FEATURE:
In Memory of…
IN THIS PHOTO: Bill Wither in 1976 (he died on 30th March aged eighty-one)
Artists We Have Lost in 2020
___________
I am going to put a playlist out…
IN THIS PHOTO: Country legend Charley Pride
at the end of this feature of the artists we have lost in 2020. With COVID-19, we have seen more needless deaths of beloved musicians than normal - it has been a very tough year regarding losses. Charley Pride, the Country legend, is the most recent loss we suffered (on 12th December). He is a legend who The Guardian paid tribute to:
“Pride was a gifted athlete who tried to escape poverty with baseball, but it was his voice that catapulted him to fame and the top of the charts with hits including Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’, Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone and Mountain of Love.
He won the Country Music Association’s entertainer of the year award in 1971, its top male vocalist prize in 1971 and 1972, and was awarded the lifetime achievement prize in 2020.
His final performance came weeks before his death, when he sang Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’ during the CMA awards show at Nashville’s Music City Center on 11 November. It was a duet with Jimmie Allen, a rising black star in country music, and was watched by a TV audience of millions.
Pride made 52 Top 10 country hits, including 29 No 1s, and was the first African American performer to appear on the Grand Ole Opry stage since DeFord Bailey made his debut in the 1920s. Pride became an Opry member in 1993”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Eddie Van Halen/PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Knighton
Very young artists like King Von (who died on 6th November) and Nikki McKibbin (who died on 31st October) caused a lot of shock with their premature deaths and, on 19th October, we said goodbye to the iconic Spencer Davis. The death of Eddie Van Halen on 6th October was a huge blow for the music industry. As a member of Val Halen, he was a hugely inspiring musician whose incredible gifts were taken to heart by so many musicians. I am a big fan of his music and I have always been blown away by his insanely wonderful guitar chops! Legacy provided a few words about the sadly-departed guitar god:
“Eddie Van Halen was one of the greatest rock guitarists in history and a major influence on up-and-coming guitarists. Many decided to take up learning guitar because of him. Eddie and his drummer brother Alex formed a band in the early 1970s that would become Van Halen in 1974. The original classic line-up included David Lee Roth on vocals and Michael Anthony on bass. Van Halen would become hard rock superstars with hit songs including “Jump” and “Hot for Teacher.” The band continued to record hits when Sammy Hagar took over for Roth in 1985. Van Halen was known for his tapping technique where he played with both hands on the neck of the guitar. Outside of Van Halen, he performed the iconic guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Van Halen was married previously to actor Valerie Bertinelli, and they have one son, Wolfgang. He is survived by his current wife Janie and Wolf”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Helen Reddy
American-Australian singer Helen Reddy left us on 29th September. Her death was a big shock too. Reddy's song, I Am Woman, played a significant role in popular culture, becoming an anthem for second-wave feminism. She came to be known as a ‘feminist poster girl’ and a feminist icon. We also lost Pamela Hutchinson of The Emotions on 18th September, and another huge loss occurred when Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert died on 11th September. The Guardian published an obituary to reflect on Hibbert’s life and incredible music:
“In the years before Bob Marley shot to worldwide fame, Toots Hibbert, who has died aged 77, was one of the main global faces of reggae music – or at least of its predecessors, ska and rock steady.
As singer and songwriter with the Maytals, later to become Toots and the Maytals, Hibbert was responsible for a number of Jamaican classics that were not only hits in their own right but were given vibrant second lives by admiring artists in Britain and elsewhere.
Among those songs was Pressure Drop, a 1969 composition about the daily strains of ghetto life in Jamaica that came to worldwide attention when it appeared in the 1972 film The Harder They Come and was also given a popular run-through by the Clash. Hibbert’s other big tune of that year, Monkey Man, in which he expressed the jealous thoughts of a spurned lover, became a UK hit and was later covered by the Specials and Amy Winehouse, while 54-46 Was My Number – written after Hibbert had experienced a spell in jail during the mid 1960s – became a defining rock steady/reggae tune when it appeared in 1968. It was also later revived – by Aswad in 1984.
IN THIS PHOTO: Toots Hibbert/PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Wright
Other Hibbert songs such as Never You Change, Bam Bam, Fever, Sweet and Dandy and Funky Kingston also stand high in the Jamaican canon, and he had the further distinction of having been the first artist to have used the word reggae in a song title, albeit spelt in now-unfamiliar fashion, with his 1968 composition Do the Reggay.
