Outkast recently tried absinthe for their first time, during a promo trip to London. Sebor Absinth TM in fact, as only the best would do. "Hi," say Outkast. "Hey Ya!" we reply. "Yo, what's the story with this absinthe stuff, man?," asks Big Boi. "Will it blow my mind if I drink it?" "Is it like glowing green?" wonders André. "Like radioactive shit?"
We biked some Sebor over to them pronto, two fun-filled bottles to be consumed in the private plushness of their swish central London hotel room. Ouch.
Eminem is another absinthe enthusiast. Go figure.
Did you know that in 2004 before the presidential election Eminem staged his own national convention, delivering his speech while wearing bunny slippers? P. Diddy and 50 Cent were there. Fans even put together an online petition:
To: Eminem & U.S. Congress
We the undersigned believe that Marshall Mathers would make an excellent president of the United States.
Mr. Mathers does and says things that other people (including George W. Bush) only think in their heads. With Mr. Mathers in power, I am sure that the United States of America would be a much better place to live for everybody.
If you listen to the lyrics in his song White America, you will see that he realizes the problems we face as a nation.
Although it is not just White America, there are more songs such as Without Me where he points out "the FCC won’t let him be".
He is talking about how a Denver radio station was sued for playing an unedited version of his song The Real Slim Shady.
Please sign this petition, and prove to the whole nation that Marshall Bruce Mathers III would make an excellent president.
Marilyn Manson thrives on absinthe; he even got his mate Johnny Depp into the stuff. When asked about his absinthe binges he replied: "I think I was trying to get to that place where you think and behave like a child or a lunatic. Sometimes the doors need to be opened. That's why so many writers and creative people in the past fell prey to it."
We’re puffing up our feathers here at Sebor Absinth TM, as Sebor is reportedly his favourite brand. Here you can see a still from a shoot he did for AP Magazine. If you look closely at the table you can see our very own Sebor Absinth TM – we guess it must be true then! Thanks Marilyn, we like it too.
Johnny Depp's character in From Hell was partial to a glass or two of absinthe, and the man himself loves the stuff. Although Depp warns, "If you drink too much absinthe, you suddenly realize why Van Gogh cut his ear off."
Marilyn Manson is one of Johnny’s biggest fans. They’ve been friends for years: “…John Galliano said I was one of the true great pirates, and I told Johnny that. So it’s like me, Johnny and Cap’n Crunch. I have hung out with Jack Sparrow, because Johnny is Jack Sparrow. We drink absinthe, that’s what we do.
The rocker once married to Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, quit alcohol after attending rehab in the 80s. However, he's back on it with a vengeance, lured by the intoxications of the green fairy. He told Radio One: "I was in London strip club Stringfellows recently - just for a quick 'taste' - and I can't remember the last hour of the night I was drinking absinthe. There's not a chance I'm gonna change."
Gary Oldman's Count Dracula shared a romantic glass of absinthe with Mina Murray (Winona Ryder) in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).
For general protection against vampires, please be sure to carry garlic. In the event of encountering a vampire, here’s how to kill one:
- Drive a wooden stake through the vampire's heart (its source of power), taking care to kill in a single blow.
- Next, behead the vampire with a gravedigger’s shovel, thus removing its brain from its body (the brains are the vampire’s lifesource).
- Alternatives include: burning, exposure to sunlight and/or The Holy Cross.
Beth Orton named a song Absinthe. Here are some of the lyrics:
All I really needed was someone to take me home,
Enough absinthe can crush your spirit to the bone,
I could feel rebellion rising,
I could hear the stars aligning,
I could see the wave rising,
But I never did seem to find my way back home,
No, I never did wanna find my way back home.
Symphony X, a progressive metal band, wrote a song called Absinthe and Rue. I'm not sure you could call them absinthe 'fans' though, judging by the lyrics below. I'm not sure you could call them 'fans' of anything really.
Absinthe and Rue,
twisted wings of paranoia,
twilight runs through eyes of ignorance,
Afflicted, addicted, and wicked,
you'll loom in fear,
severed, endeavored in trial,
time closes near,
Obsessing, possessing, confessing consumed by sin,
injected, infected by venom that's searing your skin
"One must be drunk always. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your shoulders and bows you to the earth, you must intoxicate yourself unceasingly. But with what? With wine, poetry, or with virtue, your choice. But intoxicate yourself."
