Entertainment For Lively Minds
Dead Young Rock Stars And Where They Would Have Gone Next ?
I Know it's only conjecture but I can't help thinking about dead rock stars and what they would have gone on to achieve had they lived.
The Rock death that affected me the most was of course John Lennons I am stiil affected by it, the sheer waste of the talent of the man who wrote Strawberry Fields, I Am The Walrus and In My Life, his sheer immense personality and presence.
Now I know Double Fantasy isn't his best musically although Watching The Wheels is one of my favourite Lennon songs,in fact favourite songs period.
I would like to believe that a man with Lennons talent had he lived would have rediscovered his mojo and produced some amazing work.
Elliott Smith is another whose early death affected me,he was a great talent I just wish he was still around writing those beautiful melodies.
Others I wish were still around now include Bob Marley,Marvin Gaye,Jimi Hendrix, Nick Drake and Grant McClennan of The Go Betweens.
It would have been fascinating to see how these artists would have developed musically.
When artists of such talent die young we all lose something I think.
Which dead rock stars do you miss the most ? and how do you think musical history would have been different had they lived ?
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Otis Redding has to be Number 1
Died aged 26 when he was still hungry and on the rise. Had already written, or co-written, two of the best songs of the rock era namely Dock of the Bay and Respect.
What would have happened had he lived? Difficult to know of course but perhaps the gap between "black" and "white" music may not grown so wide. Like Hendrix he had a keen ear for what the white fellas were up to and may have served as a musical bridge.
In the same vein Ritchie Valens, had he lived, may have brought Latin music further into the mainstream.
To think that Buddy Holly was on the same plane is appalling. He was what? 27? How many great songs had he already had a hand in? How many more would have come?
Buddly Holly...
..quite shockingly, was a mere 22 when he died in that plane crash.
A different order
Always wondered where Joy Division would have gone had Ian Curtis not made his final exit. I can't imagine he'd have gone down the dance/rock pioneer route ploughed by Barney and Co but probably gone on to forge a fascinating solo career.
Funnily enough
I watched the recently released Joy Division doc with a friend of mine the other day. My friend is a huge fan and we were speculating as to what Curtis would have become had he not died. My friend believes that Curtis would have given up on music before he was thirty, to pursue a career as a writer or an academic. There is no evidence or hearsay to suggest this is what would have happened, but it's an interesting theory.
Yup
definitely with you on the writer thing - I think he'd have felt that popular music was just too flimsy a vehicle for a man with such a weight on his shoulders. Or painting maybe. Or photography.
Having seen
that excellent doc/rockumentary I must agree. Amidst all the fan controversy about the re-release of Movement sans HIM, may I now say Movement is a band moving on, and that Hannet was probably more important to their 'sound' than the singist at that point?
New Order...
...are all the evidence I need that Curtis was holding them back.
Sorry Back To Lennon Again
But of course what made it worse was the thought that somewhere down the line he would have realised that Paul McCartney pushed him into his best work and would have got back to writing with him again.
Which..
would have worked a treat for Macca's post Beatles output too.
Whilst Lennon's death was a tragedy for friends and family...
I do not think his passing robbed us of years of great music, seeing as the majority of his solo records were poor to say the least. A few gems sprinkled here and there, but really if you own 'The John Lennon Collection' and 'John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band', then you have just about everything essential. Of course we'll never know, but I think his best years were definitely behind him.
I second that demotion
His best years were behind him by the end of 1971. I have never heard anyone advance a satisfactory theory for the sheer speed of his decline which was simply staggering.
I have the full set but POB is the only one I regularly go back to, although 'Rock'n'Roll' does get the occasional airing.
yeah, but isn't it a bit like Fuzzy says up above...
had lennon lived, I *think* that he'd have realised (and probably tired of) every solo record he'd bring out being dissed as being 'not as good as what he did when writing with/against McCartney'.
You'd wonder, would they have written together, and what the results would have been like. I'd love to think they'd have been something special, but I get the feeling that, on balance, we were probably best spared it. I think Abbey Road works on two levels; one, it's a great album stuffed with great tunes. Two, it was written as a swansong, and they knew it.
My own great rock death regret is Buddy Holly. I've said it before, and i'll say it again. Had he lived, I'm pretty sure that we'd quite possibly say Elvis who? Buddy didn't, perhaps, have the hip-shakin' charisma and stage presence, but quite simply, the man shat talent...
The very thought of The Beatles having reformed...
or McCartney and Lennon having made a record together fills me with dread and horror. Side Two of 'Abbey Road' is the most perfect, most apposite, most beautiful ending to a group's career it is possible to think of. Thank the lord we were spared a 1980s record (imagine a cross between 'Ebony and Ivory' and 'Imagine' with syn drums) and a legend besmirched forever...
A Jeff Lynne production
Shud, and indeed, der.
you forgot to make the
sound of a case being rested...
Jeff Lynne...
