Fond farewell
Marcus Berkmann
Imore than 35 years since Buddy Holly land the Big Bopper went down in that plane crash, and almost exactly the same length of time since anyone realised that, in pop music, death isn't necessarily a had career move. I can't help being intrigued by the recent surge of interest in Kirsty MacColl, whose wonderful songs were considered marginal fluff or worse by most critics before she was mown down by a maniac in a motorboat. (The fact that no one has ever been prosecuted for her death seems to bolster her reputation yet further.) To some people, her absurdly early death may have invested her songs with a poignancy they didn't have when she was alive, although for the life of me I can't see why: they are what they are, and what they tend to be is clever and funny and viciously tuneful. Maybe it's the subtext of rock'n'roll throughout the ages that rock stars are living on the edge in the way that most of us don't — although many of them these days seem to be living near me in Highgate or Muswell Hill, which rather undermines that one, Seeing Ray Davies of the Kinks walk into your local pub, realise it's quiz night and race back out of the door in horror — well, he could almost be a normal person.
Normal people often die normal deaths, and we are reaching the point in pop history when performers are beginning to die of old age and natural causes. Johnny Cash croaked last year after some long-standing unpleasant disease, and Warren Zevon must be one of the first rock stars to die of lung cancer. Not that it came as a surprise, for Zevon smoked like a beagle, and the little corporate logo he put on all his later albums featured a skull with a fag drooping out of its mouth. Zevon's songs, too, were clever and funny and viciously tune
ful, in a mainstream Californian rock kind of way, although, as his recording budgets declined over the years, so did the quality of his records. Too many of the later albums are dominated by clumpy, swiftly recorded guitar rock that effortlessly concealed the artistry of the songs beneath. His last album, The Wind, recorded in failing health and released last year after his death, featured a busload of celebrity fans on backing vocals and was his hest in ages, possibly because it was his fast chance. Only Zevon could have got away with singing `Knockin' On Heaven's Door' when he actually was, without making it mawkish or self-pitying. And while irony was always his friend, there's something about the straightforwardness of a song like 'Keep Me In Your Heart For A While' which you can't help but respect. He knows he is going to die, he knows he is going to be missed, he knows he will be all but forgotten in ten years. There isn't a molecule of 'Poor me!' about it, which oddly enough may be what saves him from being forgotten in ten, 20 or even 30 years.
And so, 12 months later, comes the tribute album, performed by many of the same celebrity pals. Enjoy Every Sandwich (ArternisfRykodisc) has them all: Jackson Browne doing 'Poor Poor Pitiful Me', Don Henley from the Eagles making little headway with 'Searching For A Heart', Steve Earle cheerfully murdering 'Reconsider Me' in a version that has First Take written all over it. Why are these tribute albums so annoying? Usually it's because the interpreters concerned are a bunch of lo-fi indie numbskulls who rarely have 1 per cent of the talent of the songwriter they are interpreting. This one, though, has Bruce Springsteen, who in a live version manages to turn 'My Ride's Here' into a Bruce Springsteen song. And Bob Dylan's 'Mutineer' is terrifying: if anything, he sounds more dead than Zevon. The best versions are the ones you'd least expect: the 'comedy' actor Adam Sandler gives a spirited 'Werewolves Of London' and Billy Bob Thornton's version of 'The Wind' is marvellously spooky and dry. What they all do, strangely, is send you back to the originals, and Zevon's own croaky presence. He was a considerable songwriter, but I don't think I had ever really understood before just how good he was at singing his own songs. Poor old sod.
I was also going to talk about the startling last album by the late Elliott Smith, but I see I am going to have to leave that until next month. Who knows who else will have pegged out by then.
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