According to Daniel, “Motherfucker was crazy,” and, “It was the drugs.”

“He tried like hell, though,” she says. “He’d wear you out. That man died trying to come.”

Well, this is joyous news. Nobody likes a drugged-up 70-year-old trying to come more than hecklerspray. And if anybody tries to tell you different, it’s a goddamn lie.

Daniel went on to regale GQ with a story concerning Mr. Brown that is so brilliant we’re not even going to try and change the words, so here it is verbatim:

"One night in the summer of 2001, after he’d slathered her in Vaseline (“He liked you all greased up,” she says. “Like a porkchop”) and wore her out trying to come, he gave up and left the room, and Gloria dozed off. When she woke up, Mr. Brown was standing at the foot of the bed in a full-length mink coat over his bare chest, a black cowboy hat, and silk pajama pants with one leg tucked into a cowboy boot and the other hanging out. He had a shotgun over his shoulder and a white stripe of Noxzema under each eye. “I’m an Indian tonight, baby,” he announced. “C’mon, let’s let ’em have it.” Then he dumped a pickle jar of change on the floor, told her to get a machete, and went out to the garage. He took the Rolls, drove ten miles to Augusta, weaving all over the road, clipping mailboxes, smoking more dope, and screaming about being an Indian."

Sweet Jesus. Go back and read it again. Go on. We’ll wait right here. Done it? How great was that?

James Brown truly was the last of the great mental musicians. Jim Morrison’s gone. Keith Moon’s gone. Who, of our unfortunate current lot, is going to do such wonderful things? You won’t catch Dan Gillespie-Sells of The Feeling or Luke Pritchard of The Kooks drinking a bottle of cough medicine through their eye and then pissing it onto a television as it falls from a fourth-storey window onto a granny. This is the kind of behaviour we want from our rock stars!

RIP James Brown. Hecklerspray misses you.

Read More – Papa – GQ Blog