Co-Founder of Sub Pop Records Diagnosed with Parkinson’s
Jonathan Poneman has announced that he has Parkinson’s, the same disease that plagues Michael J. Fox and Muhammed Ali. He spike to the Seattle Times:
A few years ago, though, Poneman, now 53, became almost too mellow. Slow. Sleepy. You wondered if the man with such a celebrated and successful ear for music was even listening.
“At first there was this lumbering slowness,” Poneman said the other day. “But it became even more so, like the Tin Man without any oil.”
Staffers would slip into Sub Pop vice president Megan Jasper’s office and drop their voices: “What’s wrong with JP?”
Then came the day in 2010 when Poneman was having lunch in New York City with an old friend, a radiologist who looked him over and came out with it: “How’s your health?”
Poneman had been having trouble with his right hand. Writing. Holding cutlery. And there was a degeneration of movement on his right side that he was only “fleetingly” aware of.
“I realized then,” Poneman said of that New York moment. “I can’t deny this anymore.”
