Los­ing Beck

The untold story of the breakup that fueled one of the musi­cian’s most beloved albums.

It was the sum­mer of 2000, and Leigh Limon was work­ing late on the set of South­lander, an inde­pend­ent movie her boy­friend, the musi­cian Beck Hansen, had a sup­port­ing role in. The film fol­lowed the tri­als of a strug­gling key­board­ist who gets hold of a magical syn­thes­izer, only to lose it and embark on a picar­esque jour­ney to get it back. Beck was play­ing a shabby, mal­nour­ished musi­cian liv­ing in a shack who acts as an emis­sary of a weird celebrity cult. The char­ac­ter was called “Bek”—the name Beck had been given at birth—and would be like a ver­sion of him that had never got­ten fam­ous. 

The film­makers, their friends Ross Har­ris and Steve Hanft, had hired Leigh to do styl­ing for the pic­ture. Beck had been tour­ing, and she hadn’t seen him in weeks. He was com­ing back to Los Angeles that night, fly­ing in from Japan. As she was fin­ish­ing her work, she got a call. “Come home,” Beck said, sound­ing grave. “I want to talk to you.” Anxious, she told Har­ris and Hanft she had to go and headed to the Sil­ver Lake home Beck owned and they lived in together, driv­ing the Volvo Beck let her use. It was dark when she reached the low-slung, wide-set house. 

A group of strangers were wait­ing for her in the liv­ing room. Some of them were in suits; oth­ers were in uni­forms she recog­nized from her lim­ited know­ledge of the Church of Sci­ento­logy: They were from the Sea Org, the church’s elite reli­gious order. 

Beck was there, too. He wasn’t look­ing at her.

One of the strangers, a blonde with an intense face and a dark suit, stepped for­ward. She informed Leigh she was Beck’s legal rep­res­ent­at­ive and would be accom­pa­ny­ing them to the din­ing room for a con­ver­sa­tion. Ter­ri­fied, Leigh fol­lowed them. Beck then turned to face her. He seemed changed. In their nine years together, Leigh had often thought of Beck as a kind of charm­ing insect­oid alien in a human suit learn­ing Earth cus­toms. Now she saw Ana­kin Sky­walker becom­ing Darth Vader.

“How could you?” Beck said flatly. “How could you do all of that?”

She said she didn’t know what he was talk­ing about. He replied that he was done with her. They were over. And he’d bet­ter not see her on the South­lander set.

for the first dec­ade of his career, Beck was a force to be reckoned with in the music industry. He sang songs that didn’t quite make sense in plain Eng­lish but were

some­how urgent and undeni­able to those who listened to them. He went plat­inum mul­tiple times over and sold out arenas around the world. His music was defi­ant and bom­bastic, and crit­ics and fans alike regarded him as a kind of pop mes­siah.

Then, around the turn of the mil­len­nium, something changed. No one—not the press, not his fans, not even his friends—knew what had occurred. But it was clear something had. He des­troyed the pop­u­lar offi­cial mes­sage board where his fans gathered. His inter­views grew vague and com­bat­ive. His old friends didn’t see him any­more, and he abruptly broke up with Leigh. He main­tained a reg­u­lar out­put of music—in Septem­ber, he released his first album in seven years, Ride Lone­some—but it turned inward facing and mor­ose, then repet­it­ive.

Over the past four years, I spoke to dozens of people in Beck and Leigh’s circle in the near dec­ade they were together. (Beck did not respond to requests for com­ment; Leigh declined to be inter­viewed, but I spoke with people close to her think­ing.) The shift in his life and music became most appar­ent, they told me, when Beck released Sea Change, a heart­break­ing and deeply earn­est inner chron­icle of a breakup. Journ­al­ists iden­ti­fied the source of the album as Beck’s fall­ing out with

Leigh, and crit­ics revered the LP as proof Beck had grown up as a song­writer, abandon­ing the old doggerel. For Leigh and oth­ers, the album was the story of how they lost Beck.

she could see him, but he couldn’t see her.

