Sarah McLachlan ‘Connected’ to Late Smashing Pumpkins Keyboardist’s ‘Pain’ When Writing ‘Angel’
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NEED TO KNOW
- Sarah McLachlan’s 1998 single “Angel” is among her biggest hits
- McLachlan is opening up about the emotional song’s dark inspiration and how she identified with the death of Smashing Pumpkins keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin
- Melvoin died in 1996 of a heroin overdose at 34
Sarah McLachlan has a special connection to her hit single, “Angel.”
Appearing on The Zach Sang Show, the singer, 57, opened up about the origin of the emotional track. McLachlan remembers feeling “exhausted” after 2½ years of touring and recording.
“I was mentally, physically, completely drained, and of course, the record label’s like, ‘Okay, where’s the new record? We need you to get in the studio and write the next record.”
It was a bigger ask than they’d realized, but McLachlan tried to oblige. “I remember being kind of stuck in my head and I had bought some magazines, and I read in Rolling Stone about Jonathan Melvoin, the keyboard player for the Smashing Pumpkins,” she shared.
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Pete Still/Redferns
Melvoin, who was touring with the Smashing Pumpkins as a keyboardist, died in his Manhattan hotel room in 1996 at age 34 after using heroin with the band’s drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin. Despite never having had a substance use problem herself, McLachlan felt “connected to this story.”
“I’ve never done heroin in my life, but I’ve been in that hotel room on tour and just feeling so alone and lost and… you know, starting to hate myself.”
McLachlan wrote the song in two days and remembered feeling like “it just got channeled through me.”
“And that’s never happened to me before. Like I said, I’m not prolific. It usually takes months, if not years, to finish a song. And it was so quick.”
Looking back, she now feels like the song was “something bigger than me.”
“I’d just opened up a door and witnessed this pain and recognized this pain that I feel on somebody else. It’s just a sense of connecting to something bigger than myself in the universe and out it came.”
McLachlan calls it “the perfect storm of recognition,” adding, “It’s a weird, lonely life we lead as musicians on the road and sometimes, I was in that struggle.”
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
