Mold last year to this year can be said to be very productive. First two albums, Folklore and Evermore, and this year, a re-recorded version of the "Fearless" and "Red" albums that are copyrighted entirely.
The musty lyrics are very moving, and last year's "Folklore" song "The Last Great American Dynasty of the Last Generation of America's Great Dynasty" tells a very wonderful story.
The song was inspired by her seaside holiday home in Rhode Island, "Holiday House.". Mold spent $17 million in 2013 on the 1,000-square-meter mansion, built in 1930.
What many people don't know is that the former owner of this house was also a famous person in Vanity Fair. Rebekah Harkness, rich and beautiful, but because of her out-of-the-ordinary private life, she has been chased by the media for many years, and the topic is quite high.
Why did Mold buy her house and write a song for her? Let's travel back in time to the 50s and 60s, where Rebecca lived.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > naughty rich woman</h1>
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915, Rebecca's father co-founded the investment bank with George Walker, who was also President George W. Bush's great-great-grandfather.
Born into such a wealthy family, Rebecca grew up with nothing to eat and clothe, but her childhood was actually very lonely, and she was raised by her parents to a nanny. The reason why the mother hired the nanny was because she thought that she had taken care of the mentally ill and could take good care of the children.
Although her parents ignored her, she attached great importance to Rebecca's appearance, and she slightly gained weight and sent her daughter to a ballet class to lose weight. In order to please her parents, Rebecca learned to dance and skate very hard, but never waited for her parents' praise.
After a bad childhood, Rebecca enters a period of teenage rebellion. After sharing school with the girls of the Roosevelt family, the rich families formed a bullying group, calling themselves "Bi*ch Pack", and it was not the other students who were selected.
(C: Rebecca)
A group of girls who are disciplined at home try to stir up trouble and ask for attention, and Rebecca even pranks her sister at an adult social ball, pouring lamp oil in her handbag. After graduating from high school, the bullying group still did not disband, but played bigger together, dancing striptease at dinner parties in the social field.
Rebecca continued to learn piano and ballet while playing in her social circle, and her teacher was Anna Baprova, a famous Russian ballet dancer. By 1939, at the age of 24, Rebecca had had enough and decided to marry photographer Dixon Pierce.
He is the descendant of the 14th president of the United States, and his family is still rich and powerful. But the reason Rebecca married him wasn't because of love, it was "I really didn't have anything else to do." ”
After choosing to marry, Rebecca gave birth to a son and a daughter in 1940 and 1944. She copied the way her parents raised her, threw her two children to the nanny, and her husband and she became parents, spending the money left by the family to live happily.
In 1946, Rebecca divorced her husband and moved to New York with two children in an attempt to find a new golden turtle wife. This time, the 31-year-old rich family has achieved a complete class leap and entered a life of Vanity Fair that can be called madness.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="156" > giants</h1>
In 1947, Rebecca took two babies and married William Hacknes, the heir of Mobil Oil at the time, whose family was already worth hundreds of millions. William satisfied all of Rebecca's fantasies about wealth and status, but at the same time held her firmly in his hands.
At first, people in the social circle looked down on this rich family from the Midwest and laughed at her status as a divorced baby. But what people want to see more is how she married her husband, whom The New York Times called an "embarrassing man."
Although William was born in a hugely wealthy family and "rolled" in money, he had no IQ and emotional intelligence, and in order to show that he had culture, he wrote novels at his own expense, and as a result, he became a laughingstock.
But Rebecca, who married Money, did not dare to be sloppy with her husband, and at that time, there were reports that Rebecca was afraid of her 15-year-old husband and often endured the other party's "spanking".
No one can confirm the events of the people, but There are various records of Rebecca's appearance in front of people. Spending her husband's money, she rode social circles, parties, magazines, and decorated her holiday mansion. Yes, it was the villa that Mold bought later.
The reason why Rebecca decorated the renovated mansion is somewhat bizarre. In 1948, she gave birth to her youngest daughter, Edith. She ordered the renovation of 8 kitchens and 21 bathrooms in the house so that she would not see the children in her daily life.
The two babies with her ex-husband, as well as the daughters born later, were raised by the nanny and had a estranged or even bad relationship with her.
The year 1954 was another turning point in Rebecca's life. Her husband died, leaving her with a huge inheritance. After escaping her husband's control, her madness took her to the next level, and she was also famous, or rather, infamous.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="157" > crazy life</h1>
Until her death, Rebecca loved ballet. He spent the equivalent of $80 million today to fund and set up his own Harkness Ballet. However, rather than cultivating dancers, it is better to say that it is also for their own selfishness.