He was a skinny, shabby young man work­ing in the gift shop at the Los Angeles Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art. She was vis­it­ing the museum, one of her reg­u­lar haunts, on an after­noon in 1991. And she couldn’t stop look­ing at him.

He seemed to be about her age—late teens, early 20s—and he looked like shit. She stared in mild amazement. With his unkempt hair and ragamuffin cloth­ing— was that a rope hold­ing up his pants?—he reminded her of Huckle­berry Finn or those cult­ists she used to see around South­ern Cali­for­nia when she was a kid, the Zendik Farm col­lect­ive. They were a hand­ful of fam­il­ies who were try­ing to live for art and nature; they inven­ted their own musical instru­ments, prin­ted their own poetry, and lived in huts made of garbage; even the teen­agers seemed ancient. This guy behind the gift-shop counter had that look.

Leigh had always liked weirdos. In high school, she never went for the macho guys. Her first crush was on the cher­ubic lead child actor in Meat­balls, the one who requires the aid of camp coun­selor Bill Mur­ray to learn self-respect. She looked for the kind of guy whose true worth only she could see. Guys with untapped poten­tial, even a touch of fem­in­in­ity.

A short time after that museum visit, Leigh went to Al’s Bar, a punk club in Down­town L.A. Her style at that time was angu­lar, vin­tage Depres­sion-era pro­fes­sional women’s apparel. On that night, she looked like a Ros­alind Rus­sell char­ac­ter in a ’30s screw­ball com­edy, lost in a sea of mohawks and pier­cings. She saw her friend Ed Smith. They talked for a while. Then Leigh noticed a skinny guy clad in a ratty Daniel John­ston T-shirt, his hair a feral mess. His pants were being held up by a rope. She found him intriguing and went over to intro­duce her­self. He said his name was Beck. He was still a nobody in the music world, an acous­tic folk­ster who played open mics and hopped onstage unan­nounced before other bands did their sets.

The two of them spent the rest of the night pressed together in the crowded bar, shout­ing at each other to be heard over the of drunk youth. Beck and Leigh were brim­ming over with words—not about their own lives but about cul­ture: old movies, avant-garde nov­els, French poetry, abstract paint­ings, and the infin­ite vari­et­ies of music. Later, she would put it together and real­ize he was the weird-look­ing guy from the museum gift shop; she wouldn’t men­tion it to him.

the first time Beck broke up with Leigh came about two months after they star­ted dat­ing in 1991. He called her on the phone.

“I just don’t think you like me,” Beck told her.

He didn’t say what that meant, exactly, but Leigh inferred that he was upset they hadn’t had sex yet.

“No!” Leigh pleaded. “I like you so much!”

Leigh found his frus­tra­tion odd—he’d never pres­sured or bul­lied her for sex. They just hadn’t had it. And now he seemed sad, per­haps even angry about it.

Sex wasn’t that thrill­ing for Leigh. She was young; she’d never felt totally com­fort­able in her body. She’d had sex, but every time it felt like it was hap­pen­ing to someone else. Sex was a sign in a for­eign lan­guage, illegible to her.

Beck hadn’t brought it up, and Leigh had been fine with that. Maybe it was weird, but that was what she liked about Beck: the way he seemed not just out of step but in a syn­co­pated counter-rhythm with every­one around him. There was something about him Leigh felt kin­ship to. She simply wanted to dig through piles of vin­tage cloth­ing, read obscure books, and spend time with her weird boy­friend. But he wanted something more. There was noth­ing she could do to con­vince him. He hung up on her. He had a habit of end­ing dis­agree­ments abruptly like that.

Three weeks went by. At first, Leigh was angry and ashamed. But as time went on, she couldn’t stop think­ing about Beck. She felt a stronger con­nec­tion with him than she’d had with any­one before. She had ima­gined chilling out with him indef­in­itely. She wanted that so badly. She figured she could muster up the gump­tion for some sex. So, per­haps against her bet­ter judg­ment, she called him. He said he was will­ing to give it another shot.

