REM singer Michael Stipe and singer songwriter Patti Smith have paid tribute to the late Vic Chesnutt who committed suicide this week.
In a short statement at the REM website, Stipe said, “we have lost one of our great ones”.On Christmas Day, Patti Smith said, “ I flew around the room once, a line from Supernatural. He was just that. He possessed an unearthy energy and yet was humanistic with that common man in mind. He was entirely present and entirely somewhere else. A mystical somewhere else. A child and an old guy as he called himself. Before he made an album he said he was a bum. Now he is in flight bumming around the little room with his angel voice.”
The Georgia-based songwriter died after spending a week in a coma after overdosing on 100 muscle relaxant pills.
Chesnutt had been confined to a wheelchair after becoming a paraplegic from a car crash when he was 18.
Vic Chesnutt released 13 albums during his career and became known when friends like REM, Garbage and Smashing Pumpkins recorded the ‘Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation’ tribute album to him.
Chesnutt died on December 24. He was 45-years old.
