Good ol’ Mom and Dad. Pivotal figures in anyone’s life, no matter where or when one exists. Whether publicly in the eyes of millions, or solely within the private sanctum of the nuclear family, all parents are influential people by default. One way or another, their examples thrash paths through the jungles of life for their young to observe and from which one can’t help but learn. In presence or in absence, the parent looms large (a fascinating case study which could consist of the current and preceding US presidents), while of course, some parents loom larger than others. It’s not surprising when an accomplished, strong-willed, strong-minded person has a child of similarly driven character, though it’s especially interesting to see what happens when those shouldered with the burden of an exceptional legacy are creatively exceptional themselves.

The Berman family is a prime example, in a situation which has only just started to unravel. Early this year, David Berman, central figure in the influential and recently disbanded indie rock outfit the Silver Jews, dropped the bombshell on his fans via the Drag City website message board that his father is in fact Richard Berman, a particularly loathsome Washington lobbyist. The elder Berman is a crusader against what he describes as “the nanny culture” that unjustly tries to control how consumers live their lives and industry does business. Berman heads at least 15 industry-funded projects and vaguely named nonprofits that launch multimillion-dollar campaigns in court and in the media to argue against such industry inconveniences as the sectioning of restaurants into “smoking” and “non” (claiming a lack of evidence that second-hand smoke kills). At the same time, Berman pays himself millions of dollars by entering his nonprofits into no-bid contracts with Berman and Company, Inc. (BCI), the for-profit lobbying/PR firm of which Richard Berman is the sole owner and president. Berman’s industry-backed arguments against the existence of a minimum wage helped keep it stagnant from 1997 to 2007. He’s argued against restrictions on alcohol consumption and in favor of drunk driving (in order to protect alcohol sellers and corporations), restrictions on what to serve children in school cafeterias (claiming the obesity crisis is a myth in order to protect soda and junk food companies), and the labeling of mercury-laden fish as “dangerous.” He runs TV and print ads against labor unions, environmentalists, scientists, ecologists, nutritionists, and animal welfarists. Now he’s working to undermine Obama’s burgeoning tax policies, after lining his coffers for years in a dubious tax limbo as the overpaid top executive for several tax-exempt nonprofits/insider recipients of no-bid contracts. He’s a greedy Washington hit-man, a front linesman unafraid to put forth the most deplorable arguments with a straight face in defense of industry and all its nefarious practices and cover-ups, reaping untold millions for his services.

It was in the late ’80s that Richard Berman spun his early union-busting legal/PR heft into Berman and Co., at which point his creative son David was already in college, forming a band called Ectoslavia with bandmates Bob Nastanovich and Stephen Malkmus, which, a couple years later, they’d rename the Silver Jews. (Malkmus and Nastanovich were also just forming Pavement at around the same time.) By the time Rick Berman’s evil empire hit paydirt in the mid-’90s with $600,000 in seed money from Phillip Morris, the Silver Jews had released several albums and singles and garnered a devoted following in the indie underground, though for all intents and purposes, these two worlds were mutually exclusive. While centered on D. Berman’s original songwriting with a lo-fi, melodically accessible aesthetic and lyrics of literary poignancy, the Silver Jews’ material revealed nothing specifically indicating the burden of shame and guilt Berman would increasingly experience as a result of his father’s work. The band underwent some line-up adjustments and released albums relatively infrequently (six LPs in almost 20 years), despite critical acclaim from the indie community. Also an accomplished cartoonist and lauded poet, it was at some point after the 1999 publication of his book of poems, Actual Air, that David Berman spiraled into deep depression and substance abuse, culminating in a suicide attempt in 2003. In rehab shortly after, D. Berman ironically rediscovered Judaism (the band name was never intended to reflect any religious inclination). In 2005 came the Silver Jews’ fifth album, Tanglewood Numbers, which was followed by their first-ever tour; to that point, Berman had shunned public performance of his music, garnering himself a reputation as a recluse. The band toured the US, Europe, and Israel in 2006, and it was in that year that Berman finally confronted his father. “I demanded he stop his work,” Berman wrote in the message board posting dated January 22, 2009. “Close down his company or I would sever our relationship. He refused. He has just gotten worse. More evil. More powerful. We’ve been ‘estranged’ for over three years.” 

Given the justifiable enormity of David Berman’s shame, it makes perfect sense that through the Silver Jews he would hide from the familial connection, as well as the regrettable society in which his father is accepted. “Previously I thought, through songs and poems and drawings I could find and build a refuge away from his world,” Berman wrote towards the end of the message board post. “But there is the matter of Justice. And I’ll tell you it’s not just a metaphor. The desire for it actually burns. It hurts. There needs to be something more. I’ll see what that might be.” The Silver Jews might be over, but David Berman’s work has apparently only just begun.