burning out, fading away and/or going rubbish
I was mulling over some of the outpourings on Twitter following the death of Amy Winehouse. Stuff about the “27 club”, distress at a rare genius cut short and about why it is that such talent is so often marred by addiction to drink, drugs or general thrillseeking.
It is unfortunate that Winehouse’s death surprised nobody. Constant tabloid images of her emaciated, tattooed frame, stores of drink and drug abuse, misguided relationships, aborted visits to rehab, YouTube footage of shambolic, botched gigs have all chronicled this woman’s decline. Indeed, her European tour was cancelled after a recent chaotic attempt at a performance in Serbia.
Her body of work is good but now truncated. 2 albums showcased a good songwriter with a distinctive voice, displayed to brilliant effect in the second by the production of Mark Ronson.
But is she a tragic genius? Do talent and self-destruction really go hand in hand? It seems to me that such premature deaths, far from being an inevitable companion of genius, just throws the existing work of the artist into relief. It is forever coloured with the poignance of what might have been yet to come.
Many of the early deaths of rock musicians have been due to recklessness plus alcohol, rather than the drug abuse of which so many were and are fond. Drowning, choking and freezing to death while mortally sozzled appears to have happened so frequently in the 1960s and 70s that it’s amazing any of them are still alive.
.. and that’s the point. Eric Clapton was a contemporary of Jimi Hendrix, and matched Hendrix’s wild lifestyle with a hedonistic existence of his own. Yet Clapton is an establishment figure now, not out of place at a royal garden party. The surviving Stones continue to tour, giving mediocre stand up comedians material about the continued existence of Keith Richards (and surely anyone running a book in the 60s would have had their money on Keith, not Brian). The Who, who should have known not to give hostages to fortune with a lyric like “Hope I die before I get old,” bounced back from the death of Keith Moon. Pete Townshend toils away at a Causaubon-style memoir whilst Roger Daltrey, famously, owned a trout farm.
AC/DC’s original singer, Bon Scott, froze to death in his car whilst passed out drunk inside it. But the band replaced him and released what is arguably their best album following his death.
Few new, young fans attend Daltrey’s concerts or buy his new records, and whilst the Stones have a loyal following, vanishingly few are being stolen away from Justin Bieber. Few trendsetters attend AC/DC gigs (although they will happily wear the t-shirts).
Other artists die, unnoticed at the time, yet have posthumous genius-hood thrust upon them at a later date. Nick Drake’s finely crafted pastoral folk songs were neglected by just about everyone, including his record company. Slowly driven insane, his songs became more bitter and angry, with his final work before his death being little more than a howl of rage. It was decades before he was rediscovered, in the 1990s. Had he been discovered working in the Cambridge branch of Waterstones at the time, it’s arguable that he would be a little less revered and a little more, well, human.
That young people (men in particular) live recklessly is not surprising. That some, given money and fame, behave even more recklessly, is also not surprising. That some die is therefore not at all surprising, or spooky, or interlinked in some mystical way. A correlation between being a rock star and burning out rather than fading away is obvious.
Winehouse’s death is sad, a little sordid, and not unexpected. But an inevitable consequence of her genius? I don’t think so. No doubt had she lived, gotten clean and released further albums for us to appraise, she would have become an institution, and we would have bored of her, as we do with so many others.
Add comment July 24th, 2011