There are a couple of things swirling around my head tonight. First, at the age of 58 (which is how old I am), you seem to be on an eternal death watch. Someone who helped define your youth seems to die every day.
And second, one of the best things about being a kid is that you think everything is real. You may find out different when you get older, and mature enough to absorb it, but unless someone punches a hole in your innocence when you're 11 or 12, you're spared the disillusionment of knowing what's really going on.
These two cultures clashed today when news came of the sudden death of Davy Jones, erstwhile singer/maracas player in The Monkees.
Here's the deal with the Monkees. It took two years from the time the Beatles and the rest of the Brits invaded America in 1964 for Hollywood to recreate them for a weekly sitcom. And by the time that happened, and the Monkees debuted, the actual Fabs themselves had gone well beyond being cute teen idols. John Lennon had already waxed philosophical about Jesus Christ and the apostles, and Revolver was in record stores and on turntables everywhere, with the weird sounds of "She Said, She Said," and "Tomorrow Never Knows" proving that these weren't your lovable moptops anymore.
So that's the first thing you have to know about the phenomenon that was The Monkees. They were, in 1966, what the Beatles had been two years prior. They also helped escort Gilligan's Island off the air, but that's another story for another day. I'd have preferred looking at Maryann over Davy Jones any day. But, alas, that wasn't my call.
The Monkees were sure a lot of fun. And when you've just turned 13, and you're about as unsophisticated and unknowledgable as you can be, all you see are four guys playing instruments and singing. You don't stop to ask yourself how, for example, there can be only one guitarist (Mike Nesmith) and such rich, layered sounds coming back at you from some of those impeccably produced songs. You think it's all on the level.
So it was, therefore, a shock to me when, over the summer of 1967, word got out that "the Monkees don't play their own instruments." It was like, "No. Of course they do. I see them on TV every week ..."
Now, it's 2012, and I've obviously done a lot of reading up on rock as it grew in the 1960s. And believe me, finding out the Monkees didn't play their own instruments pales in comparison to knowing, for example, that neither did the Beach Boys. With the exception of Carl Wilson (who did play some lead), the rest of the group didn't play a note on the recorded version of "Pet Sounds." All of that instrumental backing was done by a group of session musicians known as "The Wrecking Crew."
So let's get that elephant in the living room out of the equation now. The Monkees did not play their own instruments. The Monkees were, in fact, formed by Don Kirschner (among others) with an eye on acting ability first, and musicianship second. Two of the four were professional actors (Jones and Mickey Dolenz). The other two were musicians first (Nesmith and Peter Tork).
Peter Tork's best friend from his Laurel Canyon days was Stephen Stills, who'd auditioned for the gig, but whose less-than-perfect teeth disqualified him from consideration. Stills then went to Peter Tork and urged him to try out. Tork, obviously, got the gig.
There was nothing startlingly original about the shows. They were all pretty much based on the madcap exploits of the Beatles, as chronicled in both "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help." There was a plot that served more as a bridge connecting the songs that were featured than anything else.
It didn't go over well with the serious rock press, which, in 1966, was beginning to emerge (we're talking about something beyond "16 Magazine" and "Tiger Beat" here), and the Monkees were coined "The Prefab Four."
If there's something the producers and managers of the Monkees did right, however, it was connect them with some of the era's best songwriters. Neil Sedaka, Carole King and Neil Diamond penned some of their best songs (Diamond wrote maybe their most enduring hit, "I'm a Believer," while King, along with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday."
However, their most frequent collaborators were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote countless feel-good songs that helped put the group squarely in the middle of the ever-changing rock 'n' roll picture of the mid-1960s. Among them were "Last Train to Clarksville," "Stepping Stone" and the theme song, "Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees."
Despite my serious disillusionment over how "fake" they were, I have to say that the Monkees were an incredible amount of fun. They did, for a couple of years at least, harken back to the days when the Beatles were the lovable moptops as opposed to emerging "spokesmen for a generation." I've always believed that by the second half of 1966, pop music, which prior to that had seemed to be heading in the same direction, became fragmented to the point where there was no identifiable person, or group, that specialized in playing the type of accessible music that just made you feel good.
This isn't to say there wasn't great music produced at that time. I mean, come on. Some of the best music of the entire rock era was produced in 1966, including both Rubber Soul and Revolver; Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations," "Paint it Black," and so many others. But you had to be a little bit sophisticated to appreciate it, whereas 11-year-olds whose suns had risen and set on "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," didn't have that anymore.
The Monkees, regardless of their origins and authenticity, provided that. And for that alone, they have a place in the Pantheon of music history.
But curiously enough, a funny thing began to happen to them, too. They decided they didn't particularly like being the "Prefab Four." Peter Tork was a serious musician, and he wasn't at all thrilled at being perceived as a phony. Neither was Mike Nesmith, who -- out of all of them -- was probably the most unhappy about the situation.
