It wasn’t really a single person, though people certainly died - but waking up my freshman year of college and watching the Columbia debris fall was pretty upsetting. And the whole campus was just kind of numb for that day.
Amazing that no one has mentioned JFK, RFK, MLK or MX in this thread. Or maybe they go beyond “celebrity” Or maybe the geezers are still waiting for their granddaughters to come by and start up the carnfounded intertubes.
I’ve never been emotionally affected by a celebrity’s death. I don’t know them personally. I was unhappy when Isaac Asimov and Roger Zelazny died, but I cant say I mourned them in any way, not like I’ve mourned the deaths of people I know, CERTAINLY nothing like the reactions described on this board. It was more like, 'Oh, damn, no more Zelazny novels."
And I’m totally mystifed by the mourning for the death of Micheal Jackson. C’mon, he was a child molester. The world is way better off without him.
Interesting observation. Speaking only for me, the main reason I didn’t mention any or all of these people is that I made the bold assumption that anybody alive at the time (at least in the USA) was “affected” by their deaths. Therefore, there would be nothing special about my reactions to them.
I was alive at FDR’s death but unaware, in spite of the fact that I do remember vividly the picture in the newspaper a few months later of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima.
At the other end of my life so far, there’s Ted Kennedy. I didn’t mention him either for similar reasoning.
Yawwwwn. I rate this pathetic attempt at riling Michael fans 2/10.
John Peel’s death hit me surprisingly hard, especially considering that he wasn’t part of my childhood - I only moved to the UK in 1996. But there was something about his presence on the radio that was larger than life. I used to lie in bed on Saturday mornings and listen to his mellifluous tones unveiling the extraordinary in the ordinary on Home Truths, and his devotion to new music - real new music, not corporate-marketed pablum - continued to the end in a medium where such devotion was rarely tolerated.
The reports of the mourners singing at his funeral were deeply moving.
Having known a few celebrities personally, I can tell you it’s a different type of feeling when one you know dies.
No, I wasn’t upset when Jackson died, just as I won’t be upset when OJ or Woody Allen die. So be it.
I was flabbergasted and very upset when Elvis died. I still remember where I was and calling my parents with the news. We loved him in our family. I sure wish that he could have died in a more dignified way and gotten rid of some of the demons that plagued him.
**Princess Di’s ** death rocked me to the core, and I don’t really know why. I wasn’t all that into her but I just felt really sad when she died.
**Steve Irwin’s **death was another shocker that affected me for days.
Michael Jackson’s death didn’t really shock me. In fact, I kind of thought that one day he’d kill himself. He certainly had self-loathing issues, from the disfiguring plastic surgeries to practically starving himself.
Then there was John Beluchi whose best was ahead of him.
Hunter Thompson was a huge shock . I read everything he wrote.
Lots of others that I also was affected by here…
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Joe Strummer
Kirsty MacColl
Selena
…all because they were great musicians I admired, healthy - and all died unexpectedly and tragically.
While I’m a fan of folks like Charles Schulz, he lived a long life…
I don’t believe you. No Dead fan has ever had a job! 
When I was a teenager I was in love with Sal Mineo, so his murder hit me hard. I wanted to grow up and marry him. Yeah, I didn’t know he was gay back then.
I’ve been a huge Marlon Brando fan since I was a kid and I actually cried when they announced his death. People who knew what a fan I was called and told me they were sorry he died. It was strange but cool.
This generation’s Brando for me is Will Patton (fan since 1987). I don’t even want to think about him going.
Lot of good ones here, some that have affected me as well, but I wanted to mention one that hadn’t been brought up yet: Brad Delp.
I’m still not up to listening to Boston yet. I just keep wondering why he killed himself and could someone have stopped him with the right words at the right time. He was an amazing talent and seems to have been a generally kick-ass person.
Me, too, on this one. And he knew he was dying, and wrote rather eloquently about it.