“Let’s go swim­ming,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

“There’s a pool at my mom’s build­ing,” he replied.

An odd pro­posal. But he was an odd guy. They met at the Koreatown duplex where his mother, Bibbe Hansen, and his step­father, Sean Car­rillo, were liv­ing at the time. Beck led Leigh down an end­less hall­way until they reached the unit Bibbe and Car­rillo ren­ted. He had a key, and they let them­selves in. The place was messy and run-down, and there were huge smoke stains on the ceil­ing. On the liv­in­groom table was a giant bowl filled with cigar­ette butts, which Beck said was for an art project. Leigh figured these absent adults knew how to party. She had grown up in the sub­urbs with nature all around her. The scene in the duplex felt like the reason she didn’t much care for city liv­ing.

Once the two had changed into their bathing suits, they went swim­ming in the barely ten­ded pool in the com­plex’s court­yard. It was calm­ing. Soon they were laugh­ing and splash­ing together. Leigh was reminded that she really liked this guy, even if he baffled her. Under­wa­ter, they blinked at each other through the dreamy haze of the chlor­ine, smil­ing.

A few days later, they had sex for the first time at Leigh’s apart­ment. As she’d pre­dicted, she mostly dis­so­ci­ated through the pro­cess. It wasn’t bad, but she felt more like a wit­ness than a par­ti­cipant. Not hav­ing sex had seemed to be a deal-breaker for Beck just weeks before. Leigh was expect­ing him to be more in the moment. But he, too, seemed vacant and dis­so­ci­ated. Their bod­ies were united while their minds wandered away.

Shortly after that, Leigh and Beck went to a hip hangout in Little Tokyo called Troy Café. Beck informed Leigh that Bibbe and Car­rillo owned and ran the place. They’d star­ted it up the pre­vi­ous year. While there, Leigh met Bibbe. She struck Leigh as an unusual char­ac­ter, wear­ing sunglasses indoors tucked under her long auburn hair. They talked a bit. Leigh got the sense that Bibbe was—like Leigh her­self—out of place in Los Angeles. She seemed like a New Yorker, a stranger in a strange land. As Beck and Leigh fell fur­ther in love, Leigh star­ted to see Bibbe more. She never saw Beck’s bio­lo­gical father. Beck hardly ever talked about his child­hood or his feel­ings. Early on in their rela­tion­ship, he men­tioned he had grown up in Sci­ento­logy but was out of the church. She was fine with that. They’d make fun of Sci­ento­logy if it came up in con­ver­sa­tion.

bibbe hansen met Beck’s father, David Camp­bell, at one of her first Dianet­ics meet­ings in Los Angeles. Sev­eral years her senior, Camp­bell was born in Toronto and raised in vari­ous places in the north­ern U.S.; he had con­ver­ted to the Church of Sci­ento­logy in the ’60s and had stud­ied at the Man­hat­tan School of Music before mak­ing his way west. In the fall of 1969, Bibbe became preg­nant with Bek.

Camp­bell was a clas­sic­ally trained viol­ist, and when Bek was a baby, he’d bring his son along when he went busk­sound ing around Los Angeles, jam­ming with a gui­tar-play­ing Sci­ento­lo­gist friend for cash to pay for their church courses. Even­tu­ally, Camp­bell star­ted to find oppor­tun­it­ies in show busi­ness, play­ing viola on Car­ole King’s hit album Tapestry. His suc­cess gave them priv­ileged status within the church. Fam­ous­ness was next to holi­ness. The fam­ily moved to a place in Hol­ly­wood, a block north of Sun­set Boulevard and half a block away from the new Celebrity Centre.

