things fall apart

Theresa Hawk: That's when she jumped.

It was terrifying. They were broadcasting it on television live, because people were curious about how she got up there and why she wouldn't come down, and what she was saying. And then she jumped off. Those were her last words, this day will be remembered.

It was July 19^th, 2008. I remember.

Eileen Richardson: Rivka Fried was going through psychosis. It was clear from her writing that she was suffering from delusions. It was most likely an example of a bipolar mixed state—the coincidence of mania and depression—which is when individuals with bipolar disorder are most likely to commit suicide.

You can go on like that. You won't get the whole story.

I went back. I actually did what everyone else in the fandom couldn't do. I looked over every single thing she wrote. I didn't see, you know, a lost soul, crying out for help. I saw someone who really believed in everything she was saying. She had ideas. What looked like muddled thoughts and complete nonsense to everyone else who read it—yeah, including me—was, to Rivka, the clearest she had ever thought before. She had ideas, goals, plans. And she was careful. By the time she got to the top of that building, I know she knew what she was going to do, but she didn't let anyone else get any idea.

She carried a stapled packet of paper with her to the top of the building, and it was her note, her explanation. It talked about how she felt that the original message behind Knave had degraded, just like all the other people over the years who have tried to bring about social change via the mass media. It ended by saying, just as she'd said on top of that building, that she felt a rash action was the only way people would be forced to face the consequences of their actions. And that her own life didn't matter anymore. Like she was a soldier.

Lane Kennedy (reading from a sign made for an In the Court of the King promo advertisement): We are soldiers in love and death.

Naomi Fried: There's a hole in my life now. Whatever else Rivka was in her life, she was always my little sister and I love her and miss her with all my heart.

Tom Thorogood: Something I'm starting to realize is that the Knave of Hearts fans really did become something more than just the fans of a rock band. They weren't like the people who just buy records and go to concerts, not even like the people who follow the escapades of their favorite celebrities in tabloids or on TV. They weren't just groupies. They weren't just obsessed with our music, they weren't even just obsessed with our lyrics, or our image, or anything like that. Sure, some of them were obsessively interested in us, and followed us, and tried to get in our pants, and all those things. But what they did—what they promised—was that they'd accept us, for all our faults, for all our human failings.

That's sort of like what family does. They were like a sort of Knave of Hearts extended family. And when we heard about Rivka, that's what we felt. Like someone in our family had died. Was gone. Would never be around again to share what they have with the world.

We were stunned for days. As it is when anything like that happens, we all reacted to it in our own ways. Me, for the first time in my life, I stopped playing music. I didn't touch my drums. Every time I went near my drums, I thought about Rivka, I thought about the Knave of Hearts Extended Family, and I felt sick. So I just didn't. I watched a lot of television. I called my mum, dad, and brother, and had long conversations where I talked completely around the fact that something was bothering me. Parents do a good job at understanding that.

And slowly, slowly, we tried to put together the pieces again.

Lane Kennedy: I guess death is something I know too well, now. I'm all too familiar with that weird pain that never really heals. It's like a missing limb—I mean, not quite like that, but it's like it never goes away, you just get used to it being there. Or not being there. And I never knew Rivka Fried personally, but...it meant something.

People will always remember her. Maybe not for the reasons she wanted to be remembered, but I'll think of her as someone who really cared about the world she lived in, and who...I don't know. I guess it's really up to history to judge. You're interviewing me for a book and maybe people will read the book and understand that she was quite troubled, that she was really bright and passionate, not just that she was 'some crazy girl who killed herself because of our band'.

I don't know. I...I don't know why I felt so strongly to hear that someone I don't even know had died. Maybe it's because when someone reveals their whole self to the world, you can't really help but feel you know them a little.

(laugh) People say that about us, actually, don't they?

Alan Léonin: I did what I always do. I kept writing.

