Hearing the news of Meatloaf’s death made me remember other times we’ve heard of the death of a great musician. Of how the way news reaches us has changed within my lifetime. The changes in technology and the media, which have brought us to the rapid but brief, collective yet personal, outpouring of sadness we experience in the age of the Internet.
The first of these deaths I remember was John Lennon, I would have been nine years old. It was the age of the news of the day being conveyed as the headline, the lead story, on the evening news. A truly momentous event might warrant a break in regular broadcasting for a Newsflash.
I was too young to really understand the significance of John Lennon’s death. I remember my parents weeping which has seared it into my brain – crying was something that occurred when a relative or someone you knew died, not a stranger on the other side of the world. I remember we got to stay up late as the whole family watched the movie Help, which screened unscheduled.
By the time of the death that affected me more than any other, Kurt Cobain, we had entered the 24-hour news cycle. News up to the minute, and then hours and hours rehashing it with precious little new information, more and more obscure connections being interviewed, very cold and plastic.
It was my first year at Uni, I’d just left my band of four years and Nirvana was my music. They’d slain the absurdity of 80s corporate nonsense and brought back the spirit, the raw honesty, of punk. To me they changed the face of music more than any band, and now they were gone and I was angry. Seeing something that really mattered to me subjected to the vapid analysis of that cycle didn’t help.
Little did I know the whole generation of singers from the bands of that genre, would die prematurely, be it heroin or suicide. Blind Melon, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, in addition to Nirvana, all gone until only Pearl Jam remains.
And now today news travels at the speed of the Internet, we often hear the news before it makes, well the news. We all have our own stories and memories we share, I think that is a good thing. It is certainly a lot more real, more human and interactive, than what TV became.
Each year there seem to be more of them dying, part of it is that the Internet puts everything right in front of us immediately. News that may have passed us by for days floods in to our feeds. Or maybe it is just getting old. #Spoiler it is.
Typically the music idols we grew up with may be a decade or two older than us. More and more of the artists I listened to as a kid growing up in the 80s are gone, and some the same age as me, those of my parent’s generation grow fewer and fewer.
Soon there will be a final wave of them, the end of a generation of great bands from the sixties, the last Beatle, the last Stone - even Keith Richards, the end of The Who. That great era of music, our connections to it, will pass into history
Whether they are candles that burnt brightly but briefly, or those that burned on and on for decades, they all come to an end.
The 27 club, forever young – Hendrix, Joplin, Jones, Morrison, Cobain, Winehouse.
The ones who are a huge surprise, that come as such a shock that we actually put the device down and talk to those we love – OMG did you hear the news? You know the ones – Bowie, Prince, George Michael – a bolt from the blue.
The ones that make you sad but realistically were no surprise, you knew their health wasn’t that flash. People like Meatloaf or Freddie Mercury or George Harrison.
We mourn their loss not in most cases out of any expectation of new music. We grief them because they were a part of our lives, our memories, and we feel our own mortality.
We listen and it takes us back. For a moment we are back there, with friends we haven’t seen in many years, places we no longer go, recalling the events that are intertwined with their music.
RIP Marvin Lee Aday, aka Meatloaf, thanks for the memories. At these moments “objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are” is certainly true.
I guess there is just one thing left to say....
When Eddie said he didn't like his Teddy
You knew he was a no-good kid
But when he threatened your life with a switch-blade knife
What a guy!
Makes you cry.
Und I did.
A wise piece my friend. I think we mourn these deaths because, in some way, they represent the death, piece by piece, of our youth.
I most closely associate Meatloaf with the time I spent with you, Dave and Keith. Golden days and questionable nights. A time of optimism, no matter how misguided.
A time we will never get back.
Matt