![]() “Oh yes, I’m just thinking about what I want to say,” she says, in a tone that suggests she is not one to be hurried. After a full 30 seconds, I ask if she’s still there. “Celebrating River now, it just feels joyful.”īut why did it take a quarter of a century to get to this place? Or, to put it another way, why now? She is speaking by phone from LA and there is silence at the end of the line. Doesn’t this album and the release of Aleka’s Attic songs mean she now has the burden of answering questions about her brother from journalists like me? “It’s not a burden,” she says. The Phoenix family have always been very careful in maintaining their privacy, rarely speaking to reporters about River. By keeping her brother’s friends close, Rain has found a way of keeping his light alive.Īn exclusive first view of Lost in Motion, with lyrics by River His generosity and strong ethical framework – they really mirror the way River was.” She speaks fondly of Flea from the Chili Peppers, too, and spoke to Keanu Reeves only recently. I often send him my songs to get his opinion. Keener and her son directed the one for Lost in Motion and Michael Stipe duets with Rain on Time Is a Killer. River’s friends have also contributed: Gus Van Sant, who directed him in My Own Private Idaho and Rain in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, shot the video for Immolate. “As I was writing the music, he kept coming to my mind and it suddenly came to me that I couldn’t put out a solo album without him, so that’s why I called it River.” The lyrics of another, Lost in Motion, were largely written by him. “Your light, I keep it alive,” she sings on the album’s best song, Immolate, which she released on River’s birthday: 23 August. ![]() Out today – the 26th anniversary of River’s death – it’s a darkly romantic meditation on loss that wonders if those who die are gone or live for ever through us. She made so much music that it turned into her first solo album. ‘I couldn’t put out a solo album without him’ … Rain and River performing in New York in 1991. After I finished, I didn’t feel the need to release the music. ![]() “And that,” she says, “was hugely healing – just spending that time listening to my brother. When she got back to Los Angeles after touring, she moved into the guesthouse of some other friends of River’s, actors Catherine Keener and Dermot Mulroney, and spent 1996 and 97 mixing all of her brother’s unmixed songs. She also, tentatively, began to go through the archive of Aleka’s Attic, her brother’s band, which she had joined at 16. The latter were touring their album Monster, which they dedicated to River. These friends happened to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM. Instead Rain, then barely in her 20s, went on tour as a backing singer with some of River’s musical friends. This being the Phoenix family, her concept of disappearing didn’t involve just hiding out in her bedroom for the next few years. After Rain Phoenix’s brother River died in front of her in 1993, having overdosed on Sunset Boulevard as she and their younger brother Joaquin looked on helplessly, she disappeared into the shadows. ![]()
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