Emma Marx-Hall: Alan really stressed that he wanted us to keep calm and carry on. Perhaps that's the best thing to do in the face of a disaster. I knew what was on the horizon, of course. I knew that people would think of us as the band responsible for people's actions. I knew people would connect it to us. And there is a connection, of course. People who associated with our own feelings became interested in us because we offered them the chance at not being alone. It's that simple, really.

Anyhow, yeah, Alan wanted to get right back to work. I was fine with that. I always work to distract myself, and then eventually I forget about all the nervy feelings I was having in the first place. Alan works to get his emotions out, but it's a similar thing. We both have that need to keep our hands busy.

So he disappeared into his room and emerged with lyrics, which he handed to me. He said it was some of his best work yet, and he was really excited about turning it into music. I looked it over.

"You're joking, right?" I said.

"How's that?"

I say, "These aren't the real lyrics, are they?"

He's like, "Of course they're the real lyrics, could you cut the crap?"

They're incomprehensible. They're like, lists of words. Phrases that don't lead into each other right. I keep asking him to explain it and he finally tells me that he hasn't slept a full night in three weeks. He tells me that at night he lays in bed and has hallucinations where he can't move and can hardly breathe. He gets really upset and I'm at a loss for what to do. My Alan, my best friend, he's turning into someone I don't recognize. And I thought everything was all right, and in reality I couldn't do anything about it.

So I said, Alan, hold on, just wait here a minute. And I phoned up his sister Lauren, and the three of us went to see Alan's psychiatrist together. I think the fact that we had actually brought it out in the open was huge to him. By the time we got to the doctor's, he was almost like a scared little kid, shaking and unable to let go of Lauren's hand. He kept saying now he knew what he had done and that he didn't want us to tell Emily.

He felt like it was his fault. He felt like—well, like some people in the media are trying to make it out to be, like he told Rivka to do what she did, even if he did it indirectly. It's true the two of them had written letters back and forth. It's true she'd considered Alan a pure soul, a true heart, and someone who she felt this bizarre need to protect, somehow. Perhaps even to prove herself to. But that's not what it was about.

And, well. As for not wanting me to tell Emily, I thought it was just because he didn't want the band to lose management, or for them to get in a fight again, or I don't even know what. I was wrong about that.

Maggie Delacorta: Alan really didn't want to go to hospital, which is understandable when he had already been there three times. And lucky for him it turned out he was mainly suffering from acute sleep deprivation. Which he knew all about, because he didn't sleep when he was revising for his A-Levels. He was prescribed sleeping pills, and he more or less withdrew from daily life to focus on recovery, and talking to his therapist about the way he felt. It was almost like being in hospital, except that he spent his days in his home instead of in an actual hospital. Which perhaps is helpful to recovery if you come to be like Alan and really hate hospitals.

Alan Léonin: Being in hospital was something that only happened when I was terribly depressed, so of course in my mind being in hospital was always associated with, well, being terribly depressed.

Emily Alexander: It was a very tense time for all of us.

There was a massive nasty media flood. That much you could probably guess. Shit hitting us from every direction. Me and their public relations people had to deal with all the accusations. People were demanding that the band's correspondences with Rivka Fried be divulged. And of course it was all somewhere in Rivka's home, and actually a lot of it was in her magazine, so people were really looking for clues that weren't even there.

That hurt, because more and more the band were becoming my kids. Not like they were my children, that's really weird, but like they were people I needed to care for, and make sure that they were okay, and I didn't want anything bad to happen to them.

And Alan...I realized at some point that I had stopped being worried about him because I was afraid that he was too much like Tristain, and started worrying about him because I cared about him just as much as I'd cared about Tristain. Or...more. Because even when we disagreed, we were becoming really close. We were becoming two people who could form compromises, who could mediate our own conflicts. Who could actually relate to each other. Maybe it all went back to that night in Edinburgh, when I told Alan all the things I didn't tell other people. Maybe it went back to the first time when I met the band, and I realized that they had so much in common with my band, when we were young, but they had something more, they had real potential and they had optimism.