Accord­ing to people who grew close with him later, as well as his own mother, his par­ents rarely ten­ded to him. Camp­bell was away work­ing, and Bibbe was often out social­iz­ing. When Bek was about 5, he vis­ited his paternal grand­par­ents, who lived in the Over­land Park sub­urb of Kan­sas City. His grand­father D. War­ren Camp­bell was a Pres­by­terian min­is­ter. Everything was dif­fer­ent in his grand­par­ents’ house. When he returned to L.A., Bek came to under­stand that his nuc­lear fam­ily was unusual. He was ready to ask his mother some hard ques­tions: “How come you don’t wet down my hair every morn­ing and part it on the side, like Grandma? How come you don’t bake cakes so I can take them to school in my lunch? How come you don’t make me wash my hands all the time, like other moth­ers do?”

As Bibbe would later recall in a let­ter pub­lished in a fan­zine, she sat her son down and delivered a mater­nal mani­festo. “Bek, the reason I don’t do all these things is because I am not like Grandma and I am not like other moth­ers,” she told him. She would never bake cook­ies for him, or cakes, or make sure his hair was par­ted and his hands washed—“it’s not going to hap­pen,” she said. But, she said, it wasn’t such a bad deal: “Because I also will never try to turn you into a robot, make you wear shit you don’t want to, make you do tricks like some kind of per­form­ing dog, or try to cut your dick off every time you turn around.”

Bibbe was never a devout, or even par­tic­u­larly engaged, mem­ber of the Church of Sci­ento­logy. But her mani­festo to Bek could have come dir­ectly from the church’s teach­ings. L. Ron Hub­bard held that all chil­dren are merely “adults in small bod­ies,” accord­ing to many who knew him, and his teach­ings cer­tainly accor­ded with that idea. He both praised and pun­ished chil­dren as though they were grown-ups. They did not deserve spe­cial pro­tec­tion. They were respons­ible for their own safety.

Left to his own devices, Bek figured out how to cook ham­burgers on the stove for him­self and his younger brother, Chan­ning. At some point, to his father’s delight, he asked for his first acous­tic gui­tar. He never asked Camp­bell for help in learn­ing how to play. At a Sci­ento­logy-run school, Beck (his name acquired the C there) learned little about math­em­at­ics or his­tory. Dur­ing those years, he endured things that can harm or warp a child. When he was 15, a Sci­ento­logy “eth­ics officer” dis­covered that a 32-year-old woman, who con­sidered Beck her “soul mate,” was sleep­ing in his bed at night. The rela­tion­ship with the older woman ended after it was dis­covered, but the only per­son pun­ished for it was the eth­ics officer who first repor­ted the situ­ation; he was caught up in accus­a­tions and coun­ter­ac­cus­a­tions for years.

Around that time, with Chan­ning and a few friends—and with Bibbe’s assist­ance— Beck star­ted a mimeo­graphed poetry magazine by and for young people. They called it Youth­less. A French doc­u­ment­arian, dir­ect­ing a movie about the con­tem­por­ary poetry scene in Los Angeles, heard about the magazine and filmed the teens as they craf­ted an issue. The doc­u­ment­ary, Inner­scapes, was released in 1988. “I think kids are basic­ally respons­ible for their own situ­ation,” teen­age Beck mused to the cam­era and the viewer. “I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to express myself. I wasn’t going to sit down. I went and took respons­ib­il­ity for it and went out, and we’re doing this magazine.

“But I think if kids feel they’re being used or abused,” Beck con­tin­ued, “they’re ulti­mately respons­ible for their own con­di­tion.” star­dom arrived to a degree Beck and Leigh never could have anti­cip­ated.

First came the sur­prise suc­cess of his slap­dash rap single “Loser,” released on inde­pend­ent label Bong Load in the spring of 1993. It would become a nation­wide radio and MTV hit. Beck signed with Gef­fen Records and in 1994 released Mel­low Gold (cer­ti­fied plat­inum), which he fol­lowed with the crit­ical and com­mer­cial smash Odelay (cer­ti­fied double plat­inum) in June 1996. He embarked on a massive mul­ticoun­try tour that never seemed to end or run out of explos­ive, genre-defy­ing energy.

