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Also: Jim Morrison.
Janis was ok I guess, but seems to me (I never saw her) that she doesn't make the list. Morrison...well, he is dead, that's true.
Yeah, sure, Jim Morrison was a prancing drunken fool, but I think that's his picture in Webster's next to the word "rockstar". I don't even have any Doors albums any more, and haven't listened to them since about 1971, but those first two LPs meant all the world to me as a snot-nosed punk teen.
And of course if you don't have the Doors you don't have "Apocalypse Now".
It's hard to express just how new and different (for good or ill) the Doors stuff was when it came out in 1967. But in those days you just dug it all, and you actually looked forward to the next Beatles album, the next Stones. I used to go see the Velvet Underground at the 2nd Fret folk club here in Philly; they'd come down and play from a Wednesday to a Saturday. There'd be about fifty people in the audience. Lou would chat with the customers, take requests.
I remember Janis Joplin's sweat just flying off of her, like a boxer in the ring, she was pure emotion.
Okay, enough nostalgia.
I think all of us have a special place inside us for music that first hit us when we were adolescents, especially if it was new music by people we could actually go out to hear. You might not want to listen to the music any more when you grow up, but the effect it had on you -- back when you were the aforementioned snotnosed punk with dubious taste -- is always alive.
Don't forget Brian Jones, and Joe Strummer, either.
Now there was a goddam rock star.
Strummer - yea, an early death and I loved the man - but he was 50. Loved that last record, especially "Coma Girl."
And what about Bob Marley? Does he qualify as a "rock star"?
And...to risk bringing back the infamous Grateful Dead debate: Pigpen!
But I told her rock lists are a guy thing, and not to get involved...
But I told her rock lists are a guy thing, and not to get involved…
grasshopper and I are going to have to beat you up.
Judo chop! Squared!
Dan, I used to go see the Velvet Underground at the 2nd Fret folk club here in Philly...
Lucky, lucky you. Oh and...
Yeah, sure, Jim Morrison was a prancing drunken fool...
Let's not forget the *gorgeous* part.
How 'bout Harry Chapin and Jim Croce.
They rocked the house each in their own way.
True, these ladies were far from hard rockers and certainly had nothing to do with my budding adolescence. But they did die young, right? And again, I'm too lazy to check but wasn't Minnie Riperton, not too fat and not too thin, shy of forty?
Airplanes too.
All good stuff, but I grew up on a slightly different side of the tracks and the loss of a Californian by the name of Randy Rhoads was a crushing blow to my musical world at the time.
Listen to the outro to "S.A.T.O" from Diary of a Madman and anybody who doesn't hate rock will hear why this guys light went out WAY too early.
You got that, Kathleen.
All these boys over here wallowing in their rock star dreams.
I challenge any of them to a Rock Off!
From this to this.
Bring it on!
Freddie Mercury died at 45. Today is his birthday.
He was one cool cat.
Among those more certainly dead, I'd mention Ronnie Van Zant as one who seemed to have a lot more good music to offer when his band's plane went down.
A couple who died *really* young - so young, it's hard to know what they might have done had they lived - are Ritchie Valens and Bobby Fuller. (The latter is also a contender for Weirdest Rock Death, as well.)
I think Jesse Belvin had a lot more to give, both as a songwriter and a singer, at the time of his too-young death in a car crash.
Of the names mentioned already, Sam Cooke is the loss that hurts the most for me. As a songwriter, singer, and executive (head of SAR Records, where he showed a sharp eye for talent), Cooke's potential was unlimited.
You lose...
I'm talkin' a real Rock Off. Putting a band together to see who can out-rock who!
Again, I say -- Bring. It. On!
“It was ever thus. If you look back to Victorian times  Byron, Shelley those kind of people. . ."
Note to Mr. Aizlewood and the AP: Shelley died in 1822 and Byron in 1824. Victoria's reign began in 1837.
I always thought Nico's bicycle accident was satisfyingly strange end to a strange life, kind of like Roland Barthes dying slowly from injuries caused by a laundry truck.
For the back-up dead guy team I nominate Arelster "Dyke" Christian of Dyke & the Blazers, who recorded my #1 fave R&B song ever, the original "Funky Broadway". I highly recommend their greatest hits collection (there's two of them out there, a big one and a sorta big one) for anybody who loves really really nasty 60s soul. Poor Dyke got shot by some fool when he was only around 28...
TW, RE a Newcritics' Battle of the Bands -- that would be so much fun, I'm not sure I could stand it.
lol.
If you like those clips, run over to http://www.popplusone.com/gilbert.html and order The Shaming of the True.
He would have been a Certifiable Number One Smash.
If you like those sound bytes, run over here and buy The Shaming of the True.
Can I sing in your band?
LOL.
....we'll totally win.
:)
I didn't mean to be chauvinistic. I must have prancing around last night like a drunken fool.
And if I forgave him for his chauvinistic shenanigans, I guess I can forgive you, too.
grasshopper? Do you agree?
Anyway, Manny has made me his main mission most of my life. Wherever that much goodness comes from needs discovery and world-wide proliferation.
About half of your list was cleary not in the prime of their careers, as anyone asked the day before they died would have judged it. At least, Lennon, Presley, Thunders and Moon have to come off the list, on that basis.
While the Who were floundering (albeit with a minor comeback album) at the time of Moon's death, Zep was rolling on (albeit with a minor setback album) at the time of Bonham's death. If we're really talking prime, and not just preferences, he should be the 70's stadium-rock drummer on the list.
Sandy Denny.
I've never gotten tired of listening to the albums she did with Fairport Convention.
Mighty interesting survey, though. Soon, they will prove that rock stars consume an inordinate number of recreational chemicals, and that they get more ass than the toilet seat at Larry Craig's house.
Yeah, one of the nice things about the 60s was that rock hadn't got so damn popular yet. Until around '69 I don't remember many bands playing stadiums unless they were the Beatles. I came from a working-class Philly hood, and it was no big hardship to me to use my teenage after-school supermarket-job money to hear good music at cheap prices in small venues. It is kind of mind-boggling to think we heard people like Hendrix and the Cream and Janis and the Mothers and the Dead in medium-size clubs and college basketball auditoriums for about five bucks a shot.
I based the list of people I wished I could have heard more from who died under 50.