I am no doubt dating myself here, but when I was a wee lad there were two things on television on the rainy day Saturday afternoons of the early 1970s: Wonderfully cheesy horror movies starring either Dracula, Frankenstein or the Wolfman (and sometimes all three), and wonderfully sentimental Shirley Temple films, often co-starring Arthur Treacher (yes, that Arthur Treacher). Temple was a remarkably precocious child actress who always played adorable but plucky little girls who alternately disarmed the adults with her charm and chutzpah or outsmarted them when they tried to do her wrong. Temple died last night at […]
RIP: Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman Dead @ 46
THE ATLANTIC: Famous deaths invite hyperbole. The news that Philip Seymour Hoffman was discovered dead today in an apartment bathroom, with a syringe sticking out of his arm, seems like an occasion to overreact with some exaggerated summary of his career—something like “most talented and kaleidoscopic actor of his time.” Except, in this case, the compliment isn’t hyperbolic at all. It’s just an accurate description, as true yesterday as it is today. And the competition isn’t even that close. MORE THE NEW YORKER: Philip Seymour Hoffman gave one of the greatest onscreen performances that anyone ever gave, in “The […]
IN MEMORIAM: ‘Pete Seeger Made Me Understand How Far Behind Enemy Lines I Was Living’
Illustration by ALEX FINE DAVE MARSH: If nothing else, Pete Seeger made me understand how far behind enemy lines I was living—he showed me the road that had to be traveled, if I really wanted to live. He did this the same way that James Baldwin and Elvis Presley and John Coltrane did it: by example, and with the same generosity and the same sense that the world was packed with a load of insurmountable cruelty and that, nevertheless, the truth was that something better had managed to survive within it. Which meant, for each of us, a choice and […]
RIP: Pete Seeger, Inexhaustible Avatar Of American Folk And Fearless Populist Troubadour, Dead At 94
EDITOR’S NOTE: This review of Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions originally ran in PW back in 2006. I think it ably serves double duty as a Pete Seeger obituary, which was in the back of my mind when I wrote it given that he was 87 at the time. Goodnight Mr. Seeger wherever you are. It’s no accident that you don’t really know what Pete Seeger did. That he’s truly larger than life, an American original, the kind that walk out of storybooks, like Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed, but more real. That he more or less singlehandedly carried […]
RIP: Phil Everly Of The Everly Brothers Dead @ 74
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Phil Everly, who with his brother, Don, made up the most revered vocal duo of the rock-music era, their exquisite harmonies profoundly influencing the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and countless younger-generation rock, folk and country singers, died Friday in Burbank of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his wife, Patti Everly, told The Times. He was 74. During the height of their popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they charted nearly three dozen hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, among them “Cathy’s Clown,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love,” “When […]
RIP: Al Goldstein, Dirtiest Man Alive, Dead @ 77
NEW YORK TIMES: Al Goldstein, the scabrous publisher whose Screw magazine pushed hard-core pornography into the cultural mainstream, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He was 77. The cause was believed to be renal failure, his lawyer, Charles C. DeStefano, said. Mr. Goldstein did not invent the dirty magazine, but he was the first to present it to a wide audience without the slightest pretense of classiness or subtlety. Sex as depicted in Screw was seldom pretty, romantic or even particularly sexy. It was, primarily, a business, with consumers and suppliers like any other. […]
RIP: Ronnie Biggs, Great Train Robber, Dead @ 84
NEW YORK TIMES: Ronnie Biggs, a carpenter and petty crook who became an international celebrity for his role in one of Britain’s most famous crimes, the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and for the decades he spent afterward eluding a worldwide manhunt by Scotland Yard, died on Wednesday in London. He was 84. “Sadly we lost Ron during the night,” they wrote in a Twitter feed. “As always, his timing was perfect to the end.” A long-scheduled two-part dramatization of the Great Train Robbery, a half century after it took place, is to be broadcast by the BBC on Wednesday […]
RIP: Lou Reed, Pope Of Alt-Rock, Dead @ 71
ROLLING STONE: Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May. With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk […]
RIP: JJ Cale, Songwriter’s Songwriter, Dead @ 74
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: J.J. Cale, the songwriter behind the Eric Clapton classics “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” died Friday at the age of 74. Born John Weldon Cale in 1938 in Oklahoma City, Okla., the Grammy winner was an originator of the “Tulsa Sound,” a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country and jazz influences. His career saw him release 14 albums and his songs have been covered by acts including Johnny Cash, Santana, Tom Petty, Waylon Jennings and Captain Beefheart. His biggest U.S. hit single, “Crazy Mama,” peaked at No. 22 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1972. MORE
RIP: T-Model Ford, Last Of The Authentic Badass Delta Bluesmen, Dead At Either 89 Or 94
Photo by SCOTT BARRETTA SPIN: Born James Lewis Carter Ford, he grew up with an abusive father, got married six times and supposedly fathered 26 children (his current wife, Estella, was by his side when he passed). Over his nine or so decades, he’d been shot, poisoned by a woman, stabbed by a wife, saw another spouse leave him for his dad, and served two years on a chain gang for stabbing a man to death in a bar fight. He picked up the guitar at 58 when his fifth wife gave him one — on the night she left […]
RIP: Tony Soprano Has Left The Building
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Gandolfini, who had studied the Meisner technique of acting for two years, said that he used it to focus his anger and incorporate it into his performances. In an interview for the television series “Inside the Actors Studio,” Mr. Gandolfini said he would deliberately hit himself on the head or stay up all night to evoke the desired reaction. If you are tired, every single thing that somebody does makes you mad, Mr. Gandolfini said in the interview. “Drink six cups of coffee. Or just walk around with a rock in your shoe. It’s silly, […]
RIP: Michael Hasting’s Greatest Hits
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] As you may have heard by now, fearless investigative reporter Michael Hastings was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles early Tuesday morning. He will be missed. Few other reporters on the national security beat — where access is often traded for compromise and kid gloves treatment — wrote so boldly and fearlessly about the dark side of the military industrial complex moon. In tribute, we are re-running some of his greatest hits: FOX NEWS: The top U.S. war commander in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday for an interview in which he said he felt betrayed by […]
THE END: Doors Organist Ray Manzarek Dead At 74
Artwork by MDSigno NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Manzarek founded the Doors in 1965 with the singer and lyricist Jim Morrison, whom he would describe decades later as “the personification of the Dionysian impulse each of us has inside.” They would go on to recruit the drummer John Densmore and the guitarist Robby Krieger. Mr. Manzarek played a crucial role in creating music that was hugely popular and widely imitated, selling tens of millions of albums. It was a lean, transparent sound that could be swinging, haunted, meditative, suspenseful or circuslike. The Doors’ songs were generally credited to the entire group. […]