Sometime around 2016, I got the horrible sense that we were slowly moving into a new era of rock history: a period when the musicians we loved and were always with us were beginning to die.
We’d lost many rock stars before then, but they somehow seemed reasonably few and far between. But 2016 felt like some kind of tipping point. That one year, we lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey of The Eagles, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael. We lost both Keith Emerson and Greg Leg of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane/Starship. Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire. Beatles producer George Martin. And that’s only a partial list.
It got worse in 2017. Gord Downie, Tom Petty, Gregg Allman, Chris Cornell, AC/DC’s Malcolm Young, Walter Becker of Steely Dan and Chuck Berry. The following year, it was Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Avicii, Aretha Franklin, and Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks. In 2019, we heard of the death of Keith Flint of The Prodigy, Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, Ranking Roger of The English Beat/General Public, Ric Ocasek of The Cars, and drumming legend Ginger Baker.
I could go on for 2020 and 2021, but you get the idea.
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The one thing that binds all humans on this planet together is that some day, we’re all going to shuffle off into the great beyond. No one is getting any younger. And over the next decade, we’re going to lose some of the personalities who have always been there for us over the last 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years.
With that grim reality in mind, I think the time has come to institute an annual look back at those whom we’ve lost in the last 12 months as a way of recognizing their contributions to the world of music. This is 2022 in memoriam.
Songs heard on this show:
- Sadies, Stop and Start
- Depeche Mode, Personal Jesus
- Julee Cruise, Falling
- Jon and Vangelis, Friends of Mr. Cairo
- Screaming Trees, Nearly Lost You
- Dead Kennedys, California Uber Alles
- Happy Mondays, Step On
- Teenage Head, Top Down
- Foo Fighters, Times Like These
We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s, and anywhere else with a transmitter and I’ll see what I can do.
Eric Wilhite has this playlist.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s, and anywhere else with a transmitter and I’ll see what I can do.
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