rock music and death assignment

[stype1]

hi! I am currently doing a research project for university and the question is... Does or has premature death enhanced or increased popularity for rock musicians?

can you thinknof any examples and what is your take on this?

[Karen2005]

Jeff Buckley immediately springs to my mind. I'm not sure how many people had heard of him prior to his death in 1997. He had only released one album, Grace, but now this album is classed as one of the greatest of all time.

Quite a telling example - Every week the NME seems to mention Jeff Buckley in one way or another, usually in connection to a new singer who sounds "Buckley-esque". However, my husband has recently found an old issue of the NME published shortly after Buckley's death and a reader had written a letter lamenting his death and how few people had heard of him. That just goes to show that the NME jumped on the bandwagon after his death, but they didn't really write much about him or his music whilst he was alive.

[gary baldy]

Nick Drake
His albums only sold in their hundreds whilst he was alive but after an early suicide he was rediscovered and is far more appreciated now and sells a few more records aswell!
Ian Curtis
You could argue that New Order would never have happened if Curtis had lived. As it was Joy Division's work stands alone and New Order became a highly relevant (and stylistically very different) band inspite of and despite of his death.

[andy-hughes]

The list is endless - Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Marc Bolan to name just a few - all sell far more albums now than when they were alive.

The reason is that we love our rock stars to be legends, musically, and physically, so what better than a rock star who is never going to grow old, but be eternally young, and out of reach, it's tailor made for youth culture.

Elvis just about managed it - he was well on the slippery slope when he died, but his body of work and his influence assured his legend was enshrined, although oddly far more often as the Las Vegas parody he became rather then the hip-swivelling greasy quiffed sex god he was at the start of his fame.

Likewise, Marc Bolan was fat and drug-addled and hadn't made a decent record for years, but selective memory fondly recalls his glitter face, corkscrewe hair and ladies shoes as he shimmied and bopped to those timeless glam classics, and skips over the paunchy whey-faced slurring loon he became as his career slid down the pan before his death.

OK, I'll stop now, i could knock out a 5,000 word thesis if you want - no problem!

[milkybarkid]

john lennon was shot because of his popularity so i think you could include him. kurt cobain and elliot smith alledgedly killed themselves because they didnt like how famous they had become and the pressure that was put on them. also, many rock musicians have died of drug overdoses which you could probably attribute to their rock lifestyle.

[ermintrude35]

..eva cassidy...

[gary baldy]

God - she was rubbish wasn't she?

[ermintrude35]

..yes terrible...unheard of before her death though....

[spat]

I agree with gary baldy about joy Division.

they have recently been inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame and a new film is due out about ian Curtis life which will surely just add to the myth. New Order are set to make some new recordings for the Soundtrack as Joy Division and recently have been playing live sets largely based around joy Division.

a lot of bands around at the moment are crediting Joy Division/New Order as being hugely influential