Johnny Jewel Destroyed 25K Physical Copies Of Chromatics’s Dear Tommy After Almost Dying
The album’s still coming out, though.
A near-death experience prompted Johnny Jewel to destroy 15,000 CDs and 10,000 vinyl records of the long-promised Chromatics album Dear Tommy, Jewel's manager Alexis Rivera revealed yesterday on Twitter, as originally reported by Pitchfork.
Dear Tommy was originally announced in December 2014, followed by a string of track releases. Then, on Christmas Day 2015, Jewel nearly died, according to Rivera's account, declining to say how. "When he came back home to California he destroyed all copies of Tommy," Rivera tweeted. "15K CDs & 10K vinyl in the Italians warehouse in Glendale, all gone.” This wasn't even the first time he'd literally trashed an album – in April 2011, he destroyed vinyl and CD copies of the last Chromatics album, Kill For Love, before its eventual release.
Jewel then set to work re-recording Dear Tommy; no release date has been announced. “Dear Tommy has the same titles, same lyrics, same track order, as when it was announced Dec of 2014," Rivera wrote. "Nothing's changed except it's better.”
Read the tweets below via Pitchfork.
Christmas day 2015 Johnny almost died in Hawaii. I don't want to go into details, but I'm sure he'll discuss it in interviews at some point.
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
When we announced "Twin Peaks" in March, you can see some of those broken Tommy records https://t.co/Ink9W8hI24
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
March of 2011: Glass Candy was playing in Guadalajara & Johnny gave me a box of Kill For Love CDs. He wanted the album out later that month.
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
Johnny destroyed the CDs & vinyl of that version of Kill For Love in April 2011. Publicly no one knew. But it kickstarted a creative streak
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
He even referenced the other version of Kill For Love (and multiple changes) in an interview with @pitchfork in 2012 https://t.co/PZTySumQOU pic.twitter.com/8c7XBsS14l
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
.@pitchfork As for Dear Tommy, now that we are getting closer to the release of the album, Johnny wanted the music from it to come down
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
.@pitchfork "Dear Tommy" has the same titles, same lyrics, same track order, as when it was announced Dec of 2014. Nothing's changed except it's better
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
The FADER has reached out for comment. Nearly all of the previously shared Dear Tommy songs have been removed from the internet, except for the Adult Swim Single Series track "Shadow," streaming below.