Hibbert was born into a large household in the town of May Pen in Jamaica and was given the nickname Little Toots by an older brother. Both of his parents had died by the time he was 16 and after he had married his childhood sweetheart, Doreen, at the age of 18, he moved in the early 1960s to the Trenchtown area of Kingston, landing a job in a barber shop and, in 1962, putting together a vocal harmony trio with two new Kingston friends, Jerry Matthias and Raleigh Gordon”.
Another giant lost was Ronald ‘Khalis’ Bell of Kool & The Gang. He passed on 9th September; he was part of a legendary band who recorded nine number-one R&B singles in the 1970s and 1980s. It was such a shame learning of his sudden death. The wonderful Betty Wright died on 10th May, and another two big names who we lost in 2020 were Peter Green and Little Richard. As a massive fan of Fleetwood Mac, I was moved and upset when he died on 29th October. As the founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
IN THIS PHOTO: Peter Green/PHOTO CREDIT: George Wilkes Archive/Getty Images
Green's songs, such as Albatross, Black Magic Woman, Oh Well, The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown), and Man of the World were signature tunes. He really was one of the greatest musicians ever, and his loss will be felt for years to come. Little Richard died on 9th May. This was another huge shock. Rolling Stone wrote a touching obituary to a musical pioneer. I have selected a few sections:
“Little Richard’s stage persona – his pompadours, androgynous makeup, and glass-bead shirts — also set the standard for rock & roll showmanship; Prince, to cite one obvious example, owed a sizable debt to the musician. “Prince is the Little Richard of his generation,” Richard told Joan Rivers in 1989, before looking at the camera and addressing Prince. “I was wearing purple before you was wearing it!”
“If you love anything about the flamboyance of rock & roll, you have Little Richard to thank,” says the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, a longtime fan. “And where would rock & roll be without flamboyance? He was the first. To be able to be that uninhibited back then, you had to have a lot of not-give-a-fuck.”
Born Richard Wayne Penniman on December 5th, 1932, in Macon, Georgia, he was one of 12 children and grew up around uncles who were preachers. “I was born in the slums. My daddy sold whiskey, bootleg whiskey,” he told Rolling Stone in 1970. Although he sang in a nearby church, his father Bud wasn’t supportive of his son’s music and accused him of being gay, resulting in Penniman leaving home at 13 and moving in with a white family in Macon. But music stayed with him: One of his boyhood friends was Otis Redding, and Penniman heard R&B, blues, and country while working at a concession stand at the Macon City Auditorium”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Florian Schneider
On 6th May, we said goodbye to Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider. So many artists have been inspired by Schneider, so his death sent shockwaves right through the music industry. Again, I have selected a few words from The Guardian - who were keen to show their respects to a musical great:
“Schneider played the flute, violin and guitar, though often filtered through electronic processing. His interest in electronic music grew. “I found that the flute was too limiting,” he later said. “Soon I bought a microphone, then loudspeakers, then an echo, then a synthesiser. Much later I threw the flute away; it was a sort of process.”
Known for his enigmatic, somewhat faraway smile, Schneider worked on all of the group’s studio albums, including The Man-Machine, which yielded their biggest hit: The Model, a melancholy synthpop song which topped the UK charts in 1982.
Following their final studio album to date, Tour De France Soundtracks in 2003, and a return to touring, Schneider left the group in 2008.
No reason was given for his departure, and he has maintained a mostly low profile since. Hütter told the Guardian in 2009 that Schneider “worked for many, many years on other projects: speech synthesis, and things like that. He was not really involved in Kraftwerk for many, many years,” and in 2017 said that the pair had “not really” spoken since Schneider left”.
IN THIS PHOTO: John Prine/PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Gillett Collection/Getty Images
Other artists lost in 2020 include Cady Groves, Chynna Rogers, Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, and the remarkable John Prine. Prine died on 7th April due to complications from COVID-19, and that was another massive sadness. Rolling Stone said the following when they paid tribute:
“As a songwriter, Prine was admired by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and others, known for his ability to mine seemingly ordinary experiences — he wrote many of his classics as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois — for revelatory songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience. There’s “Hello in There,” about the devastating loneliness of an elderly couple; “Sam Stone,” a portrait of a drug-addicted Vietnam soldier suffering from PTSD; and “Paradise,” an ode to his parents’ strip-mined hometown of Paradise, Kentucky, which became an environmental anthem. Prine tackled these subjects with empathy and humor, with an eye for “the in-between spaces,” the moments people don’t talk about, he told Rolling Stone in 2017. “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan said in 2009. “Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree”.
