Celebrity deaths and you

George Harrison hit me very, very, very hard. (Still have the mix CD of George songs I made the night of the vigil on my college campus.) I wasn't born in '80, so I'd grown up and become a Beatlemaniac always knowing that John had been shot and killed. It was just a fact of life to me. So this was the first real Beatle loss I'd ever experienced.

I don't even want to think about when Paul and Ringo go.

 

Lennon's death kind of shook up 15-year-old Huggy. He was my fave Beatle and he was everywhere now that Double Fantasy had been released and he was talking of more albums and maybe a tour. It was so sudden and violent and with Howard Cosell announcing it on MNF...

I'm a huge Stevie Ray Vaughn fan and was bummed out a bit by his death. Christ that was almost 20 years ago...

 

Don't really mourn celebrity deaths, but they often serve as a jolt to my own sense of mortality. When certain celebs die, those that I guess in a sense left some sort of imprint on the highway of my life, it's a haunting reminder to me that my day will come as well.

And it's not all celebrity deaths; just certain ones for some funny reason. Less likely to be those that went in a fiery car crash or drug overdose; more those that succumb to an extended illness like cancer and such.

Farrah, in a way, fits in that way. She was never my favorite Angel, and I didn't have any deep attraction or bond to her specifically; but, I remember watching her when I was young, when she was so young. And now she's gone, well, it leaves me with the feeling of how much time can I expect to have left as well. Just sort of makes me stop and hear that life clock tick, tick, tick a little bit.

And in terms of a specific celebrity, while I didn't necessarily mourn the death of Keith Moon, I certainly wish he was still around, just for all the fun and good natured havoc he created wherever he was.

 

Payne Stewart was a good call (sadly). He was on my fantasy golf team for years and I grew ro appreciate his game.

 

Don't know about anyone else but Patrick Swayze's death will be a difficult one in this corner of the world.

 

Sailing lore has so many tales about ghost ships. The idea of a ghost plane flying for hours and then falling out of the sky somehow plugged into that eerie sense.

I turned 14 in the summer of '68, an age where you've started paying attention to the real world and you're prone to melodramatic reactions. I vividly remember concluding that anyone who tried to turn America toward her better angels would be shot.

From a strictly celebrity perspective? Probably Joe Strummer.

 

I hope Spencer and Heidi go at the same time, because I can't imagine grieving the death of one of them in addition to sharing the anguish of the other, who must find a way to carry on.

 

Lennon, because of what it seemed to symbolize - violence cutting down someone who had made anti-violence this mantra

that it was so unnecessary - shot outside his home by some fucking whackjob narcissist

people like Elvis, Cobain and, presumably with reports of prescription drug abuse, Jackson, I feel are architects of their own demise

lennon just wanted to live his life

 

I cried when Lennon died because my girlfriend at the time was real upset about it and I was trying to be a new-age sensitive guy. We even went to a candle-light memorial at the college union.

Then, we went back to her place and I tried to help her forget her sadness by bumping her noggin against her headboard.

 

Not for me, buit for the people who I work with and live with, Dale Sr. was much more hard hitting than Jackson.

 

Nice to see you could be such a giving person.

And giving. And giving. And giving...

 

Luther and Dan Fogelberg, artists my wife and I saw multiple times in concert and shared as favorites, and who died much, much too young.
But both were limited to, "That's a shame."
People who are crying about Michael Jackson's death at this point in his evolution just want to get on TV.