The Worst Producer In The History Of Pop Music ™
(good songwriter though)
Jeff Lynne Character Assassination
Funny we are talking about death
What is it about Jeff Lynne ? i hear it everywhere, it's so fashionable to criticise him, what did he do so wrong except produce one of the greatest pop records ever in Out Of The Blue just when punk was breaking ,you would think he was a serial killer the amount of stick he gets I think that deep down people envy him because he is so talented.
I have heard his productions of records by Dave Edmunds,Tom Petty,George Harrison and Roy Orbison and you know what there is nothing wrong with them, in fact in Harrisons case the records he produced were his best since All Things Must Pass.
So enough of this Jeff Lynne beating and get back to criticising people who really deserve it because he doesn't.
i think the problem I have with Jeff
(and i'm ignorant as to most of his ELO work) is that he developed a production style in the late 1980's that really hasn't stood the test of time. It sounded ropey then, and it hasn't aged well at all.
Exhibit A has to be what he did on George Harrisons Cloud 9. I can't describe the drum sound but it was the complete opposite of 'crisp'. He continued it with The Traveling Wilburys and in that pair of albums it worked, (to an extent) insofar as it suited some of the skiffle, lo-fi stuff that was being offered.
The sacrilege (to these ears) was that when he got his hands on the Beatles 'Real Love' and 'Free as a bird' he repeated this production technique. Maybe the songs were ropey enough as they were, but they were badly let down by the floppy sloppy drum sounds; it was like ringo was banging bin lids in a stairwell outside the studio.
His earlier production might have been quite good, but the monosound he did just didn't sit right with me. He seems to be a one trick producer and the trick ain't particularly good. If it was (a la Spector in his glory days) it'd be a different story completely.
I don't post this comment in a deliberate attempt to be snobby. I genuinely don't pass much heed on production of records one way or the other, but I can identify the latter period Lynne at the helm within 20 seconds, and it jars on me like the bejaysus
It's the bloody echolalia I can't stand....
To pick up on Ivans last sentence, if produced by Jeff Lynne, it would go:
" it jars (jar jar) on me (me me) like the (be jay) bejaysus"
flomp flomp drum sound to end
Absolutely kreck
And Roy Orbison's "You Got It" is the only evidence for the prosecution necessary.
ah sh*ite (he said, hours later...)
You Got It was to Exhibit B in my earlier post.
better late than never - thanks Archie!
I Don't Think Real Love and Free As A Bird Are That Bad
I think maybe Jeff didn't have much to work with as per the original Lennon demo's but I think he did a pretty good job,I don't consider myself an expert in production techniques but I think this runs a lot deeper,there are many rock journalists who despise ELO and Jeff Lynne, I mean I read a ridiculous quote recently from David Quantick where he said that one track on the latest Lyndsey Buckingham album was better than the whole ELO catalogue, but then I read a post by Alan McGee saying that ELO were better than The Beatles, which is equally ridiculous.
E L O are lazily lumped in under the moniker guilty pleasures, IMO they created one of the most beautiful and enduring bodies of work in British popular music history, the fact that many UK music journalists are old punks and think that ELO were one of the dinosaurs that needed killing clouds their musical judgement.
Listening to ELO records today they definitely stand the test of time, I also think that of the records Jeff has produced,but it does amaze me how much Jeff Lynne divides opinion so much, I think that is testament to the power of his recordings.
As for John Lennon's best days being behind him well if Bob Dylan had died after Down In The Groove how would he have been remembered ?
How about a John Lennon record produced by Rick Rubin,Daniel Lanois or Nigel Godrich ?
I think Jeff Lynne wrote some blinding pop songs...
but then passed them through ten feet of sludge in recording them. Honestly, some of the ELO records from the late 1970s sound terrible now! It's such a shame, as he really did have a way with a tune...
Jimi Hendrix
...for me, followed by Buddy Holly. I can't quite believed he burned that brightly - lucky for us he managed as many studio sessions as he did.
Not sure Jim Morrison had a lot more to offer the world, though...
The great lost music myth
Clearly it's tragic to die young and miss out on the chance to have a full, worthwhile existence but our experience of musicians who did not have such a fate suggests that those who checked out early would not have been likely to go on to great or better things, musically - more likely the opposite. One can only wish they had not suffered such a sad fate for their own and their family and friends' sake.
On the other hand.....
......death being the great un-leveller, wary of the backlash this will deliver me, there are some who, to me, aren't quite the giants posterity and the re-issue hungry business paints them as.
I'll start with Eva Cassidy, as her saccharine sing'n'strums are unlikely to be propping up too many shelves in Word-land, but, big breath, OK, Nick Drake. Is he really anything more than reticent whimsy? Tragic life etc etc, sad story, but isn't he really a bit dull? We look for scapegoats for the current school of plaintive whiny brit"rock" maudlin: the evidence is all there, guys.........
I will be at a hidden address, protected, for my safety.