Artists, Musicians, Writers Who Suffered From STDs

By: John Bailey

Posted: 4/14/08

This week is STD Awareness Week at the Health Education office. You can visit their tables in dining halls from between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. today in Northwest, Tuesday in Towers and Wednesday at South.

It's the unfortunate case that STDs seem a lot less dangerous than they are.

Like car crashes and lawsuits from the RIAA, they're something that "won't happen to me."

But real people certainly do get STDs, even prominent artists and musicians.

Arguably, they aren't "normal" people - they've got that special mystique, that talented jive that separates them from the humdrum.

But you might be a famous person one day, too. And you'd probably rather not croak the day after penning your Homeric epic or in the hours following your first performance at Carnegie Hall.

Learn from these stories, and know that even big shots aren't immune to the nasty consequences of unhealthy lifestyles.

Scott Joplin

Perhaps the best-known ragtime composer, Joplin penned such famous works as "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer," along with the award-winning opera "Treemonisha."

His music was featured in the Academy Award-winning film "The Sting," and it's safe to say that American pool halls wouldn't have been the same without Joplin's catchy compositions.

Joplin died from complications due to terminal syphilis in 1917. He ended up with a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and will no doubt be endlessly commemorated by thousands of middle school piano recitals across the nation.

Freddie Mercury

That the lead singer of Queen died of AIDS is pretty common knowledge. Unfortunately, Mercury himself waited until the day before he died to publicly reveal his infection.

People have posthumously flamed Mercury for not getting the word out sooner, which is pretty legitimate: when you can whip up stadium audiences at a moment's notice, the potential for stirring up activism in equal measure is enormous.

If you asked him about it, "Don't stop me now," Mercury might have replied. "I'm having such a good time."

Jonathan Larson (sort of)

It may surprise some that the composer and writer of "Rent," who died of an aortic aneurism the day before his opus' opening night, didn't actually have AIDS. Ironically, though, unlike Mercury, his artistic presence in the public sphere has become one of the greatest vehicles for HIV/AIDS awareness.

If you're an undergraduate today, your class was likely struck by "Rent"- fever some time in high school. And while it's pretty rough that Larson just missed the staggering success of his own work, he at least gets the honor of having his "one song before the virus takes hold."

Isaac Asimov

Author of the Foundation novels, along with countless other science fiction books and shorts stories, Asimov was one of the "Big Three" writers of science fiction during his life.

He was one of the most prolific writers of all time, writing or editing over 500 books, and was also a victim of AIDS.

Unfortunately, anti-AIDS prejudice in the early 1990s prevented his case from going public until his wife's version of his autobiography was published 10 years later.

Eazy-E

Though this founding member of N.W.A. was widely regarded as a pioneer of gangsta rap, Eazy-E suffered a rather mundane death from AIDS in 1995. At the time, he was careful to insist that he was absolutely straight-not as a cloaked attempt at homophobia, but rather to make a powerful statement: HIV/AIDS can be caught by anyone, regardless of sexual orientation. "I've learned in the last week that this thing is real and it doesn't discriminate," wrote Eazy-E, in his last message to his fans. "It affects everyone."

Contact John Bailey at

John.C.Bailey@UConn.edu.