They, too, began to change. They went through a period where their songs started to sound more like social commentaries and less like the innocent pop songs they'd started out recording. If you want to know what I'm talking about, listen to "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones," which -- regardless of who recorded it -- is one damn fine album. A lot of those songs showed a maturity that belied their reputation as the "Prefab Four."
Davy Jones was picked for the show because he was British (not very hard to figure out) and because he had an extensive resume as a stage performer (he was The Artful Dodger in a London production of "Oliver."). He knew his way around the stage, and those talents came in handy for the weekly filming of the Monkees.
He won his role as the bonafide teen idol of the group rather by default. There was very little warm and fuzzy about either Nesmith or Tork (at least it didn't project that way from the TV screen) and Dolenz was too much of a gawky clown to be anyone's love interest, de facto or otherwise.
That left Davy Jones. And being the actor he was, he played the part very well. So, the producers would put Davy in the role of being almost the damsel in distress a lot of the time (well, as much of a damsel as anyone who's not a woman can be). He also got to sing all the slow ballads (I remember the show where he sang "I Wanna Be Free").
If you were at all cynical (and were the sixties not a very cynical era), it came across, I suppose, as cloying. You could almost hear the gears from the machinery that set all this in motion as they clanged and rattled. That's how cloying it could be.
What saved them, of course, is that it was all fun. And despite the many ways, and times, they could have taken themselves seriously, they really didn't. They, themselves, were under no illusion that they were anything but what they were. They rode the wave for as long as they could, and when one of the other of them got tired of it, they stopped (both Tork and Nesmith left the band for spells while the show was still in production).
In recent years, they became just one more nostalgia act .. .either with Jones and Dolenz, or -- once in a while -- with Tork. Nesmith, except for brief forays, did not take part.
They have a place. Whether they were fake, whether every session musician in the canyon played on those records, whether they were thrown together as part of a TV show and were not a real band, they connected. For a couple of years, they made life fun. And after all, isn't what entertainment's about? To make life fun?
Somewhere in this great land, Marcia Brady is in mourning. So are a lot of other middle-aged women and grandmothers ... and even a few crusty, cynical curmudgeons who can't let go of the fact that so much about the Monkees wasn't what it seemed.
Whenever anyone who played such a vital role in making your youth memorable dies, whether it's suddenly or after an illness, it is cause for great reflection. And when it happens, we don't differentiate between the great (the likes of John Lennon, George Harrison and Roy Orbison) and the ordinary (which is where I'd put Davy Jones and the Monkees).
But it doesn't matter either. Regardless of how great, or not great, they might have been, they made a contribution and need to be properly remembered and appreciated for it.
It's certainly a poorer world without Davy Jones. It seems as if the death of any baby boomer icon forces that generation closer to coming to terms with realities that it's spent much of its time trying to avoid ... that we all get older, we all suffer the indignities of aging whether we even want to admit that we've aged, and someday, we're all going to die.
Wednesday it was Davy Jones' turn. May he rest in peace.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wherever you are, George, happy birthday!
A friend wrote the following on Facebook recently: "It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."
That passage has a great deal of meaning to me for a variety of reasons. It is, of course, important in any group endeavor that people understand that they often belong to something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It's also true in relationships. If the dynamics of a relationship change too radically -- one way or the other -- it can often require a lot of work to absorb those changes without causing, as Obi Wan Kanobi might say, major disturbances in The Force.
So what does any of this have to do with music? I'll tell you. Today, George Harrison, had cancer not claimed him, would have been 69 years old. George was always the most intriguing of the four Beatles to me. He wasn't the face (that was Paul), or the brains (John), or the spirit (Ringo) maybe, but he was -- I think -- the soul of the group. And more important (to me, at least), he, of the four, was the most visible barometer of the band's journey through its different phases, and the ultimate changes in the group dynamics that led to its dissolution.
I saw that passage on Facebook and I didn't immediately think of George Harrison. I thought of the many friendships I've been in, and how easily things have changed in them when the dynamic got thrown off kilter by even the smallest of wrinkles. And it made me realize that in the end, whether we want to be or not, we are often what people perceive us to be. And when that perception changes, so, often, do the dynamic of the relationship.
Some friendships survive these changes ... others don't. And it's often up to the people involved to determine whether these friendships are important enough to evolve, or whether they're merely transitory events (sort like the reason/season/lifetime gauge).
There's a lot of different ways to go on dissecting "The Quiet Beatle." But what comes to mind today is how he grew both as a person and a songwriter, during the comparatively brief period the Beatles were together, and how that growth mirrored the changes that brought about the end of the group.
