It's terribly sad. It's tempting to say that great artists need that gnawing edge of self-doubt - show me a happy and well-adjusted artist and I'll show you Paul McCartney - but I suspect that's a rationalisation; a happy and well-adjusted Bellamy might have made just the same music, but made it for longer.

In this respect I'm haunted, if that's not too strong a word, by MGM's story upthread:

Jenny told Valerie and me that, a few days before he died, he spent the entire evening playing right back thru all his records, listening carefully and as best he could objectively, and said at the end, "Well, I AM good!. What the hell has gone wrong?!"

That must have been a comfort on one level, but I suspect it also sent PB the bleakest, darkest message imaginable - it wasn't a case of "you're being rejected because you're no good", it was "you're being rejected because you're you".