"Lord, make me middle-class and anonymous."
This is one of the things for which I actually pray. If people still made mix tapes, you could make an excellent mix tape of music by people who have died in this millennium by drug overdose. Below are my favorite songs from the more famous members of this grim club.
Side A: 2000s overdoses
"Would?" by Alice in Chains- Layne Staley (also Mike Starr)
"Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen- Dave Schulthise
"Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers- Bobby Hatfield
"Will You Be There" by Michael Jackson
"See You Around" by Vic Chesnutt
Side B: 2010s overdoses
"Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots- Scott Weiland
"Heaven" by Warrant- Jani Lane
"Purple Rain" by Prince
"Echo" by Tom Petty (also Howie Epstein of the Heartbreakers)
"Daffodil Lament" by The Cranberries- Dolores O'Riordan
"I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston
I love all these songs. I didn't realize some of these people had even died, like the Righteous Brother and Jani Lane. Each of the tracks above is on the soundtrack for a time in my life, or a person, or some defining event.
I am assuming with the angelic-voiced Dolores O'Riordan that it was either suicide or a drug overdose. I find that when no details are given, the cause of death is usually one of the two. Since she died, I have been listening to her albums and watching videos of Cranberries performances. In 2007, I had the good fortune to attend a solo concert in a small venue in Charlottesville. Dolores was small, Irish, feisty, and a total superstar. The charisma radiated off of her. I thoroughly enjoyed the show and left there in awe.
When I was 18 and new to the Army, I spent March 1995 in a one-month rotation at the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, California. Remember when you could only fit so many cassettes- then CDs- in your luggage, your car, your backpack? "No Need to Argue" was one of the handful of cassettes I brought along. I remember like it was yesterday listening to that album as I lay in my sleeping bag on the floor of a clamshell helicopter hangar. That voice!
I listened extensively to the Vic Chesnutt album "About to Choke," containing the song "See You Around" in 1997, right at the time my high school friend Alec Vitarius collapsed and died from a brain aneurysm while working in the kitchen of his father's restaurant. That spring, I had stopped at Alec's college, looked him up and called him, then spent a memorable afternoon catching up and playing guitar. Two months later, just before reporting to West Point for the first time, I was on a trip to Germany with a friend when I heard Alec had died.
Alec was optimistic, ambitious, and unfailingly kind and friendly to everyone. Virtually our entire high school class attended his funeral. He loved sports, but the condition which led to his early death limited him to being a spectator. He loved baseball and the Yankees. In middle school, we were in the gifted program together and with our friends Antoinette, Kathleen, Scott, and others whose names I'm sure a glance at my yearbook would bring back in a flash, we had laughs in various creative pursuits. We sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" as a duet for a play tryout, adding doo-wop flourishes in the chorus. He got the part, I think it was "Man of La Mancha." We both had key roles in a different 7th (or 6th) grade play, and I remember the words to his songs better than my own. I remember those times, nearly 30 years ago, pretty vividly. Alec's mother Sharon had died of cancer a few years before him. After Alec passed, his father closed the family restaurant and moved away with his brother and sister.
At the funeral, I told his father "Alec was a good friend." "He still is a good friend," his dad replied, wanting me to keep a dead friend in the present tense. And he was right. Alec is a good friend. His optimism and academic curiosity set an example for me that helped me in college. He is a good friend. Like everyone we lose, I carry him with me as a memory and a blueprint of a life well lived. I have tried to be like Alec, and do things he didn't get to. And when Vic Chesnutt warbles the line "I'll see you around" over and over, I'm 20 years old again and listening to that song on the night I learned he died.
Such is the power of music and memory. I can go months without hearing those songs or having their attendant memories. But they're always in my head.
I sometimes scoff at the outpouring of grief at a rock star's death. "So what?" I say. "Their music is still there and their best years were behind them, anyway." Lately, though, I get it. These tormented souls made major contributions to the soundtracks of our lives. Their emotions become ours. "[O]ne must still have chaos within oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star," Nietzsche wrote. The dancing stars are Michael Jackson songs, are Van Gogh paintings, Marlon Brando performances.
I don't have a conclusion, just a rumination on the perfectly legal opioids which killed many of these great singers. I had knee surgery in 2014. When I read the litany of potential side effects with the bottle of Hydrocodone the surgeon prescribed me, I decided that the devil I knew, "knee pain," was the better alternative. I don't know what physical, mental, or spiritual ailments drove these creative people to turn to drugs, but I am thankful my cross doesn't include them. I pray for the deceased, and I pray for you, dear friends. May you carry your own burdens with grace, and know that I love you, that many others love you, and that there is happiness and peace in your future.