To understand this, you must know about the group's early days, where George was basically John Lennon and Paul McCartney's de facto little brother. That was his role. He was the tag-along, invited by Paul to audition for John. Legend has it he played one of the popular guitar instrumentals of the day (Raunchy) and that Lennon, suitably impressed, let him in.
He was in, but he was by no means an equal partner. He was sort of like the junior executive who got locked out of all the important meetings. And there was, at the time, nothing all that remarkable about him, other than that he could play guitar. Most people in the late fifties and early sixties just remember him as this nice, quiet kid whose parents tolerated rock 'n' roll, and who let John, Paul and whomever else practice at their house.
But that was the dynamic. Even after George started writing his own songs (he said he wrote "Don't Bother Me" because he was convinced that if John could write one, he could too) he was never to be confused with the real creative element of the band.
But something changed all that. And it began with George.
The point here is to keep with the first paragraph. Nobody (least of all me) is suggesting that George's forays into eastern mysticism or his increased yearning to be seen as an equal, as opposed to an adjunct, are necessarily bad. In the beginning, these yearnings gave the Beatles another dimension and truly set them apart from whatever else was happening at the time.
But, as the saying goes, the song remains the same. As the sixties progressed, it became impossible -- for this fan, anyway -- to view George Harrison as the guy in the middle. He quickly emerged as an individual, and perhaps that's because he was so far behind the other three in that regard through the early years.
Don't forget. When the Beatles came to America and performed on Ed Sullivan for the first time, George Harrison was two weeks short of his 21st birthday. Lennon was 23 and McCartney was 21. They had all this power, and all this fame, and they were kids.
Regardless of what or who they were behind closed doors, the Beatles quickly established public images that put Harrison squarely in the background. If you've ever watched a football game, you'll notice the backup quarterback stands on the sidelines in a baseball cap. That was George Harrison -- at least in the beginning.
He'd get a brief guitar solo in the middle of a song, he got to sing one per album, and if he was really good, Lennon and McCartney would let him record one of his own.
The problem was that as Harrison progressed through his 20s, and the Beatles careened through the sixties, George grew up. In the dynamic of the group, that probably wasn't supposed to happen. There wasn't enough room for three equals. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing Ringo was such an easy-going, simple, uncomplicated person or maybe the Beatles might have crashed and burned even sooner.
So there was George, as early as, perhaps, 1966 (Listen to "Think For Yourself" off Rubber Soul ... it's a fairly significant song), already growing beyond the parameters of the very narrow dynamic. He found the sitar, and Indian music, while the group filmed "Help" in 1965. You can see that from almost the very beginning, George was the Beatle least satisfied with the status quo.
And really, who would be satisfied at being cast as the tag-along all his life?
Nobody's suggesting that George Harrison single-handedly broke up the Beatles. Yoko Ono is generally given credit for that. And why? Because she also altered a very basic dynamic that held the group -- as tenuous as that hold was by 1968 -- together.
In fact, Yoko's alleged role in bringing the group down is so ingrained in our consciousness by now that whenever a strong female figure enters a famous man's life, she's referred to as a "Yoko Ono."
Mia Hamm, when she married Nomar Garciaparra of the Red Sox, was referred to by my sister as "Yoko Hamm." And these days, Giselle Bundchen gets the nod for the way she supposedly has neutered Tom Brady (though I don't see this one personally; Brady's doing just fine as far as I can see).
But the seeds that broke up the Beatles were planted well before John Lennon met Yoko Ono. She may have helped move the process along, but it was well under way.
As he got more prolific with his songwriting, George chafed being held back by the other two. If you watched the two-part HBO documentary on him, you'll know that he asked Eric Clapton to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" because he was upset that the other Beatles were treating the song too cavalierly.
George Harrison didn't break up the Beatles. But he began the long process of altering the experiment, as it were, and he did that simply by suggesting that he be treated as an equal within the group. Not a lot to ask.
It's been 10 years since he died. And while Paul McCartney has been knighted, and John Lennon has been practically canonized for being the spokesman of a generation (and I don't say that critically) I believe George Harrison emerged from the Beatles with a truer sense of himself than any of the other three. His wasn't a stress-free life by any means, and he could be, at times, quite the contrarian. But it seems, from hearing and reading about his post-Beatles days, that he stayed connected with his world, and the world around him, better than the others did.
Perhaps George said it best in the best song I think he's ever written, "All Things Must Pass."
"All things must pass/None of life's strings can last/So, I must be on my way/And face another day."
I always thought that at least part of that song was about the Beatles, and how they were wonderful for as long as they lasted ... but that they were also never meant to last forever.
And as an aside, that song was rejected by the group for the "Get Back" sessions that later became the "Let It Be" soundtrack album.
Now, some fans might object to this thesis, and it is -- of course -- their right to do that. But I think George Harrison was right. The Beatles came along at precisely the right time in U.S. history -- three months after the Kennedy assassination, when the country desperately needed something to smile about.