Baudelaire was hyper-conscious of that shackle Time, and often turned to absinthe for release. The green fairy provided the ‘intoxication’, the distraction he longed for. Manet was a good friend of Baudelaire’s: both shared a struggle to move away from conservatism and embrace progress, even as both acknowledged its absolute necessity. Absinthe numbed their inability to reconcile their attitudes to past and present. Manet was one of the sixty mourners at Baudelaire’s funeral in 1867.
Betty Williams (nee Preston, previously Turpin) of Coronation Street and Diane Sugden of Emmerdale both turned to the absinthe in consecutive weeks. Spooky.
Betty Williams came to Coronation Street to help her sister run the Corner Shop. In 1969 she became a barmaid at Rover’s Return, but is now, like the actress Betty Driver who plays her, in her eighties. These days she makes only rare appearances on the show. Betty is famed for her fabulous hotpots.
Diane Sugden is played by Elizabeth Estensen; she co-owns the Woolpack pub. She is one of the only people to know that her best friend Louise is a murderer. Let’s hope, for Louise’s sake, that absinthe doesn’t loosen her tongue!
Experimental, daredevil, dark, Aleister Crowley had his fingers in all sorts of fishy pies: he was an astrologer, he experimented with drugs, with magic, with sex, mysticism and the occult. He wrote The Book of Law, which formed the centre of his version of 'Thelema', a type of religious philosophy, and this certainly later influenced Hubbard's Scientology. Crowley's Thelema advocated a way of life in which 'do what thou wilt' translates as finding your true inner spirit and path and being true to it no matter what.
Sound like fun? Maybe, but Thelema had its wicked way with Crowley, dubbed “the wickedest man in the world”, in more ways than one: as well as being a devoted lover of ‘the green fairy’ absinthe, Aleister Crowley was a heroin addict for much of his life, and when he died in 1947 Crowley was addicted to opium.
Big fans of Aleister Crowley can be found elsewhere in our list: he’s had mentions in Ernest Hemingway novels, and can also be found as a schoolboy in Alan Moore’s novel From Hell (later made a hit film with Johnny Depp, which co-starred our friend absinthe).
Degas was good friends with Manet, a relationship kept on its toes by a healthy dose of friendly rivalry. Degas's painting L'Absinthe prompted much debate when exhibited in London a few years after it was painted in 1876. George Moore wrote the following extraordinary commentary in the Speaker on 25 February 1893:
“The woman that sits beside the artist was at the Elysée Monmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the ratmort and had a soupe aux choux; she lives in the Rue Fontaine, or perhaps the Rue Breda; she did not get up until half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her, slipped on that peignor, thrust her feet into those loose morning shoes, and came down to the café to have an absinthe before breakfast. Heavens! – what a slut! A life of idleness and low vice is upon her face; we read there her whole life. The tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson.”
In fact the woman in the painting was an actress called Ellen Andree, a close friend, and fellow-absinthe drinker, of Degas. By her own account she hardly ever drank absinthe, and in 1921 she said of the painting:
“My glass was filled with absinthe. Desboutin has something quite innocuous in his… and we look like two idiots. I didn’t look bad at the time… But Degas – didn’t he slaughter me!”
Gauguin is integral to the Van Gogh ear-chopping legend. Did Gauguin cut if off during a fight then claim it was actually Van Gogh in an absinthe-fuelled frenzy? Speculation aside, it is clear that Van Gogh and Gauguin shared their tendency to depression, and consequently were volatile housemates.
Gauguin enjoyed absinthe as much as his friend, and this love for intensity of experience is reflected in his brightly coloured, often exuberant paintings. He loved the symbolism and energy of African and Asian art, and indeed ended his days in Polynesia. A characteristic comment:
“How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.”
Hemingway's love of absinthe was rather frighteningly bound up with his love of weapons. "Got tight last night on absinthe. Did knife tricks." His novel For Whom the Bell Tolls features the same worrying combination, with the character Robert Jordan turning to absinthe while he is fighting with the loyalist guerillas.