It was Lauren Leonard who called me and told me Alan wouldn't be coming to band rehearsals for the next couple weeks. "Because," she said, "he's been to see his psychiatrist. He's been missing sleep, he's been in a state, and he needs to stay at home to recover. Oh, and he told me not to tell you."

Emma Marx-Hall (reading from a press release on the Knave of Hearts website): Hello loyal friends and fans,

We know this is a difficult time for everyone in our community. We have lost a dear friend in Rivka "Starlett" Fried, and it's been a very strange period of time for us in the band. We're still trying to figure out a way to cope with this loss and its impacts, but we want you to know we still believe in the dream and in music.

All four of us are enjoying the chance to spend time with our friends and family, and we want you to know that while Alan will not be answering his mail, the other three of us are happy to hear from any one of you lovely people. We will also pass on messages to Rivka's family if you like. But please be kind and keep it nice.

Lane wants to share Four Things To Do When Living Hurts

1. Commune with nature

2. Spread love

3. Write

4. Believe in the power of the universe (whether random or controlled by a higher entity) to sort things out

Alan wants to share a short message: even when it's all chaos, I'm glad to be alive. No lyrics for a bit but I'll be back, boys and girls. Take care of yourselves.

Love and glitter kisses,

Knave of Hearts

Theresa Hawk: No one really knew what was going to happen to Alan. I felt really upset when I read the band's press release on their website. It practically broke my heart to learn that he had stopped writing. I felt really lost and bewildered. I had known Rivka too, you know, and she was such a sweet young girl. She had actually sent me some photos for my website. I remember she said she felt a bit uncomfortable about the fantasies and stories, but she wanted to share pictures of Alan and the band. Someone like that isn't supposed to die. It's completely unfair. She weren't hardly a teenager.

But what was worse was all the things people were saying. I actually saved one of the articles because it had a really good picture of Alan in it. It was an outtake from one of the band's old photo shoots. Alan is sitting in a black leather chair wearing tight blue jeans and a black waistcoat with nothing underneath. Oh my god, it's great. Like, he's tilting his head back and has a finger to his throat like he's tracing out a line to cut it. So anyway, I saved this article because of the picture, but they were using it to show that the band was about killing yourself or something.

Emily Alexander (reading from an article titled "Rock and Roll Suicide"): Knave of Hearts have always been very close to death. The band's taciturn songwriter and figurehead, Alan Léonin (born under the much more unassuming moniker Alan Leonard in a tiny fishing hamlet in the south of England) has always had a fixation with what happens after life is over, and in fact is rumored to have attempted suicide at the tender age of eight.

It's no surprise that Alan's dark imagination and of course, dashing good looks attracted legions of unbalanced teenage devotees. What is perhaps surprising is the recent event the band's story. Like many bands before them, Knave of Hearts have found their lives marked by a suicide. But different from the likes of Kurt Cobain, Elliot Smith, and Jeff Buckley, Alan Léonin has not taken his own life. But a fan has taken hers.

Following the path set out by the band, who once held up a sign reading "Liberty Or Death" in an advert and furthermore, who have advocated a moral opposition to media censorship and obfuscation, a fourteen-year old fan found herself on a winding road into militant antagonism against animal abuse, the media's portrayal of women, war crimes, and religion. It ended in her jumping from the top of a building in central London, fully believing that she had found something larger than her own being and more important than her own life.

"She'd never been troubled before," a relative of the deceased said in a television interview. So why did this young woman take her life? What messages did she find in Knave of Hearts' music that led her to such radical actions? We go back to examine the band's songs for the clues that this fan herself found.

It goes on like that. It analyzes songs, draws ridiculous conclusions. There were others. They got worse. They talk about a death cult—it's really tenuous, a connection to self-harm and the girl who cut herself in front of Alan. Some of them just said that Rivka was a nutter, but others definitely want to prove we did it.