"Daylight is good at arriving at the right time/Its not always going to be this grey."
But they weren't the Rolling Stones nor were they U2. They were a supernova, with a unique and very, very fragile dynamic that was bound to change once the four members grew out of post-adolescence and started becoming men. It's just that the first one of the four to really do that was George Harrison, and, in so doing, made it possible for the rest of them -- particularly John Lennon -- to follow suit.
And that's why I think he was the soul of the group. He may have started the journey as the tag-along. But in many ways, he ended up being the leader in their emergence as mature men.
As I said, he was always the most intriguing of the four.
"It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."
George was the first one to change his role. For a long time afterward, the Beatles continually tried to change the performance until, finally, the performance was permanently canceled.
As a fan, I miss what he could have contributed to this world had cancer not claimed him 10 years ago.
So, wherever you are, George, happy birthday.
That passage has a great deal of meaning to me for a variety of reasons. It is, of course, important in any group endeavor that people understand that they often belong to something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It's also true in relationships. If the dynamics of a relationship change too radically -- one way or the other -- it can often require a lot of work to absorb those changes without causing, as Obi Wan Kanobi might say, major disturbances in The Force.
So what does any of this have to do with music? I'll tell you. Today, George Harrison, had cancer not claimed him, would have been 69 years old. George was always the most intriguing of the four Beatles to me. He wasn't the face (that was Paul), or the brains (John), or the spirit (Ringo) maybe, but he was -- I think -- the soul of the group. And more important (to me, at least), he, of the four, was the most visible barometer of the band's journey through its different phases, and the ultimate changes in the group dynamics that led to its dissolution.
I saw that passage on Facebook and I didn't immediately think of George Harrison. I thought of the many friendships I've been in, and how easily things have changed in them when the dynamic got thrown off kilter by even the smallest of wrinkles. And it made me realize that in the end, whether we want to be or not, we are often what people perceive us to be. And when that perception changes, so, often, do the dynamic of the relationship.
Some friendships survive these changes ... others don't. And it's often up to the people involved to determine whether these friendships are important enough to evolve, or whether they're merely transitory events (sort like the reason/season/lifetime gauge).
There's a lot of different ways to go on dissecting "The Quiet Beatle." But what comes to mind today is how he grew both as a person and a songwriter, during the comparatively brief period the Beatles were together, and how that growth mirrored the changes that brought about the end of the group.
To understand this, you must know about the group's early days, where George was basically John Lennon and Paul McCartney's de facto little brother. That was his role. He was the tag-along, invited by Paul to audition for John. Legend has it he played one of the popular guitar instrumentals of the day (Raunchy) and that Lennon, suitably impressed, let him in.
He was in, but he was by no means an equal partner. He was sort of like the junior executive who got locked out of all the important meetings. And there was, at the time, nothing all that remarkable about him, other than that he could play guitar. Most people in the late fifties and early sixties just remember him as this nice, quiet kid whose parents tolerated rock 'n' roll, and who let John, Paul and whomever else practice at their house.
But that was the dynamic. Even after George started writing his own songs (he said he wrote "Don't Bother Me" because he was convinced that if John could write one, he could too) he was never to be confused with the real creative element of the band.
But something changed all that. And it began with George.
The point here is to keep with the first paragraph. Nobody (least of all me) is suggesting that George's forays into eastern mysticism or his increased yearning to be seen as an equal, as opposed to an adjunct, are necessarily bad. In the beginning, these yearnings gave the Beatles another dimension and truly set them apart from whatever else was happening at the time.
But, as the saying goes, the song remains the same. As the sixties progressed, it became impossible -- for this fan, anyway -- to view George Harrison as the guy in the middle. He quickly emerged as an individual, and perhaps that's because he was so far behind the other three in that regard through the early years.
Don't forget. When the Beatles came to America and performed on Ed Sullivan for the first time, George Harrison was two weeks short of his 21st birthday. Lennon was 23 and McCartney was 21. They had all this power, and all this fame, and they were kids.
Regardless of what or who they were behind closed doors, the Beatles quickly established public images that put Harrison squarely in the background. If you've ever watched a football game, you'll notice the backup quarterback stands on the sidelines in a baseball cap. That was George Harrison -- at least in the beginning.
He'd get a brief guitar solo in the middle of a song, he got to sing one per album, and if he was really good, Lennon and McCartney would let him record one of his own.
The problem was that as Harrison progressed through his 20s, and the Beatles careened through the sixties, George grew up. In the dynamic of the group, that probably wasn't supposed to happen. There wasn't enough room for three equals. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing Ringo was such an easy-going, simple, uncomplicated person or maybe the Beatles might have crashed and burned even sooner.