By late 1996, there was Beck Hansen and there was “Beck.” Beck, as a concept, was largely built on Hansen’s music and voice: his stringy form and his delib­er­ate mis­dir­ec­tion in inter­views, his altern­at­ing

“I think if kids feel they’re being used or abused,” teen­age Beck mused, “they’re ulti­mately respons­ible for their own con­di­tion.”

Folksy shy­ness and funky bom­bast onstage. But his col­lab­or­at­ors helped turn Beck into a cul­tural product, mak­ing videos, shoot­ing pho­tos, provid­ing musical inspir­a­tion for samples. Beck was an art piece, a Hap­pen­ing, a mobile per­form­ance install­a­tion made by the tire­less work of a small coterie of people, includ­ing Leigh. Leigh had been Beck’s girl­friend for five years by this point, and she was his styl­ist, defin­ing his much-praised look. She combed vin­tage and thrift shops, scour­ing fash­ion his­tory to put together out­fits for Beck that were eclectic yet con­sist­ently cool. It wasn’t an easy tar­get to hit, but Leigh’s sense of style was unerr­ing. Under her cur­a­tion, Beck became a trend­set­ter. And he received her ideas with enthu­si­asm. When Beck pre­pared to put out a single of one of the dream­ier tracks from Odelay, a breezy ode to wan­der­ing called “Jack-ass,” he asked Leigh to design the art­work and she found the per­fect image: an illus­tra­tion of a grin­ning, bray­ing don­key from an old chil­dren’s book. The image would be dis­trib­uted on an offi­cial Beck T-shirt. Whatever Leigh got paid for her work went dir­ectly into Beck’s bank account, which she had per­mis­sion to draw from. She didn’t have her own. But she took a lot of pride in her part of Oper­a­tion: Beck.

Recently, a new mem­ber had joined the cre­at­ive team: Beck’s father, David Camp­bell. Camp­bell hadn’t been very present in Beck’s life since 1988 or so, after Camp­bell had split up with Bibbe and star­ted a new fam­ily. But curi­ously, not long after “Loser” hit big, Camp­bell ree­m­erged in Beck’s life and rees­tab­lished a long-dormant paternal rela­tion­ship. (A rep­res­ent­at­ive for Camp­bell did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

The “Jack-ass” single fea­tured a new track called “Strange Invit­a­tion.” It was a rerecord­ing of “Jack-ass” with a stu­dio orches­tra gently play­ing behind Beck’s voice. The orches­tral part was writ­ten and con­duc­ted by Camp­bell. It was his first offi­cial col­lab­or­a­tion with his son, and it would be far from the last. Still, Beck didn’t seem to want to talk, in private or in the media, about hav­ing grown up as the child of a suc­cess­ful music-industry hust­ler— much less one who was so proudly and pub­licly involved with a con­tro­ver­sial reli­gious move­ment. He never men­tioned his dad to inter­view­ers, not even now that Camp­bell was back in his life. And he never breathed a word about Sci­ento­logy to journ­al­ists. (He pub­licly acknow­ledged his rela­tion­ship to the church for the first time in 2005.)

Some­times, Leigh thought Beck should be more forth­com­ing. To her, there was noth­ing about the real Beck that seemed neces­sary to hide. But it wasn’t worth arguing with him—it only made him shut down. He’d stop talk­ing, revert to a blank stare. If they were out in pub­lic when such a dis­agree­ment came up, Beck might walk away, leav­ing Leigh alone wherever she was, even in a for­eign city. That was just how he was. Leigh was used to it by now—his weird moments of dis­tance, the unex­pec­ted silences she’d run up against once in a while.

As far as Leigh was con­cerned, the major prob­lem in their rela­tion­ship wasn’t Beck’s father. It was Beck’s bassist.

