Two decades after losing her brother, Rain Phoenix is finally able to share his music. She talks about ‘the wild animal’ of grief – and learning to sing with River on the streets of South America
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. This being the Phoenix family, her concept of disappearing didn’t involve just hiding out in her bedroom for the next few years. Instead Rain, then barely in her 20s, went on tour as a backing singer with some of River’s musical friends. These friends happened to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM. The latter were touring their album Monster, which they dedicated to River.
She also, tentatively, began to go through the archive of Aleka’s Attic, her brother’s band, which she had joined at 16. 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. “And that,” she says, “was hugely healing – just spending that time listening to my brother. After I finished, I didn’t feel the need to release the music. It was enough.”