People started talking about boycotting us. There were letters to the editor in major newspapers, from concerned parents, some of whose children were fans and they were worried that their children were going to kill themselves. Some of it was just parents being parents, but some of it was a terrifying mob mentality. It was the worst thing I have ever had to do as a manager, to sit through all that, to get asked questions about the band that were obviously loaded. But I wasn't about to let the band themselves talk to those people. Not because I was afraid they were going to say something stupid, but because I don't think anyone deserves to hear that kind of shit about themselves.

ºAmanda Barrett (secretary): It's really filthy, their music. A lot of it has sexual themes that are completely inappropriate for the radio. And it's very, very dark. I don't believe it's anything to do with Satan worship, but there are themes of violence and especially of self-harm and death. It's not something children should be listening to and really it's not something anyone should be talking about in the first place, I don't think. It's what happens in the modern world. Music becomes a tool for people to mold innocent minds. I shouldn't have to listen to everything my children buy just to make sure that it won't incite them to kill themselves. If that band has any self-respect, they'll make a public apology.

Emma Marx-Hall: I found myself almost wishing that I could hear Rivka's response to it all. If I believed in heaven I'd probably imagine her up in the clouds with a harp, a robe, and a notebook, coming out with a big stapled packet of paper all about how much bullshit it all was.

Lane Kennedy: Emma, you almost sound like you're talking fondly of her. This is the girl who basically broke into Emily's apartment and scared her half to death!

Emma Marx-Hall: I do think on her fondly. I don't think anyone should really be judged by the action they take when they're not in their right mind. I remember Rivka's magazines before they started getting incomprehensible. Even then, she had so much to say about everything.

Alan Léonin: So I went home. I went back to my parents' small-town house, with stray cats running around everywhere, and where everybody knew me not as Alan Léonin but as Alan Leonard, the neighbors' kid. For a while I just stayed in my room and slept most of the day. Once I had figured out how to sleep again, it seemed like all I wanted to do. Sometimes, my sister Lauren would come round and check on me.

Lauren Leonard: It was a little weird because since Alan and I went to university, we hadn't seen much of each other. And it was really frightening, riding in the car with Alan and Emma after Alan had had his breakdown, not knowing if my brother would ever be the same again. And in a way he really wasn't.

When he finally got out of bed, Alan wanted to sit on the dock and watch the waves. I found him there. I was brought back to the time when I'd picnicked with my friends and seen Alan nearly drown himself. I guess that's one of my strongest images of my brother. Him, all dark and quiet, framed by the black sea and the white sky.

I went up to him.

"Alan," I said, "You know nothing that happened is your fault."

He said, "I know." He paused and then he went on to say, "I think there was a time in my life when I felt like I had a purpose, and that I was going to change the world."

I said, "You did change the world."

He said, "I know." He paused again and said, "So I'm done. So what do I do now?"

And I thought about that for a while, and put my arm around him, because to be honest I guess I never made any concrete goals for my life. Do a degree, do a postgraduate degree, do field work, those are concrete but that's not what my life's about, you know? Teach children in third-world countries. Make my parents proud. Those aren't things that ever really end. Those aren't goals so much as...paths, I guess. Paths, that I don't know where they lead.

I said, "Now you're just like all the rest of us."

Alan Léonin: I asked her if I really had been all that special.

"Of course you're special," she said. "Everyone knew that." That's not how it's supposed to go, really. How life is supposed to work is that you grow up thinking you're special until real life hits you and you realize you're really not, you're really just like everyone else.

"I don't really want that," I said. She nudged me in the side. The way siblings do.

"Yeah you do," she said. "Don't be daft, Alan. I know you love having your ego stroked."

We argued over that point for a minute and finally I said, "I guess even if the world did change, it didn't change the way I wanted it to. I expected that..." And I guess I didn't know what I expected, so I said that.

Lauren Leonard: So we just sat there on the pier for a while and looked out at the horizon. That's a good metaphor for life actually.

Alan Léonin and Lauren Leonard: If you keep sailing toward the horizon, you'll never reach the horizon but you'll get somewhere.