Rock Heros

God only knows what I’d be without you

Posted on by brucehhackett

imgres-2Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles.  Diana Ross as Billie Holiday.  Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin.  Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.

These are just a few of the amazing performances we’ve seen in the movie genre known as the biopic, or biographical film.  It’s been around since the beginning of motion pictures, focusing primarily on historical figures, presidents, authors, actors and other celebrities.  Biopics on popular music figures first emerged in the late ’50s and early ’60s, with Hollywood treatments of such luminaries as Benny Goodman, Hank Williams and the like.  But things didn’t really get rolling until the ’70s, when biopics of Billie Holiday (“Lady Sings the Blues,” 1972), Woody Guthrie (“Bound for Glory,” 1976) and Buddy Holly (“The Buddy Holly Story,” 1979) were nominated for, or won, Academy Awards for the star or the film.

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If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?

Posted on by brucehhackett

images-9“I’ve lost a lot of friends on this highway, so long, everyone, I watched them all sail into the distance, like a setting sun, they’d only just begun, and we just lost another one…”  Graham Nash, 2002

It’s a sad truth that the creative arts fields — music, film, literature — have had more than their fair share of gifted artists who have died prematurely.  In popular music in particular, a disturbing number of promising, successful talents have left us at a young age.  Considering that the average age of death in the US these days is nearly 79, anyone dying in their 40s or 50s has died young.  Those passing away in the 20s or 30s have died WAY too young.

In rock ‘n roll’s first couple of decades, it seemed to be an almost monthly occurrence that we’d lose a major player to drugs, or suicide, or a plane crash, or a bullet, or a terminal illness.  I don’t know about you, but for a while there, I got really tired of grieving for yet another musical hero who bit the dust for whatever reason.

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