This is one of the things for which I actually pray. If people still made mix tapes, you could make an excellent mix tape of music by people who have died in this millennium by drug overdose. Below are my favorite songs from the more famous members of this grim club.
Side A: 2000s overdoses
"Would?" by Alice in Chains- Layne Staley (also Mike Starr)
"Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen- Dave Schulthise
"Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers- Bobby Hatfield
"Will You Be There" by Michael Jackson
"See You Around" by Vic Chesnutt
Side B: 2010s overdoses
"Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots- Scott Weiland
"Heaven" by Warrant- Jani Lane
"Purple Rain" by Prince
"Echo" by Tom Petty (also Howie Epstein of the Heartbreakers)
"Daffodil Lament" by The Cranberries- Dolores O'Riordan
"I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston
I love all these songs. I didn't realize some of these people had even died, like the Righteous Brother and Jani Lane. Each of the tracks above is on the soundtrack for a time in my life, or a person, or some defining event.
When I was 18 and new to the Army, I spent March 1995 in a one-month rotation at the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, California. Remember when you could only fit so many cassettes- then CDs- in your luggage, your car, your backpack? "No Need to Argue" was one of the handful of cassettes I brought along. I remember like it was yesterday listening to that album as I lay in my sleeping bag on the floor of a clamshell helicopter hangar. That voice!
I listened extensively to the Vic Chesnutt album "About to Choke," containing the song "See You Around" in 1997, right at the time my high school friend Alec Vitarius collapsed and died from a brain aneurysm while working in the kitchen of his father's restaurant. That spring, I had stopped at Alec's college, looked him up and called him, then spent a memorable afternoon catching up and playing guitar. Two months later, just before reporting to West Point for the first time, I was on a trip to Germany with a friend when I heard Alec had died.
Alec was optimistic, ambitious, and unfailingly kind and friendly to everyone. Virtually our entire high school class attended his funeral. He loved sports, but the condition which led to his early death limited him to being a spectator. He loved baseball and the Yankees. In middle school, we were in the gifted program together and with our friends Antoinette, Kathleen, Scott, and others whose names I'm sure a glance at my yearbook would bring back in a flash, we had laughs in various creative pursuits. We sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" as a duet for a play tryout, adding doo-wop flourishes in the chorus. He got the part, I think it was "Man of La Mancha." We both had key roles in a different 7th (or 6th) grade play, and I remember the words to his songs better than my own. I remember those times, nearly 30 years ago, pretty vividly. Alec's mother Sharon had died of cancer a few years before him. After Alec passed, his father closed the family restaurant and moved away with his brother and sister.
At the funeral, I told his father "Alec was a good friend." "He still is a good friend," his dad replied, wanting me to keep a dead friend in the present tense. And he was right. Alec is a good friend. His optimism and academic curiosity set an example for me that helped me in college. He is a good friend. Like everyone we lose, I carry him with me as a memory and a blueprint of a life well lived. I have tried to be like Alec, and do things he didn't get to. And when Vic Chesnutt warbles the line "I'll see you around" over and over, I'm 20 years old again and listening to that song on the night I learned he died.
Such is the power of music and memory. I can go months without hearing those songs or having their attendant memories. But they're always in my head.
I sometimes scoff at the outpouring of grief at a rock star's death. "So what?" I say. "Their music is still there and their best years were behind them, anyway." Lately, though, I get it. These tormented souls made major contributions to the soundtracks of our lives. Their emotions become ours. "[O]ne must still have chaos within oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star," Nietzsche wrote. The dancing stars are Michael Jackson songs, are Van Gogh paintings, Marlon Brando performances.
I don't have a conclusion, just a rumination on the perfectly legal opioids which killed many of these great singers. I had knee surgery in 2014. When I read the litany of potential side effects with the bottle of Hydrocodone the surgeon prescribed me, I decided that the devil I knew, "knee pain," was the better alternative. I don't know what physical, mental, or spiritual ailments drove these creative people to turn to drugs, but I am thankful my cross doesn't include them. I pray for the deceased, and I pray for you, dear friends. May you carry your own burdens with grace, and know that I love you, that many others love you, and that there is happiness and peace in your future.
"I do believe I'm getting old enough
To believe in better things."
(who is alive and well)
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