So there was George, as early as, perhaps, 1966 (Listen to "Think For Yourself" off Rubber Soul ... it's a fairly significant song), already growing beyond the parameters of the very narrow dynamic. He found the sitar, and Indian music, while the group filmed "Help" in 1965. You can see that from almost the very beginning, George was the Beatle least satisfied with the status quo.
And really, who would be satisfied at being cast as the tag-along all his life?
Nobody's suggesting that George Harrison single-handedly broke up the Beatles. Yoko Ono is generally given credit for that. And why? Because she also altered a very basic dynamic that held the group -- as tenuous as that hold was by 1968 -- together.
In fact, Yoko's alleged role in bringing the group down is so ingrained in our consciousness by now that whenever a strong female figure enters a famous man's life, she's referred to as a "Yoko Ono."
Mia Hamm, when she married Nomar Garciaparra of the Red Sox, was referred to by my sister as "Yoko Hamm." And these days, Giselle Bundchen gets the nod for the way she supposedly has neutered Tom Brady (though I don't see this one personally; Brady's doing just fine as far as I can see).
But the seeds that broke up the Beatles were planted well before John Lennon met Yoko Ono. She may have helped move the process along, but it was well under way.
As he got more prolific with his songwriting, George chafed being held back by the other two. If you watched the two-part HBO documentary on him, you'll know that he asked Eric Clapton to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" because he was upset that the other Beatles were treating the song too cavalierly.
George Harrison didn't break up the Beatles. But he began the long process of altering the experiment, as it were, and he did that simply by suggesting that he be treated as an equal within the group. Not a lot to ask.
It's been 10 years since he died. And while Paul McCartney has been knighted, and John Lennon has been practically canonized for being the spokesman of a generation (and I don't say that critically) I believe George Harrison emerged from the Beatles with a truer sense of himself than any of the other three. His wasn't a stress-free life by any means, and he could be, at times, quite the contrarian. But it seems, from hearing and reading about his post-Beatles days, that he stayed connected with his world, and the world around him, better than the others did.
Perhaps George said it best in the best song I think he's ever written, "All Things Must Pass."
"All things must pass/None of life's strings can last/So, I must be on my way/And face another day."
I always thought that at least part of that song was about the Beatles, and how they were wonderful for as long as they lasted ... but that they were also never meant to last forever.
And as an aside, that song was rejected by the group for the "Get Back" sessions that later became the "Let It Be" soundtrack album.
Now, some fans might object to this thesis, and it is -- of course -- their right to do that. But I think George Harrison was right. The Beatles came along at precisely the right time in U.S. history -- three months after the Kennedy assassination, when the country desperately needed something to smile about.
"Daylight is good at arriving at the right time/Its not always going to be this grey."
But they weren't the Rolling Stones nor were they U2. They were a supernova, with a unique and very, very fragile dynamic that was bound to change once the four members grew out of post-adolescence and started becoming men. It's just that the first one of the four to really do that was George Harrison, and, in so doing, made it possible for the rest of them -- particularly John Lennon -- to follow suit.
And that's why I think he was the soul of the group. He may have started the journey as the tag-along. But in many ways, he ended up being the leader in their emergence as mature men.
As I said, he was always the most intriguing of the four.
"It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."
George was the first one to change his role. For a long time afterward, the Beatles continually tried to change the performance until, finally, the performance was permanently canceled.
As a fan, I miss what he could have contributed to this world had cancer not claimed him 10 years ago.
So, wherever you are, George, happy birthday.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Amy ... Whitney ... sadly the list goes on
I was a senior in high school, meeting a bunch of my friends on September 18, 1970, to go into Boston to attend a Credence Clearwater Revival concert. When we all met, one of my friends turned to me and said, "you see what Hendrix did?"
I had not seen what Hendrix did. But what Jimi Hendrix had done was taken an overdose of sleeping pills and -- in the grand tradition of the movie "This is Spinal Tap" choked on his own regurgitation.
For a 17-year-old high school kid about to embark on one of life's great adventures -- a night in Boston without any kind of adult supervision, to see the hottest group in the USA at the time -- Jimi Hendrix's death was a glancing blow. He certainly wasn't the first rock star in my memory to die under somewhat nefarious circumstances. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had him beaten by a year ... July 3, 1969, when he drowned in his swimming pool at the age of 27. Abuse of drugs and alcohol had enlarged both his heart and is liver.
But it was stunning nonetheless. Here was a guy on top of his world. He was one of the great guitarists and showmen of the rock era, and his rendition of the National Anthem at Woodstock -- something that I had just seen for the first time just months before when the movie came out -- was already the stuff of legends.
