Most fateful flights of music
News of the plane crash over the weekend that killed four people and
severely injured former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker and noted
turntablist Adam Goldstein (aka DJ AM) serves as yet another sobering
reminder that in the ever-unpredictable world of celebrity culture, fate
can and often does play a significant hand.
This seems especially true when it comes to pop music, which over the
decades has seen its fair share of unfortunate life-ending events
specifically related to air travel. Some of the most famous have
occurred "in the line of duty"-on the way to or from concerts, personal
appearances, photo/video shoots, etc.-a fact that not only has magnified
the tragedies for fans but also has frozen in time the lives of these
stars inside our collective memory banks.
For example, in just a few months-February 3, 1959, to be exact-it'll
be the 50th anniversary of what's generally considered the most
well-known of all music-associated plane crashes: the Clear Lake Iowa
accident that took the lives of rock and rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie
Valens, and "Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson. Holly was only 22 and Valens
hadn't even turned 18 when they perished, and as Don McLean so aptly put
it in his song "American Pie," for anyone who grew up during rock's
Golden Age, it would always feel like "The Day The Music Died."
Meanwhile, country music fans often point to the March 1963 Tennessee
plane crash that took away superstar Patsy Cline along with fellow
performers Lloyd "Cowboy" Copas and Harold "Hawkshaw" Hawkins as their
own era-stamping equivalent. And soul music fans, not to mention music
fans in general, all mourned the loss of Otis Redding (and four members
of his backing group the Bar-Kays) after their plane went down near
Madison Wisconsin on December 10, 1967-ironically, mere days after
Redding had recorded what would be his classic posthumous hit, "Sittin'
On The Dock of the Bay."
Sometimes a plane crash can carry added symbolism. When Swing Era
bandleader Glenn Miller's plane disappeared on the way to Paris for a
scheduled performance for Allied troops fighting in Europe in
mid-December 1944, his death became a powerful emblem of American
patriotism during World War II. And when Southern rock group Lynyrd
Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steven Gaines and backing
vocalist Cassie Gaines lost their lives in October 1977 in a crash near
Gillsburg Mississippi, it seemed that perhaps the band had had
premonitions: their latest album Street Survivors had just been released
featuring an original cover (later changed) that depicted the group
standing in flames, and was eerily highlighted by a song about death
called "That Smell."
As evidenced by the likes of singer-songwriters Jim Croce (1973) and
John Denver (1997), former teen idol Ricky Nelson (1985), hard rock
guitarist Randy Rhoads (1982), bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan (1990), and
R&B vocalist Aaliyah (2001), musician-associated plane crash deaths cut
across all styles and genres. Thankfully, the names of Travis Barker and
DJ AM did not have to be added to this fateful list. |