First, we feel, in simplest terms, like we've lost a friend. Dictionary.com defines a friends as:
-a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard
-a person who gives assistance
-a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile
-a member of the same nation, party, etc.
-(initial capital letter) a member of the Religious Society of Friends; a Quaker.
-a person associated with another as a contact on a social-media website
I might also add something along the lines of "a person who enjoys spending time and shares interests in common with another person." In any case, all of this sounds precisely like my relationship with musicians and their work-- right down to my sense that music functions as a religion for some folks, and to the fact that many people connect and "follow" musicians via social media. Over my 4 dozen plus years here on this earth, I have spent thousands of hours, in every life situation imaginable, with these people. Music is playing at almost all times in my home, car, classroom, bar, restaurant, grocery store, street, sidewalk-- absolutely everywhere. And when it's not being played out loud, it's ALWAYS playing in my head. Though never there in corporeal terms, of course, Mr. Bowie, Mr. Frey, Mr. Kilmister and all of these artists have, in a very authentic way, been through everything with me: when I was being bullied (indeed my love of Elton John in Middle School made me a target), when I finally found some actual friends in high school (indeed, our connection over music often defined our friendship, was the foundation upon which it was built), when I went to class, when my kids were born, when I fucked up, when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was confused, when I was pissed off, when I had been dumped, when I was horny, when I ws broke... Music has been an active participant in every significant moment of my life, and most of the insignificant ones, too. It has provided me solace, counsel, therapy, strength, empathy, reassurance, celebration, confidence, ecstasy... And so, from very early on, I not only felt that the recordings-- the music itself-- functioned as my friend, but by unconscious extension, that the people creating the music were also my friends-- that they knew and understood me, my feelings, my situations-- and that I could always rely on them to get me through good times and bad. And, unlike the friends who I did know personally, these folks never, ever let me down. When things are shitty, I can put on "Sweet Virginia" and Keith and Mick always come through, every time. Well I know that many rock stars-- including every one named so far in this little post-- have been and / or are insufferable assholes, or at the very least mighty difficult to live with in literal terms, to the people in their own lives. As a mere consumer of their work, however, they have been the most reliable friends I've ever had. And so, when they pass-- especially in bunches as seems to be the case right now-- I think many of us feel, quite authentically, like we have lost close friends.The second reason people feel the loss of these musicians so acutely, I think, relates weirdly to a bumper sticker I saw awhile back that set me thinking. The bumper sticker reads "Be the person your dog thinks you are." I'm not a dog person (at all), but the line to me simply suggests that people should try to live up to their own ideals. I have sometimes translated it as "Be the kind of person you wanted to be when you were young." Rock and Roll, as an ethos, has always valued a youthful spirit. The art form is driven forward, most often, by performers between the ages of 18 and 30. While a growing number of artists have continued to make strong contributions at later ages, proving that rock and roll is not just kids stuff, the truth of the matter is that these records rarely change the face of the genre or our culture in the same way as records by more youthful musicians. This is largely because people in that age range are old enough to see what's wrong with the world and have clear ideas about how it should look which they can articulate through their art, and young enough not to have been deterred by the harsh financial, cultural, medical, political, familial, and other realities of life that can grind away idealism as one gets older. Indeed, records by more mature rock and rollers often point to the difficulty of staying true to youthful ideals as one ages. Whatever creative decline afflicts most rock and rollers as they age, the recordings they've made and the songs they've written don't change and thus serve as reminders to us of the people we'd hoped to be. The term "Classic Rock" points to this reality-- it's only a classic if many people have enjoyed it for a long time. These records and the people who made them remind us of what we want, in our hearts, the world to look like, and so when they pass, we feel that a bit of our soul, our dream, our vision for the future has also died. In an almost literal sense, we've lost some hope.
And so, like so many of us, I've been spinning a lot of Bowie and Eagles records (Lemmy's Motorhead records, too, but not as much 'cuz those are harder for my family members to take, even if I am in mourning). For my regular Tuesday night gig at the bar, I threw together covers of Bowie's "Moonage Daydream" (yes, from Ziggy-- the Scary Monsters songs are too fuckin hard for me to play solo acoustic) and the Frey-Jackson Browne penned Eagles classic "Take It Easy." Glorious singalongs ensued, more Bowie and Frey tunes were called, and tears flowed like at a good, sad but also celebratory funeral. The trite but wonderful immortal miracle of our age is that while David and Glenn have departed, their records and the songs they wrote have not and will not. Ever.