To see him struck down, and in such an undignified way to boot, made a profound impression on me. I may have, from time to time, done a little weed in my younger days, but visceral mental images of the likes of Hendrix, Jones, and two other iconic rockers -- Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison -- who also died within that same year's period of time were enough to scare me away from any serious, or chronic, drug or alcohol use.
Ironically all four of the aforementioned rockers died at the age of 27, which -- obviously became kind of a dangerous age for those who indulged in the three vices of our era (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).
Sadly, these were not the last four rockers to die from drugs, either directly or indirectly. The list is staggering. And beyond the simple tragedy of anyone that young dying due to his or her addictions, the loss to humanity of what these tremendous artists had to offer is equally tragic.
Whitney Houston is the latest. Last year, it was Amy Winehouse. I cannot say I was the biggest fan of either, though it was obvious both had tremendous talent, and the love their fans had for them was genuine. And besides, it hardly matters, at times like this, whether you like Whitney Houston or not. What matters is that she was only 48, and despite her enormous talent and fame, lived a tortured life because of her addictions.
I remember the 2002 Super Bowl, when U2 sang "MLK" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" with a scroll of all the 9/11 victims in the background. Very moving ... very meaningful.
I feel like doing that tonight. You could probably fill five blogs with the names of musicians who have died from drugs, again either directly or indirectly.
I'm of that generation that thought it was cool the way groups like the Beatles related their experiences with LSD through their songs. I loved songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said, She Said," that -- as I came to find out -- were directly related to acid trips that John Lennon took in the mid 1960s.
And I was certainly one of many of my era who thought "thank God for LSD." It didn't mean I had to take it, but it was certainly responsible for some great music.
But was it? Did the condition of the artists when these songs were germinating help or get in the way? That's the age-old argument, and I've had it with many people over the last 30 or so years.
But when you think of someone as beautiful, and as beautifully talented, as Whitney Houston, lying dead at the age of 48, you can't help but think that even if drugs don't end up being the official cause of death, you're inclined to do the math. And you're inclined to say to yourself, "there's your answer." If drugs keep robbing us of our musical and cultural icons, whether they're Billie Holliday, Judy Garland, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Dennis Wilson, Keith Moon or John Entwistle, then how can anyone claim that the drugs these people took did anything other than rob them of live ... and us of their talent?
I no longer think what I thought back in the late 1960s.
But if anyone needs a reminder of just how destructive substance abuse, or addictions, can be, here's a list of some of my more noteworthy chemical casualties. These were people who meant something to me, for various reasons. They're not all musicians but that's OK for today. They're all connected.
And by all means, feel free to click onto the link I've provided for "Where The Streets Have No Name" and listen while you're reading.
Jack Kerouac was a beat-generation author whose book "On the Road" was required reading for millions of people who came of age at the same time I did. In fact, I had to read the book my senior year in high school, right around the same time both Hendrix and Janis died. He died in 1969 of cirrhosis of the liver due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.
Judy Garland. She was Dorothy ... the very definition of wide-eyed, heartland America innocence. If there's a more iconic children's movie lead in the history of motion pictures, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you who. But because of the grueling schedule that went with the filming of the "Wizard of Oz," she was given artificial stimulants to keep her awake; and artificial depressants to bring her down. She was 49 when she died, never having completely freed herself of her addictions.
Elvis Presley. Look up his cause of death sometime. He could have started his own pharmaceutical company with what was in his body when he died.
Sid Vicious. Put me down as a fan of the early punk stuff, because if it did nothing else, it gave disco a swift kick out the door, and injected some life into a genre that was close to collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. And the Sex Pistols were certainly huge contributors. Heroin, among other things did him in.
Len Bias. Oh, to be a Celtics fan in 1986. The C's had just won the NBA championship, and Red Auerbach had just bamboozled some poor team into trading him a draft pick that turned out to be Len Bias, the fabulously gifted forward from the University of Maryland. Bias was the guy who was going to be the link between Larry Bird and the next generation. Only the day after Bias was drafted, he died of a cocaine overdose.
Mike Bloomfield. This guy was a tremendous blues guitarist who died in 1981 of some unspecified drug overdose.
John Bonham. Led Zeppelin, according to book I read a while ago about Laurel Canyon, was the No. 1 party band to pass through the LA rock scene. Apparently, no woman was safe when Led Zep came to town. The boys -- all four of them -- had gargantuan appetites for sex and drugs and booze and whatever else came their way, and their off-stage exploits were just about as legendary as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Dazed and Confused." One night, though, Bonham became very dazed and confused, consuming 40 shots of vodka, and then doing the "Spinal Tap" in his sleep. He did not come down for breakfast the next morning.
Paul Butterfield. As in "Paul Butterfield Blues Band." As in "died of drug-related heart failure."
Jeanine Deckers. I know. You're saying who? Well, she was the Singing Nun, who came out with that song "Dominique" in the 1960s. She was only 52 she she killed herself via barbiturates and alcohol.
