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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZFISCHER, Wild Man(b Lawrence Wayne Fischer, 6 November 1944, Los Angeles CA; d there 16 June 2011) A singer-songwriter and street musician who lived with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and enjoyed decades of intermittent celebrity. Documentary filmmaker Josh Rubin's portrait of him, dErailRoaDed, was released in 2005, the title taken from one of Fischer's songs, coined to describe his mental condition. Beginning when he was a teenager, when he was in a manic upswing — a condition which he called the 'pep' — songs would pour out of him. His voice was a loud rasp, and the songs were like nursery rhymes, but with less melody. He usually sang a cappella, providing his own sound effects. His cult following included at various times Frank Zappa, disc jockey Dr. Demento, and Rosemary Clooney, who recorded a duet with Fischer, 'It's A Hard Business'. He was committed to mental hospitals as a teenager, and from his late teens lived in the street, performing songs for passers-by on the Sunset Strip and appearing in local talent shows. From the mid-'1960s he opened for acts like Solomon Burke, and later for Alice Cooper and the Byrds. Zappa heard him on the street in 1968 and produced his first album, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, on his Bizarre label (1968). That year Fischer appeared on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, among other TV appearances. His best-known song is probably 'Merry-Go-Round', from the Bizarre album, no more than a jingle, with Fischer's 'boop-boop-boop' calliope sound. Whether it is genius or garbage is up to the listener, but once heard it is never forgotten, and it has as much musical content as a lot of pop music in 2011. Fischer was hard to get along with, and his career stalled until the mid-1970s, when he got involved with Rhino Records. This began as a record store in Los Angeles where Fischer hung out; he recorded a promotional single for them in 1975, 'Go to Rhino Records', and there was so much demand for it that the owners became record producers, and eventually Rhino became one of the foremost reissue labels, preserving and circulating an enormous amount of American pop culture. Fischer made three albums for Rhino: Wildmania, Pronounced Normal and Nothing Scary. More Fischer songs were 'My Name Is Larry', 'I’m Selling Peanuts for the Dodgers' and 'I Wish I Was A Comic Book'. He was in fact featured in several comic books. In 2004, after a severe episode of paranoia, the New York Times reported,
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