Yes, Prince Is Gone But Then There Was Harry....

   In what will likely become known as "2016- The Year The Music Died", Prince's name has now been added to the list of performing icons who have passed what seems like long before their times.
   As each and every name has been agonizingly revealed to us, collectively we have mourned and individually dealt with whatever the loss of that artist has personally meant to us.
   The losses in the music world have been particularly hard to assimilate and come to grips with---Glenn Fry, Paul Kantner, Merle Haggard, David Bowie, Keith Emerson---the list just seems to go on and on.

   Social media has allowed us to both mourn the passing and celebrate the life of each and every musician and, most importantly, share the grief. Obviously, each passing has meant something different to us as individuals, depending on the role each performer played in our lives. A term I have heard frequently the last few months is "the soundtrack of my life". Essentially, many of the performers who have recently passed were responsible for the music we all played and the music that followed us around for all our formative years. The idea that the creators of this music are no longer with us seems intolerable.
   As I have dealt with the surprise and shock of so many icons' deaths, I have been fortunate in one way---none of them were intrinsically part of the soundtrack of my life. As much as I appreciated their artistry, there wasn't a lot there that really touched me in an important or personal way.
   

There was a particularly dark day for me, musically-speaking. On July 16, 1981 I was walking along a dusty road in the middle of Pinery Provincial Park when I heard a radio report from a neighbouring campground letting me know that Harry Chapin had been killed in a car crash in New York state. Gone was the artist who'd created "Taxi", "Sniper", "Cat's In The Cradle". "W.O.L.D.", "Circle", and "30,000 Pounds Of Bananas". Gone was the story-telling and gone was the humanitarianism
   This was devastating. My ex-wife and I were huge fans of Harry and had seen him here in London not that long before he died. We had many of his albums and basically worshiped the man. The worst part of it all was that he was in what seemed to be the prime of his career and there was just so much more music to look forward to. The rest of the camping trip was a bust, to say the least. It was like a all of our underpinnings had been removed, in one fell swoop.
   I know that millions of us have been affected similarly in the last few months as legend after legend has disappeared. It is much too easy to forget that, as we have aged, certainly they have as well. And if they seemed too young to die then we need to remember that no-one is guaranteed a certain number of years and that there are forces at work in all of our lives which pre-dispose both life and death.

   I have been what you might have called a "folkie" most of my life. This means that the artists who comprised the soundtrack of my life were people like Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. In recent years we have almost lost a couple of them and it is inevitable that, sooner or later, they will all be gone. They may be gone after me or they may be gone before me. At this point in my life, though, I am not expecting a lot of new music from any of them and am content with the role they have already played in my life.
   This wasn't true with Harry, though.