Brian Epstein. None of the fun we had in the 1960s would have ever happened had Epstein, who was gay and who worked in a record store, not fallen for John Lennon after seeing the Beatles perform in their head-to-toe leather outfits one day. He worked day and night on behalf of the Beatles after that, and he was responsible for a good deal of the early success that just snowballed and became Beatlemania. But his was a sad life, too, and it took its toll. He died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
Chris Farley and John Belushi. What's more to say? Belushi may have been one of the most talented comedians/actors of our generation ... and Farley wasn't too far behind. They both had a penchant of creating characters that connected strongly with us. Belushi's Samurai Warrior ... Brilliant. Farley's Matt Foley, or his nervous talk show host who interviewed Paul McCartney? Inspired. Drugs claimed both their lives.
Lowell George. I count "Dixie Chicken" as one of the great sing-along songs whenever it comes on the radio. I don't care who's watching. I'll just blast it to the top of my lungs. And Little Feat ... great band. One night, George collapsed in his hotel room and died. They called it an unspecified drug overdose.
Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. God, how could you not love The Band? I'll tell you how much I love The Band. The day of my father's funeral, after we got back from the restaurant where the post-service meal was held, I found "The Last Waltz" on TV and watched it from beginning to end. That's how much love The Band. Manuel and Danko were such integral parts of that group. In fact, in between long stints of the group's inactivity, Danko and Manuel used to tour together. Manuel fought with alcohol and drugs all his life, but relapsed once too often and committed suicide. Danko died of drug-related heart failure, just like John Entwistle and so many others.
As I said before, I could go on and on. The list is endless. The carnage is staggering. And even if Whitney Houston's not really my No. 1 cup of tea, she has now joined this damned list of drug casualties, just as Amy Winehouse did a year earlier.
And I'm reminded of another line, from another song, sung so many years ago: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn."
I had not seen what Hendrix did. But what Jimi Hendrix had done was taken an overdose of sleeping pills and -- in the grand tradition of the movie "This is Spinal Tap" choked on his own regurgitation.
For a 17-year-old high school kid about to embark on one of life's great adventures -- a night in Boston without any kind of adult supervision, to see the hottest group in the USA at the time -- Jimi Hendrix's death was a glancing blow. He certainly wasn't the first rock star in my memory to die under somewhat nefarious circumstances. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had him beaten by a year ... July 3, 1969, when he drowned in his swimming pool at the age of 27. Abuse of drugs and alcohol had enlarged both his heart and is liver.
But it was stunning nonetheless. Here was a guy on top of his world. He was one of the great guitarists and showmen of the rock era, and his rendition of the National Anthem at Woodstock -- something that I had just seen for the first time just months before when the movie came out -- was already the stuff of legends.
To see him struck down, and in such an undignified way to boot, made a profound impression on me. I may have, from time to time, done a little weed in my younger days, but visceral mental images of the likes of Hendrix, Jones, and two other iconic rockers -- Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison -- who also died within that same year's period of time were enough to scare me away from any serious, or chronic, drug or alcohol use.
Ironically all four of the aforementioned rockers died at the age of 27, which -- obviously became kind of a dangerous age for those who indulged in the three vices of our era (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).
Sadly, these were not the last four rockers to die from drugs, either directly or indirectly. The list is staggering. And beyond the simple tragedy of anyone that young dying due to his or her addictions, the loss to humanity of what these tremendous artists had to offer is equally tragic.
Whitney Houston is the latest. Last year, it was Amy Winehouse. I cannot say I was the biggest fan of either, though it was obvious both had tremendous talent, and the love their fans had for them was genuine. And besides, it hardly matters, at times like this, whether you like Whitney Houston or not. What matters is that she was only 48, and despite her enormous talent and fame, lived a tortured life because of her addictions.
I remember the 2002 Super Bowl, when U2 sang "MLK" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" with a scroll of all the 9/11 victims in the background. Very moving ... very meaningful.
I feel like doing that tonight. You could probably fill five blogs with the names of musicians who have died from drugs, again either directly or indirectly.
I'm of that generation that thought it was cool the way groups like the Beatles related their experiences with LSD through their songs. I loved songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said, She Said," that -- as I came to find out -- were directly related to acid trips that John Lennon took in the mid 1960s.
And I was certainly one of many of my era who thought "thank God for LSD." It didn't mean I had to take it, but it was certainly responsible for some great music.
But was it? Did the condition of the artists when these songs were germinating help or get in the way? That's the age-old argument, and I've had it with many people over the last 30 or so years.
