The secret live of Sesame Street's Grover is so deadpan and dead-on, I couldn't stop reading it through all six installments.
From 1976 up until 1979, Grovski Carbunkle hardly knew a sober moment. "I have gone over this so many times with my therapist," said Grover in his famous Playboy interview from 1979, only weeks after drying out. "Losing the Muppet Show gig was like some kind of affirmation for me of all of my worst insecurities at once. It was as if the whole world was telling me 'You are not good enough, Grover. You are only a children's show character, Grover. Go back to Queens and die a slow death, Grover."
And to his friends and co-workers on the set of "Sesame Street", it seemed that Grover was dying a slow death, by his own hand. "He'd come in looking like hell," said Ernie in a recent interview. "Sometimes with a drink still in hand or a hooker draped around his neck, snapping at everybody. It would take make-up 2 hours to get him looking halfway decent, during which time he invariably fell asleep." But despite this, Grover's work didn't suffer- intead he worked harder than ever and came up with some of the most brilliant material of his career. This was the time during which "Super Grover" was born. An album was released in 1976 called "Grover Sings the Blues" which was well-received, and another in 1978, "Sesame Street Fever" featured a disco-dancing Grover on the cover and shot to the top of the charts.
(via Fark)
