From Elvis to Nick Drake,
music lives on.Elvis Presley secured number one, last week, in historic 1000th compilation of British charts, with A Fool Such As I ? 44 years since its original release. This is some achievement, but does his premature death have something to do with it? After all, a contemporary such as Jerry Lee Lewis, now well into pensionable age, doesn?t look likely to make a comeback at top of present-day, mainstream play lists.
What?s at work here is that powerful emotion: nostalgia. Though Elvis was taken from us once ravages of middle age were pretty much advanced, our collective memory of him remains frozen at an earlier, more flattering time. We all like to recall him as that vital, charismatic, leathered-up, turbo-charged macho of Jail House Rock. His early death has ensured his musical immortality and that he remains forever young in our hearts.
From Glenn Miller to Buddy Holly, an untimely death has endowed a certain mystique to life and times of performer, not to mention: bankability, qualities that endure from beyond grave. Just take a look at number of Glenn Miller compilations that are periodically released and success that musical ?Buddy? has had in recent times.
Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison left a vast, gaping void in music landscape when they passed away, in early 1970s. However, their musical legacy has taken on cult status. The posthumous marketing of Hendrix material (from huge quantities of available, unreleased studio sessions and recordings of live concerts) exceeds that which he released in his lifetime ? and though much of it falls well below sublime heights touched by: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Leyland (recorded with his classic band, Jimi Hendrix experience), it hasn?t deterred buying public from continuing to buy into Hendrix legend.
Jim Morrison (wayward rock-child, touched by spirit of Beat generation) with an exceptional talent for self-destruction, has been seen by many as a willing victim of rock and roll excess. His death in Paris in 1971, in his late 20s, and burial at Pere Lachaise cemetery (the resting place of great and good: from Edith Piaf to Oscar Wilde) have all added to Morrison mythology, which has never lost its capacity to fascinate and sell records. Like Elvis, image that survives is that of an arresting and unblemished youth, before excess took its toll.