But when you think of someone as beautiful, and as beautifully talented, as Whitney Houston, lying dead at the age of 48, you can't help but think that even if drugs don't end up being the official cause of death, you're inclined to do the math. And you're inclined to say to yourself, "there's your answer." If drugs keep robbing us of our musical and cultural icons, whether they're Billie Holliday, Judy Garland, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Dennis Wilson, Keith Moon or John Entwistle, then how can anyone claim that the drugs these people took did anything other than rob them of live ... and us of their talent?
I no longer think what I thought back in the late 1960s.
But if anyone needs a reminder of just how destructive substance abuse, or addictions, can be, here's a list of some of my more noteworthy chemical casualties. These were people who meant something to me, for various reasons. They're not all musicians but that's OK for today. They're all connected.
And by all means, feel free to click onto the link I've provided for "Where The Streets Have No Name" and listen while you're reading.
Jack Kerouac was a beat-generation author whose book "On the Road" was required reading for millions of people who came of age at the same time I did. In fact, I had to read the book my senior year in high school, right around the same time both Hendrix and Janis died. He died in 1969 of cirrhosis of the liver due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.
Judy Garland. She was Dorothy ... the very definition of wide-eyed, heartland America innocence. If there's a more iconic children's movie lead in the history of motion pictures, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you who. But because of the grueling schedule that went with the filming of the "Wizard of Oz," she was given artificial stimulants to keep her awake; and artificial depressants to bring her down. She was 49 when she died, never having completely freed herself of her addictions.
Elvis Presley. Look up his cause of death sometime. He could have started his own pharmaceutical company with what was in his body when he died.
Sid Vicious. Put me down as a fan of the early punk stuff, because if it did nothing else, it gave disco a swift kick out the door, and injected some life into a genre that was close to collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. And the Sex Pistols were certainly huge contributors. Heroin, among other things did him in.
Len Bias. Oh, to be a Celtics fan in 1986. The C's had just won the NBA championship, and Red Auerbach had just bamboozled some poor team into trading him a draft pick that turned out to be Len Bias, the fabulously gifted forward from the University of Maryland. Bias was the guy who was going to be the link between Larry Bird and the next generation. Only the day after Bias was drafted, he died of a cocaine overdose.
Mike Bloomfield. This guy was a tremendous blues guitarist who died in 1981 of some unspecified drug overdose.
John Bonham. Led Zeppelin, according to book I read a while ago about Laurel Canyon, was the No. 1 party band to pass through the LA rock scene. Apparently, no woman was safe when Led Zep came to town. The boys -- all four of them -- had gargantuan appetites for sex and drugs and booze and whatever else came their way, and their off-stage exploits were just about as legendary as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Dazed and Confused." One night, though, Bonham became very dazed and confused, consuming 40 shots of vodka, and then doing the "Spinal Tap" in his sleep. He did not come down for breakfast the next morning.
Paul Butterfield. As in "Paul Butterfield Blues Band." As in "died of drug-related heart failure."
Jeanine Deckers. I know. You're saying who? Well, she was the Singing Nun, who came out with that song "Dominique" in the 1960s. She was only 52 she she killed herself via barbiturates and alcohol.
Brian Epstein. None of the fun we had in the 1960s would have ever happened had Epstein, who was gay and who worked in a record store, not fallen for John Lennon after seeing the Beatles perform in their head-to-toe leather outfits one day. He worked day and night on behalf of the Beatles after that, and he was responsible for a good deal of the early success that just snowballed and became Beatlemania. But his was a sad life, too, and it took its toll. He died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
Chris Farley and John Belushi. What's more to say? Belushi may have been one of the most talented comedians/actors of our generation ... and Farley wasn't too far behind. They both had a penchant of creating characters that connected strongly with us. Belushi's Samurai Warrior ... Brilliant. Farley's Matt Foley, or his nervous talk show host who interviewed Paul McCartney? Inspired. Drugs claimed both their lives.
Lowell George. I count "Dixie Chicken" as one of the great sing-along songs whenever it comes on the radio. I don't care who's watching. I'll just blast it to the top of my lungs. And Little Feat ... great band. One night, George collapsed in his hotel room and died. They called it an unspecified drug overdose.
Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. God, how could you not love The Band? I'll tell you how much I love The Band. The day of my father's funeral, after we got back from the restaurant where the post-service meal was held, I found "The Last Waltz" on TV and watched it from beginning to end. That's how much love The Band. Manuel and Danko were such integral parts of that group. In fact, in between long stints of the group's inactivity, Danko and Manuel used to tour together. Manuel fought with alcohol and drugs all his life, but relapsed once too often and committed suicide. Danko died of drug-related heart failure, just like John Entwistle and so many others.
As I said before, I could go on and on. The list is endless. The carnage is staggering. And even if Whitney Houston's not really my No. 1 cup of tea, she has now joined this damned list of drug casualties, just as Amy Winehouse did a year earlier.
And I'm reminded of another line, from another song, sung so many years ago: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn."
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