In the late 90s, neo-psychedelicists the Olivia Tremor Control enjoyed critical acclaim and a rabid cult following, but co-founder Will Cullen Hart – who died on Friday, aged 53 – wanted more. “Guys would come up to us after shows and tell us, ‘You’re my band!’” Hart told me last year. “But I wanted us to be everybody’s band.” However, Hart and his musical partner Bill Doss had little interest in making music for “everybody”. And while major labels such as Elektra sensed commercial potential within OTC’s often brilliant and occasionally baffling acid-pop, record contract negotiations quickly foundered over questions of creative control, which Hart had no intention of relinquishing. “I didn’t want to be rich,” he admitted. “I just wanted to be able to buy more equipment and continue to create cool things.”
Such simple ambitions had bonded Hart with dear friends Doss, Robert Schneider and Jeff Mangum back in junior high school in their home town of Ruston, Louisiana. Hart’s parents, both interior designers, had encouraged their son’s precocious artistic leanings – his mother kept him stocked with reams of paper to scrawl on. But music became his chief focus after Schneider, his “mentor”, introduced him to lo-fi home-recording. “When we realised the Beatles made their records on four-track tape-recorders, it changed our lives,” Hart said.
