“Those are people who died, died,” sang Jim Carroll of The Jim Carroll Band in the 1980 hit, People Who Died. I was reminded of this song again when Meat Loaf passed away recently.
I was never a particular fan of Meat Loaf, but like many others, I experience a strange sense of loss whenever someone famous I have never met dies. In the case of Meat Loaf, I sort of have a soft spot for Bat out of Hell, as a pub I used to frequent in my youth had it on the jukebox and those who wished to get the most value for money played it as part of their selections with alarming regularity, being as it is nigh on 10 minutes long, so I have made his estate coppers richer by streaming the song on Spotify a few times since he died. It’s what you do though, isn’t it? Of course, the “humourists” have been out in force, lamenting the fact that we may now never know what the “that” is that Meat Loaf wouldn’t do for love. These people are the equivalent of those who become enraged by a headline without reading the accompanying article — the answer to what he would and wouldn’t do can be found in the song. Anyway, I digress.
Different celebrity deaths hit different people harder. Who can forget 2016 when EVERYONE died? David Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fischer, him out of Status Quo — it was a very long list. And the public outpouring of grief was colossal in most cases. But yes, I listened to their music or watched their films every single time one of them died.
But why do we get so upset by celeb deaths? It could be because some of their work has spoken to us in some way or that we feel some kind of connection to them. Or it could be because our devastation is purely selfish because we know they won’t make any more films or music. I’ll admit that that’s why I was upset when Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman and former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell died. And to a certain extent, Dave Brockie, better known as Oderus from shock rockers GWAR. You may or may not know who any of these people were, but there will no doubt be someone famous who died that upset you for precisely this reason.
The whole thing reminds me of a letter that was printed in Viz many years ago. I’m paraphrasing here, but it went something along the lines of:
Isn’t it funny how when a famous actor dies, their films are all shown on TV? I hope Clint Eastwood dies next, I bloody love him.
The celebrity death that hit me the hardest was Christopher Price. This is a weird one and I even had to google him because I’d forgotten his name. You probably don’t know who he was either. Anyway, there was once a celeb gossip show on BBC called Liquid News and he was the presenter. He basically delivered scathing and amusing monologues about famous people and he was possibly the funniest man on TV that never made it big. In 2002, he was found dead in his flat, having contracted a rare condition from an ear infection that led to heart failure. I was affected by his death for weeks, but why? I didn’t know him. And it wasn’t that the thought of no new episodes of Liquid News was too much to bear. I don’t really know and I can’t explain it. All I know is, I found his death more upsetting than those of some family members.
I suppose the point I wanted to make here is that everyone grieves differently. There’s certainly no right or wrong way to do it and if your grief is selfish, so what? It’s still real grief that you need to work through. On a happy note, one day the world will end and everyone in it, along with everything anyone has ever created, will be completely destroyed. Now there’s something to get upset about.
