What Madness Drove Thelonious Monk?

Monk's music has that special ingredient we find difficult to identify: a mysterious inspiration that only he understood and only listening to his music can reveal.

Thelonoius Monk

Jazz is a genre populated by a vast array of edifying geniuses. From Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington to Dizzy Gilespie, the seminal minds of America’s greatest contribution to music have successfully established a globally appreciated art form.

Though Ellington remains the most recorded jazz composer of all time, having written over a thousand songs, the mad and mysterious Thelonious Monk, who only composed 70, comes remarkably a close second. Famed for his outlandish behaviour and unique fashion sense, Monk’s near-atonal, percussive approach to the piano has attracted a cult following.

Monk’s strange musical aspirations and reputation as a befuddling performer has often prevented due acknowledgment of his virtuosic skill and serious professionalism. His discernible peculiarities, be it the way he spoke to journalists and or how he sometimes left gigs to dance mid-song, have led casual observers to ascribe the cause of his weirdnesses to an obscure insanity that haunted him throughout his life. 

But what kind of madness plagued Monk and how did it affect his music?

The relationship between insanity and creativity is a well-tilled field. Some see it as a requisite for pioneering originality. Others have argued that the glorification of dysfunctional artists ignores the prodigious output of sober creators. Though the truth is elusive, it likely loiters between these two positions.

Monk, with his extravagant eccentricity, might epitomise the quirky character of a nonconformist but in actual fact, he was ardently committed to the idea of engendering a lucrative career off the back of his natural talent. According to Monk biographer Robert D.G Kelley, he began experiencing bouts of mental illness as early as the 1940s (he died in 1982).

He endured irregular yet persistent cycles of manic depression, harrowing episodes that debilitated him for days at a time. It is Kelley’s belief that Monk suffered from bipolar disorder before it was a term used by the medical community, for in the 40s, psychiatry was still an emerging discipline and many of the diagnoses we use today were not yet accepted.

Monk in 1965 (Photo: Michael Ochs)

The misconception of his ailment and the poor choice of medication from that misdiagnosis exacerbated the problem. After being hospitalised for the first time in 1956, his general behaviour became more and more perplexing. He was involved in a minor collision following his stay in hospital and was strangely uncommunicative to police officers who investigated the incident. This led to several more admissions, including to the Grafton State Hospital where he was given the antipsychotic Thorazine. The careless use of that intense drug stymied his productivity and proliferated the myth of Monk as the ‘inspired madman’.

These episodes, however, were portrayed by contemporaries as examples of Monk’s eccentric nature and not as symptoms of a deep medical issue. Though he was hindered by the hardships of occasional mania, Monk also enjoyed prolonged bouts of uninterrupted mental health.

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The 50s were a particularly prolific time in his career, but as the years went on, the frequency of the malady began to increase. Aided by the glamorous jazz patroness, Baroness Pannonica de Keonigswater, and his loving and loyal wife, Nellie, Monk managed to continue composing and performing until he suddenly retired in 1973. 

Excluding a few special appearances, he led a life of seclusion, shunning his well-earned celebrity in favour of peaceful introspection. After he died, numerous theories were put forward to explain the undulations of his moods and his curious withdrawal from music at the height of his powers. Autism, tourettes and schizophrenia have all been posited but it appears the devastating combination of poorly prescribed drugs and massive misdiagnoses addled his vulnerable mind.

Nonetheless, despite these numerous obstacles Monk was able to extend the boundaries of jazz, introducing listeners to a whole new terrain of uncharted music.

Photo: David Redfern

His playing style encapsulates the extremes of his oscillating temper. At times adroit and accurate, he could play arpeggios and runs clearly and rapidly before abruptly embellishing his melodic line with a harsh thump of a seemingly incongruous key. Those apparent lapses to his dexterous abilities were of course deliberate and daring explorations of the possibilities of harmony and melody. 

Deemed a sage by many be-bop enthusiasts and divinely animated by the prospects of jazz, Monk’s hammering gestures and splayed fingering inspired a generation of imitators and experimentalists. In addition to his playing style, the true depths of his compositional genius are still being plumbed as young performers attempt to make songs of his, their own.

His playing style encapsulates the extremes of his oscillating temper

To have made the music that Monk made, you have to have an extraordinary mind, but not one necessarily plagued by madness. He certainly suffered from inner frailties, but his artistic triumphs were the results of lengthy training, intense hard work and inherent faculties.

It was that special ingredient we find difficult to identify: a mysterious inspiration that only he understood and only listening to his music can reveal.


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