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‘Exceptionally intelligent, kind and compassionate’ – family pay tribute to Fontaines DC manager Trevor Dietz at inquest
(www.independent.ie)
Trevor Dietz died on June 7 in England © Rip.ie
The “intelligent, kind and compassionate” manager of Fontaines DC took his own life in June this year, an inquest has found.
Trevor Dietz (47) died in East Sussex, south-east England, on June 7 after a long battle with mental health issues.
Fontaines DC called Mr Dietz “the sixth member of the band”, while hip-hop group Kneecap paid tribute to him during their headline set at Crystal Palace Park later in June.
On Monday, East Sussex Coroner’s Court heard that Mr Dietz felt “overwhelmed” by his mental health problems and had become “increasingly distressed” by global events, particularly in Gaza.
Fontaines DC © PA
Beyond his impact on the music industry, Mr Dietz was widely known as a campaigner for Palestinian human rights and against genocide.
His sister and partner both attended court, while his brother watched proceedings by video link.
In a statement read out by the coroner, Mr Dietz’s sister Helena Prentice wrote: “Throughout his life he was passionate about humanitarian issues, particularly Palestine, and found it very difficult to accept the suffering of innocent people.”
She added that he was an “exceptionally intelligent, kind and compassionate man” who had experienced “recurrent anxiety” for many years.
Mr Dietz had been engaging with his GP and other mental health professionals about an ongoing anxiety disorder and suicidal ideation, the court heard.
Trevor Dietz managed the band Fontaines DC
Assistant coroner Rachel Redman found that Mr Dietz had died by suicide.
“He clearly was really, really dedicated and devoted to his band and it seemed to be a mutual feeling,” she said.
“I’m sure that they, and all of the musicians he worked with, will be lost without him.”
Rock band Fontaines DC shared the news of Mr Dietz’s death on June 9 with a heartfelt tribute.
They wrote: “We are utterly heartbroken to let you know that on Sunday, June 7th we lost our dear friend and manager Trevor.
“Trevor was beside us from the beginning of our journey as a band, we have never known Fontaines DC without him, the sixth member of the band.
“He cared passionately for us and for what was fair and right in the wider world. He was fearless in his beliefs. We will miss him always.
“We ask that you kindly respect our privacy and that of his family at this terribly difficult time. RIP Trev.”
Mr Dietz signed Dublin band Fontaines DC in 2016 ahead of their breakthrough debut album Dogrel.
The first photo in the online tribute showed Mr Dietz wearing a Kneecap T-shirt, with the fellow musicians’ official page commenting: “Suaimhneas síoraí dá anam, a chara”, which translates to “Rest in peace, my friend”.
Kneecap rapper Móglaí Bap also wrote: “Suaimhneas síoraí Trev.” ["Eternal rest Trev."]
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During a speech at the Las Vegas Sphere on Saturday, Metallica frontman James Hetfield took aim at artists like Macklemore for making political statements about the genocide in Gaza during their concerts.
“I just gotta say, Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit, okay?” said Hetfield, adding, “We’re here to forget about all the outside shit, okay? Metallica’s agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby!”
Defenders of imperial status quo apathy like Matt Taibbi are presently defending Hetfield from the backlash his comments are receiving, arguing that art exists on some kind of magical higher plane that transcends such trivial “political” concerns like whether or not genocide is bad.
I have no respect for this idea that art is somehow separable from politics. ALL art is political when you live in a genocidal dystopia, because all your expression exists in relation to our freakish civilization.
If you were on fire, any action OR inaction on your part would necessarily be happening in relationship to the urgency of your situation. If you chose to stand there strumming your guitar while the flames consumed your body, nobody would try to argue that your artistic expression in that moment was somehow separable from your failure to address your urgent need for extinguishment. Your inaction would be a self-destructive act, and your final song would have been about burning to death — whether you sang anything about fire or not.
In exactly the same way, western artists who ignore the abuses of the western empire are taking a political position and sharing a political message. They might be singing about romance, or dancing, or the Sandman, but their actual message is, “Here are those circuses you ordered, you vapid NPCs, you mindless empire automatons, you shambling zombies consuming the flesh of the third world. Distract yourselves from the burning ecosystem, from the screams of Gaza, from the suffering of the poor and the marginalized, from the AI-assisted surveillance system they are constructing all around you right this very moment. Pretend everything’s fine and capitalism is working out great for everyone. Here you go, you empty-headed human livestock, sedate yourself with some catchy rhythms while our rulers turn our world into a desert planet so a few billionaires can become trillionaires.”
Real art tells the truth, and facilitates a deeper connection with reality. It pulls us into intimacy with parts of ourselves we’d been neglecting, draws attention to aspects of the human experience we’d avoided, directs us, rebukes us, inspires us, encourages us, emboldens us and reassures us as we crawl forth on our adventure across this mysterious blue planet during our short few decades between birth and death. And in a healthy world it could do all these things without ever getting “political”, because the most urgent needs of the moment would typically just involve our feelings, our interpersonal relationships, and our struggle toward self-actualization.
But we do not live in a healthy world. We live under a tyrannical world-eating empire that is fueled by human blood and suffering. That is our reality, and your art is either real about reality or it isn’t. You’re either telling the truth about reality or you’re normalizing it.
It’s easy for the rich and the propaganda-addled to believe we are living in a healthy world where everything’s basically fine, but for everyone whose eyes are open to the reality of our situation as a species, it’s a five-alarm fire. A real artist is in tune with reality, and in this particular slice of spacetime our reality contains horrors that should be treated with the same urgency as we would have if our clothing caught fire.
Telling artists to shut up about politics is telling them to stop being artists and start being propagandists for the empire. It’s telling them, “Don’t say anything unless you have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. Your job isn’t to incite, your job is to distract and sedate. Your job isn’t to blow on the embers of human brilliance, your job is to play the fiddle while we smooth the pillow of a dying world.”
Fuck that. Make art. Be brilliant. Fight the empire. Free Palestine.
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Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No generative AI used in any works.
Feature image by Dennis Radaelli — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78819699
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