Our lives are diminished when we lose a great actor, author or visual artist, but rarely does that spark the same sort of worldwide grief as the recent deaths of David Bowie and Prince.
My generation has lost two of its great geniuses, its touchstone artists. At every milestone, it seems, their music has been the soundtrack of our lives. What teenager didn’t identify with “Rebel, Rebel,” or pine to be one? Who didn’t dance from the sheer joy of life when the jukebox blared “Little Red Corvette?”
Skyscrapers the world over — and even the White House — glowed purple in Prince’s honor; as one commentator marveled, “Who owns a color?” The streets of his hometown of Minneapolis transformed themselves into an impromptu dance party.
It reminded me of the outpouring of love and loss when John Lennon was murdered in 1980. Baby Boomers the world over felt as if a part of our youth died that day.
Unlike other art forms, music surrounds us at nearly all times, whether in the background or blasting from our iPhones (or, in ancient times, our record players).
We hear a song, and we remember our first love.
We hear a song, and we remember our first heartbreak.
We hear a song, and we remember the day we got married.
We hear a song, and we remember the day our child took a first step … or went to his first prom … or graduated from high school.
“If you think back to any part of your life there is most likely a song or songs that will pop into your head,” said my friend Dennis Kiel.
My friend Steven Rosen, a Cincinnati journalist and music writer, believes that “musicians are especially mourned because they became culture heroes by being themselves, as opposed to actors who play roles. So the identification with those you like can be really close, really strong.”
The response was so strong with Bowie and Prince, he said, because “they were viewed as visionaries who changed music and fashion — and maybe confused the older generation — and maintained their youthful looks, their stamina, and their position as harbingers of social change even after hits stopped. They were Modernists whose ideas never seemed dated.”
I think he’s on to something. As “Roots” frontman Questlove wrote in his “Rolling Stone” tribute, “From the age of 11, Prince was in my ears and in my head. I patterned everything in my life after him: his fashion, his affect, his taste in women and, of course, his taste in music.”
Sol Smith was one of many friends who observed that the music of our youth exerts a particularly profound influence: “I think we connect with music on a primal level throughout our lives, but especially during adolescence. It becomes part of our identity. When the person who created that piece of you is gone, you mourn the loss because you’re suddenly incomplete.”
Concurred my Miami University classmate and fellow writer Sue MacDonald, “Who doesn’t remember, as a teen, sitting next to a record player or stereo, boom box, cassette player, CD player, or iPod and listening to every word, singing along, learning harmonies, replaying certain riffs, feeling something deep inside resonate from and with the music. That’s why it’s so personal; music is intrinsic to who we are. That’s why we connect so strongly … and feel a loss when the connection is severed for good.”
My friend Michelle LeCompte has been thinking about this a lot since attending a Paul Simon concert in Des Moines, Iowa, last week. “All his music is wonderful, but the songs that moved me deeply were those that he wrote when I was a teenager and young adult,” she said. “Those were years of figuring out who I was — and music helped with both the discovery and definition. ‘Homeward Bound’ took me home, back to who I was and who I was becoming.”
Music is at once the most intimate and the most communal of art forms. It is the place we can go with our most private thoughts. As Dayton-area musician Georgia Goad observed, “So there we are, alone … but with the voice and sounds of these artists to either support our current emotional state or motivate us into another emotional state. We hear the songs and it reminds us of ourselves, our moments of change, our history. Words often fail us during times of our most profound emotions. And music is there to say how we really feel.”
And yet few things are as unifying, or as thrilling, as a great live show, when the performer opens a vein for us, puts it all on the line, and inspires us to do the same in our own lives.
When someone asked me recently who was at the top of my lists of performers I still wanted to see, I replied without hesitation, “Prince.”
Now that can never be. We have so many videos to remind us of what was lost, including a blazing Prince guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that caused my husband to exclaim, “He’s like Jimi Hendrix’ little brother!”
Hendrix’ music has never seemed more vital, more relevant. He’s on our kids’ playlists.
We can comfort ourselves with knowing that the music of Prince and David Bowie will live on, too, like that of so many other greats.
But we’re just not ready for them to join the pantheon of the lost.
What do you think? Why do the deaths of musicians feel so personal to us? What loss affected you the most deeply? Contact this columnist at maryjomccarty@gmail.com.
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