Beck had needed a new bass player, so he’d men­tioned it to his father. Camp­bell happened to know just the guy: 26-yearold Justin Meldal-johnsen. Born into the Church of Sci­ento­logy and employed by Camp­bell as a stu­dio gofer for years, Meldal-johnsen was look­ing for a gig. Surely Beck remembered him; they’d met when they were both teen­agers in the church and Meldal-johnsen had star­ted work­ing for Camp­bell. Why not give him a try?

Per­haps it was coin­cid­ence that Camp­bell sug­ges­ted the bassist; per­haps it was part of a broader charm offens­ive from the church. Either way, Beck hired Meldal-johnsen. And Leigh couldn’t stand him. He pro­jec­ted a wild and goofy image, per­form­ing out­land­ish dance moves and occa­sion­ally grop­ing Beck onstage for com­ical effect. Des­pite these antics, he had an oddly quelling effect on fun behind the scenes. As a Sci­ento­lo­gist, Meldal-johnsen didn’t smoke weed, which was fine—beck didn’t smoke either. Pretty soon, though, no one else in the band could toke up with Meldal­johnsen around unless they wanted to be lec­tured about drug abuse. And he was always around. Even­tu­ally, marijuana was banned from the tour bus alto­gether.

Meldal-johnsen wasn’t just friendly with Beck. He seemed devoted to him in a way Leigh didn’t like; it seemed inap­pro­pri­ately intim­ate, even pro­pri­et­ary. Leigh sus­pec­ted he was there as an agent of the church, angling to get her boy­friend to drop in for a Dianet­ics sem­inar or an audit­ing ses­sion, just for old times’ sake.

All this had an effect. Beck was intrigued enough that he asked Leigh to join him for a so-called Puri­fic­a­tion Run­down—a Sci­ento­logy prac­tice in which you go into an incred­ibly hot room, take niacin pills, and attempt to “sweat out” your “tox­ins.”

Leigh thought it soun­ded like a Nat­ive Amer­ican sweat lodge. She had Latino roots on one side of her fam­ily, and she liked to think one of her ancest­ors might have done something sim­ilar. She went to the “Purif,” as it was known, and had a great time. As they were fin­ish­ing up, one of the Sci­ento­lo­gists admin­is­ter­ing it asked if Beck and Leigh would like to sit for an audit­ing ses­sion. They politely declined.

Leigh star­ted wor­ry­ing when the phone star­ted ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She’d pick it up and there would be noth­ing. Just silence. Some­times, she could hear someone breath­ing. She star­ted to sus­pect there were Sci­ento­lo­gists on the other end of the line.

It was 1998, about two years into Beck’s col­lab­or­a­tion with his father. Beck agreed the calls were prob­ably the church, and he told Leigh to just ignore them. They began screen­ing their phone calls, wait­ing for the machine to pick up. Often the per­son call­ing let the tape run out, never say­ing a word.

To make mat­ters worse, Leigh’s home had been invaded by musi­cians. Tech­nic­ally, it wasn’t actu­ally hers, inso­far as Beck’s was the name on the deed. He was also, tech­nic­ally, her primary employer— most of her styl­ing work was for his videos and photo shoots. Per­haps she shouldn’t have become that fin­an­cially depend­ent on her boy­friend, but it had never seemed like a prob­lem. Until now.

She found her­self mar­gin­al­ized in the house whenever Meldal-johnsen, Camp­bell, and the oth­ers were over for their 16-plus-hour work­days. Beck was really throw­ing him­self into this new record. He was done with being shaggy—this would be an album of pre­ci­sion.

It was Novem­ber 1998, and he’d just released his stripped-down, folkie Muta­tions to rave reviews, but he was already telling report­ers it was a “par­en­thet­ical work,” not the “true” fol­low-up to Odelay. Since the sum­mer, ses­sions had been ongo­ing for that next album, which Beck was going to call either Mid­nite Vul­tures

or I Can Smell the VD in the Club Tonight. “VD,” in that con­text, stood for “vener­eal dis­ease.”