Phil Hartman counts for me too, in a big way, though ironically I hadn’t realized Phil Hartman had died/been murdered until long after the fact. I had mistaken Hartman as doing the voice talent for Zapp Brannigan on Futurama as well (which I now know is at least partly an homage to him by Billy West), and figured he was just too busy to do any more work on The Simpsons. Some time in mid-2001, I commented to a friend that I hoped he’d someday go back to do another turn as Lionel Hutz or Troy McLure on The Simpsons, and my friend looked at me dumbfounded before saying, “You do know he’s dead, right? Murdered by his wife? That was like, three years ago!”
Well no, I hadn’t. And then less than a week later came the attacks on the World Trade Center that brought them down. It all around sucked.
Mine was Joey Ramone. I was in high school and college in the late 70’s and the first half of the 80’s and the general cultural identity at the time was still very much tied to the 60’s and that music. A friend’s mother, who was English, told me about this “punk” movement going on over there at the time and I became fascinated by it. I also found out about the New York parallel movement with the Ramones and the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop.
I went to college at the U of Wisconsin, which was much more 60’s influenced that where I lived in high school. I never became a punk, I drifted more towards the Clash and Elvis Costello and then to the “alternative” movement, but had all the music and went to shows when I had the chance.
Joey Ramone’s death was a real blow to me. I was in a transitional period in my life when he died, and it was the only other one besides the transition from youth to adulthood that coincided with the punk era. That one knocked me for a loop, it really did. Surprised me.
Yeah, Lennon was the only one I ever got swept up in. Too young to really remember much about JFK, but 3 months later, Beatlemania was much easier to grasp.
I was watching the football game, remember the play that was happening at the time, cut up a sock to make an armband to wear on the subway the next day, etc.
There haven’t been any cult suicides lately, but I have this ongoing curiosity about what the effect of a mass celebrity suicide would be. Either related or independent; like 10 celebs off themselves in the space of a week. People would be like “WTF is going on, Leland?”
I think you had it in one: They don’t really register as “celebrities”. Famous, yes, but not “celebrities”.
Just don’t ask me to define the difference.
And get off my lawn!
I love Kirsty’s music, and though I had only met her after concerts she came across as a wonderfully down-to-earth English girl. Would I have been affected as deeply if I had never met her? Obviously it is impossible to know. I do know the senselessness of her death, the way the bastard who killed her managed to slip out of being punished and the nobility of dying while saving her children have combined with the fact that she was in the middle of a career renaissance to hit me really hard.
These two. Never followed Princess Di but I was sad that, after all the problems she went through in her marriage and her personal issues, she was trying to find happiness and that was cut short.
Even though I believe Michael Jackson was guilty of something and thought justice should have played out differently in the molestation cases, I also remember the handsome little boy who started out with the Jackson Five and give the world so much beautiful music (I wished I could have been him and had his talent). Even as he morphed into someone who obviously had deep-seated issues enough to mutilate himself the way he did, I felt for him for that and always remembered he was part of my growing up.
Two more:
Luther Vandross: He had one of the most beautiful, natural voices I’ve ever heard in a pop/R&B singer and, though I am not into any New Age-y, “Spiritual” thinking, I just feel he was born to sing and was glad he was able to leave the treasure of his music that he did. He had been ailing for quite awhile (strokes, hypertension, etc.), so I knew he’d probably never been like he was, but I thought he’d be alive for a littler longer. I was quite shocked he died when he did.
Gerald Levert: Again, not the healthiest of people, but his death was a shock and affected me. One of the most soulful voices I’ve enjoyed over the years; his Baby, Hold Onto Me, is a song I play in the aftermath of lost love, and can even relate to in light of new love possibilities. I’m listening to it and tearing up right now.
No love for Madeline Kahn yet? I still feel glum when I think of her death.
Also a second for Phil Hartman, in part because it was so fucking pointless.
The world is appreciably less fun without those two in it.
You did make me think of Gilda Radner though. I always loved her characters on SNL - she’d come up with the perfect facial expressions for every one of them (Lisa Loopner, Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, Barbara Walters, etc. I admit it was several years before I found out she had died, but it was definitely shocking and affecting.