After the ban Hemingway persisted in drinking his favourite green tipple, probably getting his absinthe from Cuba or Spain.
Damien Hirst attended an absinthe-fuelled weekend for artists and poets in Devon, hosted by the Dutch owners of the Broomhill Art Hotel and Sculpture Gardens, a country house nestled next to an enormous red stiletto. He designed a crazy-golf course for the occasion, in which a pair of hairy buttocks concealed a cunningly-positioned hole.
Toulouse-Lautrec mixed his absinthe with brandy on occasion. An unusual combination you might say, as some might well say about his life in general. Frequenter of brothels, but well-known for his profound sympathy for humanity; short legs with a long body; close to his family, but his last words, aimed at his father who was in vigil by his death bed, were "Vieil imbecile!" ("old fool!")
An unusual life, with extraordinary consequences: his paintings have been sold for as much as $14.5 million.
Manet drank absinthe at the zenith of its career, and produced the acclaimed painting The Absinthe Drinker in 1862. He was friends with many contemporary celebrities on this list.
All his life Manet resisted being lumped in with the Impressionist movement, despite his work clearly operating in close dialogue with the genre. He would die painfully of syphilis, an illness he undoubtedly picked up while indulging in the Parisian absinthe lifestyle of his fellow artists.
Absinthe is ever-present in the prolific writings of this popular 19th century French writer, whose 'literary godfather' was the illustrious Gustave Flaubert.
Maupassant met the Swedish psychiatrist Axel Munthe (Munthe recalls in his famous memoirs, The Story of San Michele) when he invited the doctor onto his private yacht. There Munthe met one of Maupassant’s many lovers Mademoiselle Ivonne, a ballet dancer addicted to ether. Munthe treated her later as she lay dying of this addiction; she called for Maupassant during the last hours of her life, but in vain.
By all accounts the strange, macabre stories of Edgar Allen Poe drew much of their inspiration from his experiences while drinking absinthe. His own life was also smattered with horror and mystery.
Some eerie facts about Poe:
Poe’s first wife Virginia (also his cousin) was thirteen years old when he married her in 1836. Poe was twenty-seven.
Poe died unexpectedly and suddenly, having been found very ill in the street, wearing someone else’s clothes. He called for ‘Reynolds’ in his last hours; no-one since has been able to discover who Reynolds could possibly have been.
Poe’s grave has been visited on his birthday every year since 1949 in the early hours of the morning, by a man dressed in black, carrying a cane. He makes a toast with cognac, places the half-finished bottle and three red roses onto the grave and leaves.
Absinthe fuelled the tempestuous relationship between Rimbaud and his mentor and lover, poet Paul Verlaine. Having arrived in Paris aged just sixteen, with wallets stuffed full of poetry and not a lot else, he was vulnerable to Verlaine's advances. Perhaps his early poverty led him to give up poetry in later life and turn to the more lucrative gun running. Or perhaps it was Verlaine himself - he shot Rimbaud in the wrist - who gave him the idea.
Vincent Van Gogh lopped off his ear while drinking absinthe. Send us your most outrageous conspiracy theories for this much-glorified legend. If we think you've hit on something we might just send you a prize. We almost have conclusive proof that it was in fact a rare breed of head louse that nibbled off Van Gogh's ear while he was sleeping, but please do prove us wrong.
Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder is the title to one of Webley's songs.
One Halloween Webley killed himself. He took off his signature black hat, all his clothes, tossed them onto a bonfire, underwent a ritual shaving, was put into a hearse and driven ceremoniously away. He rose again the following June 1st, and promptly fed everyone slices of giant tomato pie.
Zola enjoyed the odd glass of absinthe. He must have been grateful of the distraction, what with the furore over his controversial article damning the Dreyfus Affair, then being convicted as guilty of libel and escaping to England to avoid prison.
In January 1998 Jacques Chirac held a memorial service to commemorate the centenary of Zola’s courage in speaking out over the Dreyfus Affair:
"Let us never forget the courage of a great writer who, taking every risk, putting his tranquility, his fame, even his life in peril, dared to pick up his pen and place his talent in the service of truth."