The astonishing Kenny Rogers died on 20th March, as did Genesis P-Orridge on 14th March. We tragically lost Barbara Martin of The Supremes on 4th March, and we also had to process the death of Andy Gill on 1st February – he was the lead guitarist for the British Rock band, Gang of Four, which he co-founded in 1976.
IN THIS PHOTO: Dave Greenfield
The Stranglers’ Dave Greenfield left us on 3rd May at the age of seventy-one. He was an artist who had a big impact on many other musicians. There are three more artists I want to mention before ending this. Bill Withers died on 30th March…that was another one of those deaths that nobody saw coming that really rocked us. The BBC wrote the following in their feature:
“Bill Withers, the acclaimed 1970s soul singer behind hits Ain't No Sunshine and Lean On Me has died from heart complications aged 81, his family said.
The singer died on Monday in Los Angeles, the family told the Associated Press.
They described him in a statement as a "solitary man with a heart driven to connect to the world".
"He spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other," the statement said.
Known for his smooth baritone vocals and sumptuous soul arrangements, he wrote some of the 70s best-remembered songs, including Just The Two Of Us, Lovely Day and Use Me.
On Lovely Day, he set the record for the longest sustained note on a US chart hit, holding a high E for 18 seconds.
Although he stopped recording in 1985, his songs remained a major influence on R&B and hip-hop.
His track Grandma's Hands was sampled on Blackstreet's No Diggity, and Eminem reinterpreted Just The Two Of Us on his hit 1997 Bonnie And Clyde”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Neil Peart/PHOTO CREDIT: Igor Vidyashev/Rex/Shutterstock
Rush’s titanic drummer, Neil Peart, passed away on 7th January. NME wrote a wonderful obituary of one of the greatest musicians ever. I have taken a bit from it:
“I’m not physically or musically capable, but thanks for the offer,” said Dave Grohl when it was suggested he replace Neil Peart in Rush after the legendary drummer – who died after a three-year battle with brain cancer on January 7 – retired from the group in 2015. “That’s a whole other animal,” Grohl continued, “another species of drummer.”
There can be no greater testament and tribute to Peart’s mastery of his art than one of the best drummers in the world considering himself so far his inferior. Peart was nick-named The Professor thanks to his meticulous, intricate, firebrand drum work in all manner of exotic time signatures, which was key in making Rush one of the most renowned bands of classic rock and inspired countless drummers to take to the sticks in awe of his skills. That he was also the band’s primary lyricist, developing his themes of fantasy, science fiction and mythology to take in philosophy and humanitarian issues over the decades, added to his standing as one of the most talented backbones in rock”.
I always associate the biggest deaths with those that have occurred during the pandemic, but Peart died beforehand – before lockdown -, as did Andrew Weatherall. He died on 17th February…and I want to end with him. Aged only fifty-six when he died due to a pulmonary embolism, so many people were stunned and numb hearing the news.
IN THIS PHOTO: Andrew Weatherall/PHOTO CREDIT: John Barrett
Weatherall remixer of tracks by the likes of Happy Mondays, New Order, Björk, The Orb, The Future Sound of London, and My Bloody Valentine. His epic production work on Primal Scream's album, Screamadelica, helped the record win the first-ever Mercury Music Prize in 1992. In a feature from The Guardian, David Holmes shared memories of his friend:
“Andrew was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known: naturally very bright but also very curious. He was always reading because he spent so much time on planes. He would devour information so quickly and remember it all. He was also a great wordsmith. I tried to encourage him to write a novel. The last book he turned me on to was Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier. Three days later, a friend of mine, a film producer, said: “We just bought the rights.” I said: “Look, it would be a dream if the two of us worked on the music together.” I’m still going to try and compile the soundtrack from his record collection. Even though Andrew’s not with us, I really want to capture his spirit in this film.
This sums up his friendship: I sent him a text last New Year’s Eve and he got back to me with two quotes. One from Anthony Wilson: “Rarely there when you want me, always there when you need me.” And one from Jim Dickinson: “Take reassurance in the glory of the moment and the forever promise of tomorrow.” Then he said: “Proud to count you as a friend. Happy new year to you and yours”.
It has been a tragic year in terms of losses, where so many hugely respected and important artists have left us. I am writing this on 14th December, so I hope that 2020 is not preparing to take any other musicians! I will end by combining songs from many of the artists I have mentioned, but I wanted to write and reflect on a year that has not only been tough on individuals, but the music industry has had to say goodbye to so many great people. It has been so sad losing them but, for all they have given to the world of music, we thank them…
IN THIS PHOTO: Betty Wright
WITH passion and love.