**Jeff Buckley
Kirsty MacColl**
Both died while swimming, Jeff by drowning, Kirsty by being run over by a boat. We will never understand the enormous artistic loss.
Kirsty owns this thread. Vastly unappreciated in her early career, just emerging from a divorce and making amazing Latin-inspired music… and we lost her. Makes me want to cry when I hear her voice.
I wish Michael Hutchence (INXS), Pete Farndon, Jimmy Honeyman-Scott (Pretenders), and Alan Murphy (Level 42, Go West, Kate Bush) had been around a little longer as well.
I would add Ian Curtis to the list as well, but after reading Deborah Curtis’ Touching From A Distance he sounds like one messed up dude. Talent-wise, it was a huge loss. But we wouldn’t have had New Order… imagine Curtis singing “Love Vigilantes” or “The Perfect Kiss.”
John Keats, TB at 26. It was a sad day when I realized I was older than Keats ever was.
Well…
John spent the last half of the 70’s in “retirement”, being a dad. During the first years of that decade, he released some of his greatest material, added his voice to the anti-war movement, and successfully fought the US Government’s efforts to have him deported. He did quite a bit in the last 10 years of his life, if you ask me.
seminal bluesman Robert Johnson was pretty young.
What about the singer Selina?
Who can forget Darby Crash?
James Dean
Buddy Holly
Jim Croce
Duane Allman
Berry Oakley
Mitch Hedberg
Bill Hicks
Boatloads of pretentious mediocracy.
I came here to post Jeff Buckley, Stevie Ray Vaughn and David Lee Roth.
Stan Rogers, dead at age 32.
Two words: John Belushi.
If you’ll forgive me being flippant (and/or sacrilegious), this reminded me of this Onion article about an “artist” of sorts who died too young.
Same article reminded me of Buddy Holly and James Dean, who also deserve a mention in this thread.
Eddie Wilson
Brad Nowell and Shannon Hoon
Not necessarily very young, but I don’t think any of them were done, yet.
Tommy Bolin
Michael Hedges
Allen Woody
Jimmie Spheeris
Chris Wood
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Houseman
Bob Marley
Lowell George
Twiggs Lyndon (what, you don’t think what he did took artistry?)
Rory Gallagher
Steve Marriot
Janis Joplin
John Bonham
Toy Caldwell
Mark Sandman
Sam Kinison
D. Boon of the Minutemen (27)
Marc Bolan of T. Rex (30)
Both car crashes.
I came in to mention Bill Hicks and Bradley Nowell, both already mentioned. Both geniuses whom I firmly believe would’ve kept getting better and better for years.
How about the French mathematician Evariste Galois?
Besides his mathematical contributions, he also was expelled from school, a political activist, a member of the French military, imprisoned for 6 months and shot to death in a pistol duel five months before his 21st birthday!!!
Eva Cassidy died of skin cancer at 33.
George Butterworth, composer, killed at The Somme, 1916 at the age of 31.
Ditto here, too. And although their ages might fall outside the “too young” category in a chronological sense, I’d add Paul Desmond and Chet Baker, both of whom elicited the “Oh, NO!” reaction from me with their passing.
Still another whose age is irrelevant to me was Michel Petrucciani at 36.