The songs were a dan­ger­ous dance with gender, sexu­al­ity, and race. The brash and brassy “Sexx Laws” had a chorus in which Beck said he was “a full-grown man” but “not afraid to cry,” a line that evoked soul records of the ’60s—but that also felt delight­fully out of place in the world of late’90s rap-rock hard­ness. “Hol­ly­wood Freaks” was a ram­bling, sur­real rap about life in L.A. fea­tur­ing strange, sexu­al­ized non sequit­urs like “Nor­man Schwar­zkopf!/something tells me you wanna go home!” On many of the songs, Beck broke into a fal­setto that was a dir­ect homage to Prince. In par­tic­u­lar, Beck tinkered with a Prince-ish ode in par­tial trib­ute to Leigh. It was an R&B slow jam about the nar­rator seek­ing the sexual com­pany of a mall employee named Jenny—and her sis­ter, Debra. Most of it is pure L.A. satire and fantasy (“Like a fruit that’s ripe for the pickin’/i wouldn’t do you like that Zankou Chicken”—a local chain), but the nar­rator men­tions tak­ing his date to Glend­ale for a “real good meal.” Leigh used to work at the mall there. The song was not yet released, but it had become a live staple.

Leigh felt weird about the whole thing, espe­cially the track called “Debra.” He hadn’t even acknow­ledged that the song was about her. Leigh feared the tracks might be too arch, too pre­ten­tious, too insin­cere. They soun­ded like cocaine music, and Beck didn’t even do drugs. The res­ult was a record that was fero­ciously sexual, hid­den behind a thick plexi­glass wall of ironic remove. She heard her boy­friend sing “Sexx Laws” through their semi­sound­proofed walls. She could make out the refrain and thought about whether she’d ever seen her full-grown man cry. She couldn’t think of a single time. He was singing about pas­sion, but they hardly touched each other any­more.

Leigh sus­pec­ted that grow­ing up in Sci­ento­logy had been trau­matic for Beck. Still, she had no idea what, spe­cific­ally, might have happened to him. He said so little about his upbring­ing. Leigh liked Camp­bell, but she remained deeply sus­pi­cious of the other church mem­bers. When Leigh con­fron­ted Beck about all the Sci­ento­lo­gists who were now in their lives, he said he had no plans to rejoin the church. She didn’t feel reas­sured by how he said it.

“Leigh,” he said, “Sci­ento­logy doesn’t make you a bet­ter or worse per­son. It just makes you more of who you are.”

as the sum­mer of 1999 waned, Leigh came to Beck with a pro­posal—she wanted to go on a camp­ing trip. She’d never really been a city girl, and she missed nature. She begged Beck to take a break from his music and com­mune with her in the woods some­where. She wanted to hit the reset but­ton.

Beck agreed. Then, mere days before they were set to go, he got a phone call at their house. Leigh could hear him talk­ing excitedly. He hung up and ran to tell her he’d just got­ten an incred­ible oppor­tun­ity: David Bowie wanted him to remix a new song called “Seven.” Indeed, Bowie wanted Beck to come up with two remixes, each in a dif­fer­ent style. He said he had to can­cel the camp­ing trip.

It was at that moment Leigh decided it was over between her and Beck. Only she didn’t tell him. She was non­con­front­a­tional, per­haps to a fault. She felt too chicken to out­right dump him. More import­ant, he was still the source of her paychecks and hous­ing. When he pri­or­it­ized Bowie over her, her last embers of pas­sion fizzled out. Beck was hardly spend­ing time with Leigh any­more, and he had never been the most emo­tion­ally intel­li­gent guy. So if he noticed his girl­friend’s apathy, he didn’t let on. He just went back to the stu­dio and then to his never-end­ing world tour.

Mid­nite Vul­tures was released in Novem­ber 1999. Gef­fen Records pushed the album as best it could and had high hopes for another Odelay, but sales paled in com­par­ison to that album’s. Crit­ical response was mixed with even the pos­it­ive write-ups cri­ti­ciz­ing Beck for giv­ing in to his most emo­tion­ally empty impulses.