She rehearsed her own dance performances, returned to the dance troupe to appear on stage, and released her own dance photo book. Every activity about ballet seems to prove that it is the brightest star on the stage.
Later, after a fight with the director of the co-operated dance company, Rebecca ran away willfully, taking all the troupe actors and installing a dance studio in her seaside mansion. At that time, the actors were ordered by the boss to practice dancing on the lawn in front of the villa, and Rebecca herself participated, and the picture was strange.
In addition to spending money on dance troupes, Rebecca is also keen to raise a little lover who is 20 years younger. From dancer Bertrand Castelli to her last lover, Bobby Scevers, she was able to handle it with ease. She once asked Castelli to kiss her in front of everyone, or she would threaten to lose her temper on the spot.
Rich and smelly rich women, who are keen to have parties in holiday villas all year round. In order to show her novelty, she once ordered someone to dye chocolate pudding blue, and pour champagne and whiskey into the pool and fish tank?
When a nearby neighbor complained that it was too noisy, she actually stole someone else's cat and dyed it green. In order to trick the accountant, she transferred millions of dollars of her savings to different banks.
Once on a trip to the sea, she actually jumped naked into the pool of the boat to play in the water, and after going ashore, she threw plates at the performers during the concert, and finally was expelled from the ship by the captain.
On the way to spending a lot of money for ballet, raising a little lover, and living a luxurious and wayward life, Rebecca also "by the way" married twice, both of whom were doctors, and prescribed medicine to her.
To fight aging, she loves to inject vitamin B and testosterone, but the side effects are also obvious. A reporter familiar with her once said, "She walks like a Frankenstein." ”
Despite this, Rebecca's home is still bustling with people, much like in Gatsby's novel, where people want to get close to the woman who has a million dollars in the family.
His son Allen once said: "The house is full of guests, lawyers who want to slander and ask for money, all kinds of weirdos and misdemeanors, everyone loves us." ”
In the lyrics of "There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen This is the most noisy woman this town has ever seen", it is her.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="158" > plastic bag ending</h1>
Rebecca's later years, compared with the glory of her youth, can only be described as a person who walks tea cold.
In 1975, her ballet company closed down due to poor management, losing tens of millions of dollars. Some see it as the result of her betrayal of the guidance of cooperative management and self-inflicted.
Her relationship with the children was never repaired.
The eldest daughter got married and gave birth to a child with brain disease. Rebecca began to feel sorry for her granddaughter and became a maternal grandmother for the first time, but once the child accidentally pulled off her head rope, she immediately threw the child aside and never held her again.
The eldest son is also the appearance of a clumsy boy, because he had a quarrel in a bar and people, and shot and murdered each other. Finally, because of the influence of the Hackes family, his crime changed from premeditated murder to manslaughter, and he was imprisoned for 8 years. Rebecca died while her son was serving his sentence.
The youngest daughter, Edith, has suffered from severe depression since childhood and has committed suicide many times. She jumped over the stairs, swallowed the medicine, and went crazy all the time.
Rebecca was cruel to her daughter, even saying, "What should she do to die?" Isn't there a chic funky way anymore? ”
(Little Daughter)
In 1982, Rebecca was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Knowing that time was running out, she actually spent $250,000 and asked Salvador Dali to help her design the urn, asking for a design that she would always dance ballet.
After arranging the urns, on June 17, Rebecca died. However, she left a mess behind.
Because of the huge inheritance, various people who claim to be related to her jumped out. Craig Unger, the author of her autobiography, wrote: "The scene was very chaotic and everyone came to the house to take things from each other. ”
The response from Rebecca's three children was this. The eldest daughter, Terry, asked to have her will canceled, her son was serving a prison sentence for murder and said that "the days in prison were the happiest time of my life", and the youngest daughter Edith also committed suicide in the year of her mother's death.
As for her ashes, the final ending is comical and ironic. The bottle designed by Dalí was too small to hold her.
The people around Rebecca said, "In that jar, there was probably only half her head and an arm and leg. In the end, her daughter Terry had to take the remaining ashes away in a plastic bag from the supermarket.
Rebecca had a childhood that was not loved by her parents, spent a rebellious girlhood, ushered in four turbulent marriages, and gave birth to three children who were not personally raised and loved. The beginning of her life was quite tragic, but she never broke through the cycle of tragedy, and because of the connivance of the family wealth, she completed a more chaotic life.
After Rebecca's death, the seaside villa was managed by the Hacknes family until 2013, when Mold bought it and became the new owner.
Rebecca's story became the inspiration for Mold, culminating in the song "The Last Great American Dynasty, America's Last Great Dynasty."
It is wonderful to return to the last dynasty in time and space, so vivid but also in the clouds of the past.