineers hired by Dodos, as well as his expert colleagues in the Oakland studio where he is now an engineer, and asked how to capture the sound he had imagined for a long time. Every night after Tegra goes to bed, he goes to his soundproof garage. Sometimes writing and experimenting until 3 am while recording and playing may make his hands hurt, but "I might go to the other side," he remembered," This is the feeling I am after. Nowhere else in the world exists. That totally saved me."

Long is so focused on getting rid of pain and self-pity that The Dodos finished the Grizzly Peak recording almost before Kroeber learned about his band members-not to mention that many of these songs are a test of the band itself. Sexual farewell. But the drummer said that he understood that after his "tiger's golden age", he needed to apply a lot of Singaporean analgesics to painful joints during performances, so much so that he often smelled like a menthol manufacturer. He still likes to be a band, but he hates seeing it punish Long.

"It's easy for me to take everything he does for granted. He is so talented, I don't think about physical limitations," Krobb said. "But he has been racking his brains for decades. How long can I expect him to perform at that level?"

Grizzly Peak was released on November 12 and it did achieve the original goal of the Dodo. Its 10 songs let the audience levitate above the sound hole of the guitar like puppets, and almost every song rumbling like a small earthquake. The album opened with a rumble "Annie", a song that Lang was writing when everything went wrong. Directly hitting the pain behind the scenes, the surging "Pale Horizon" is an anthem of fighting aging and the great possibilities it may bring. Kroeber's kick drum reflects every action of the guitar in "Sustainer". One friend helps another friend resist the melancholy of reality. "I never have much to say, but I say it on the guitar," Lang once sang, scoring his own crisis.

Overcoming existential anxiety on records is not new to the band. They have alternately added vibraphones, electronic instruments and electric guitars over the past decade-partly to go beyond their original duties and partly to respond to changing tastes. And the dwindling crowd. After each record, Long will ask himself if the pair has just finished. (He did so much, and despite the diagnosis, Krober gave the Dodo a 65% chance to continue.) But he always returned to the question of what would happen to him without the instrument: "Then who am I?" He remembered thinking. "What can I add?"

If nothing else, arthritis may have given him an answer—a reason to see himself as more than just a guitarist. The hardship of recording this album has permeated his work as an audio engineer, motivating him to help other guitarists sound great. And he still has his family. On the cloudy eve of the first stop of the Grizzly Peak tour, he sounded gloomy. This was the first time he had left home in more than two years. He just took a bath for his pet dog, Maple, as if he was making atonement for his imminent departure.

Kottke understands Long’s dilemma—and its possibilities. When he stopped using fingertips to avoid tendinitis, he realized that he could feel the strings of the guitar again. This change can be said to make him a better player in time. "Your deficiencies determine you," he said. "And this is often something that liberates you. It provides a way for you to enter." Max Weinberg said that he relearned how to hold his stick and passed the lesson to his son Jay, who is Slipknot Drummer. His credo of safe drumming is unwavering: "Keep as relaxed as possible."

Young guitarist Williams will soon receive her first steroid injection, and she is developing a warm-up procedure that Weinberg insists that every musician should perform for the sport of their choice. Due to the heavy burden of the guitar after the operation, Clark added more electronic devices to the Beauty Pill, and began to write songs without musical instruments and sing to his mobile phone. "The disability is not the end of the story at all," Clark said. "If your art can lead people to a more optimistic outlook, it will be a profound value."

Earlier this year, with the completion of Grizzly Peak and any concerts in the next few months, Long left his guitar for a while to focus on family, work and other life. When he finally sat down to play, his body was curled up on the body of the instrument, and his back was so stiff that he couldn't move. He went to bed and stayed there for 24 hours-a reminder of the pain he suffered throughout his career.

Long's diagnosis is likely to end The Dodos and prevent him from becoming a guitarist in the future. But this allows him to consider what else he can become, and what else he can become. "My basic relationship with the guitar is so simple. Now that it has been taken away, I realized that it doesn't matter if I have nothing else to say," he said. "I found another way of talking-without the guitar."

The previous version of this article misreported the age of Meric Long's daughter: Tegra is 5 years old, not 3 years old.