“Mid­nite Vul­tures is filled with won­der­ful little quirks,” the web­site All­music wrote. “What pre­vents the album from being an unqual­i­fied suc­cess is the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that for all the ingenu­ity, it’s all a hip­ster joke.” Or, as Q magazine put it, “As music­ally dazzling as Mid­nite Vul­tures often is, the one cri­ti­cism that can be still leveled at Beck is that his songs remain strangely soul­less … fail­ing to ever really grip the emo­tions or stir the soul.”

The recep­tion of Mid­nite Vul­tures was, in its way, a death knell for the eclectic era of ’90s “altern­at­ive music.” Major labels would rarely take chances on albums as weird as that one again. by the spring of 2000, Beck and Leigh had settled into a depress­ing dynamic: she the ignored, unmar­ried house­wife; he the jet-set­ting, increas­ingly exhausted rock star. It didn’t seem to Leigh like any­thing would change any­time soon. Beck was as com­mit­ted to the rela­tion­ship as he’d always been: mono­gam­ous but dis­tant.

In the middle of May, Beck once again kissed Leigh good-bye and embarked on some tour dates, these ones in Japan. He had nine shows booked there, a coun­try where he’d developed a siz­able fan base.

The Beck who left for Japan was not the Beck who came back. The pre­cise details of what happened there are obscure, and rep­res­ent­at­ives for Beck did not respond to my requests for com­ment. What seems likely, based on inter­views with those close to him—and given what tran­spired next— is that someone from or work­ing for the church con­tac­ted Beck while he was there and presen­ted him with inform­a­tion, much of it untrue. And it was all about Leigh.

Leigh, Beck was told, was a drug addict who had been cheat­ing on him behind his back. He was presen­ted with a real email she had writ­ten to a friend—ed Smith— com­plain­ing about Beck’s fail­ings as a boy­friend. Other mater­i­als also may have been presen­ted to him. Only Beck can say for cer­tain.

What is clear is that Leigh saw none of this com­ing when she came home to meet Beck on that night in the late spring of 2000, when he got back from Japan. After hear­ing Beck’s tone, Leigh dis­so­ci­ated for long minutes while her boy­friend delivered a furi­ous soli­lo­quy about her alleged sexual prof­ligacy and rampant drug abuse and how it had been ruin­ing his life. When Beck fin­ished, his law­yer asked Leigh to fol­low her to the table to sign some paper­work. Before Leigh could respond, the law­yer informed her that she wouldn’t receive any of her pos­ses­sions in the house unless she signed the papers.

Beck left the room. Leigh sat down and signed what was put in front of her without read­ing any of it. The law­yer col­lec­ted the papers and said Leigh was to leave the premises.

“What about my stuff?” Leigh asked. “We’ll con­tact you,” the law­yer replied. Leigh was shuffled out of the house. Beck didn’t reappear to say good-bye. The door shut firmly behind her.

She stood alone on the lawn. Without Beck, she was not just single—she had no job, no bank account, no house. God, Leigh thought sud­denly, where will I even sleep tonight? Beck did not respond to requests for com­ment on the breakup.

that night, Leigh wandered to the some­what nearby home of a couple she and Beck had been friends with. They took her in. She slept on their couch. Days went by without a word from any­one about her belong­ings. She wasn’t about to try to call Beck. One even­ing, she went back to the house. She figured she could sneak in through the first-floor bed­room win­dow in the early even­ing, when Beck was likely to be out; grab some of her things; and go. She arrived and crept up to the win­dow.

When Leigh looked in, she was shocked to find that the bed was occu­pied. By Bibbe.

Before Leigh could pro­cess the visual inform­a­tion—her ex’s mom sleep­ing in her bed—Bibbe noticed her. They locked eyes. Bibbe said, Leigh star­ted wor­ry­ing when the phone star­ted ringing. And ringing. She sus­pec­ted there were Sci­ento­lo­gists on the other end of the line.