Besides virtually everyone else in this thread, I’ll add:
Esbjörn Svensson, one of the more recent ones.
Jaco Pastorius, for sure.
Cliff Burton from Metallica.
I’m pretty much the same way. I can’t really shed a tear for someone I never knew personally.
That being said the only one I can remember that sort of “bummed me out” more than anything else was Freddie Mercury. I always thought someday I’d get to see him in concert but it never happened.
Elliott Smith
Buddy was my earliest, but for being affected most, I’d have to say Elvis. The “dying young” doesn’t quite apply to Paul Desmond or Chet Baker, both of whom were middle aged when they left, but I literally cried for their passing.
I was late coming to the Allman Brothers Band so the deaths of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley only affected me in retrospect, but their early demise was upsetting anyway.
I’ve looked over the list at 27 Club - Wikipedia and can’t say I was affected one way or the other by anybody there. Obvious wastes, for sure, but no personal connection with any of them. Same with Lennon.
One tragic loss many won’t know much about (I didn’t until fairly recently) was Lenny Breau - Wikipedia whose guitar innovations are still being copied or, better said, attempted.
It was Lennon. It was just so wrong.
I could say that Keith Moons death affected me a lot also, but in a different way. [spoiler]
I’d lobbied the living Hell out of my parents for an OK to see The Who perform. The tickets were ‘in the bag’, a group of friends all lined up, transport to/from all lined up. When he died, the tour canceled. When it canceled, all I got from my parents was,
“…and we were going to let you see Him? A drunken drug addict??? Worse, You Knew what he was…and you thought that seeing that show was Responsible…?” :rolleyes:
I guess you could say that it taught me that Rock Concerts are a lot like Sex. If you want it, you go Do it… and if it comes up after, its Too Damn Bad. And F-CK discussing anything with your parents about it ahead of time. [/spoiler]
And what an emotional night that was. I’ll never forget Pete standing on the edge of the stage and saluting John’s image at the end of the show.
I’ve never made any pretense of being cool, so I’ll admit it: the musician whose death saddened me most was John Denver.
He hadn’t made a recording I liked in many years, so I didn’t mourn the music he MIGHT yet have written. But he’s a guy who provided the background music for many of my best childhood memories. I’ll always associate his songs with big, happy family gatherings at Christmas or Thanksgiving, when everybody would sing “Back Home Again” and similar corny songs.
Damn, talk about your unrealistic expectations.
Michael Hutchence. INXS was the proverbial soundtrack of a very tumultuous part of my life and I let go of a lot of things from that time but never my love for the band. I remember I had VH-1 ( I think MTV was already shite by that time?)on as I was getting ready one Saturday morning and wasn’t really paying attention. I did notice they were playing a block of INXS but didn’t think anything of it. I sat down for a moment to catch the end of the video and all of a sudden the screen goes black and Michael’s name and dates of birth and death(that day) are there in solemn white letters. I was gobsmacked to say the least and spent the rest of the day in kind of a bummed out daze.
Affected me personally? John Denver.
But thinking about what might have been? I wish Jim Croce had been alive longer to make music.
I was really sad when LeRoi Moore of the Dave Matthews Band was killed a few years ago. Although Dave Matthews’ work started to go downhill around 2005 and, in my opinion, really sucked by the time I was a senior in college ('08), I really loved the late '90s era DMB, and their sound was defined by Moore’s sax.
This is really the only example I can think of, because most of the tragic young deaths of music happened before I was born.
I do remember feeling sad when, shortly after “discovering” Sublime in high school, I found out that Bradley Nowell of Sublime had been dead for five years.
None. There have been deaths for band members that I really like (Bonham, Morrison, Hendrix, Lennon) that occurred before I knew the band’s music, but I don’t count those. The few who have died that were active (Cobain, Layne Staley) just didn’t affect me.
I was a big music fan as a teen, but pretty much just for the music. Now, I’m far more into the bands, their history, etc, so there are a handful that, if someone died tomorrow, I’d feel like a cousin died. Not so close that I couldn’t go about my day, but I’d certainly miss them and think about the good times a lot. The closest to come to that was probably Jason Pierce (Spiritualized and Spaceman 3) when he had a very threatening case of pneumonia a few years ago.
I’d like to say Zappa, but I didn’t really start getting into his stuff until shortly after he’d passed away. So while today I feel there was no greater loss to the world of music than Zappa, at the time of his death it didn’t really affect me beyond a simple “that’s sad.”
The one that did devastate me when it happened was Kevin Gilbert.
How could I forget Harry Chapin? But he wasn’t all that young.
Gosh. All of them. Senseless and pointlessly gone.
As a drummer losing Keith Moon really shook me up. Same thing when I heard we lost Lowell George.
Do we have to have been alive when the person died? Because I’d say Mozart or Gershwin (both died in their 30s). It’s impossible to know what direction their art would have taken.
And Donny Hathaway . . . only because he and I were born on the same day.
The one that shocked me the most was John Lennon.
The one that made me the saddest was Stevie Ray Vaughn.
I haven’t had for they dying young, but Johnny Cash was the only death I actually cried over.
The one who saddened and disappointed me most at the time of his death is Gene Eugene.
But there are other musicians who died before I was fully aware of their importance—or, in some cases, long before I was born—that make me sad when I think about what they might have gone on to do: Mozart, Gershwin, John Lennon, Mark Heard, Freddie Mercury, Buddy Holly…
Sorry, too recent; forgot. Clarence Clemons.