DEAD OR ALIVE – MAGGIO
By Federica Lemme
Dead Or Alive is the column of Seeyousound’s monthly newsletter that pays tribute to some of the musical events that have marked the current month: births, deaths, indelible traces in the history of music. We begin our journey with the month of #maggio.
ϟ On 22 May 1959, at the Park Hospital in Davyhulme, the second son of the stretcher-bearer Peter Aloysius and the librarian Betty, two Irish immigrants, is born. His name is Steven Patrick Morrissey, the greatest bedroom rock star.
ϟ Twenty-one years later, on the 18th of the same month, at 77 Barton Street in Macclesfield, The Idiot by Iggy Pop spins, silent, on the turntable and Deborah finds her husband hanged in the kitchen. The following day he was due to leave for the first American tour of Joy Division; he is only twenty-four and his name is Ian Curtis. On the album that marks his passing, Still, there are chicken footprints imprinted, a reference to the film that accompanied him towards death, Stroszek by Werner Herzog.
ϟ On 11 May 1981, at the University of Miami Hospital, aged 36, the soul of reggae passes away, the singer of redenzione, Bob Marley.
ϟ On 4 May 1982 the Cure release their fourth album on Fiction Records, Pornography, the last chapter of the trilogy of despair, which fully gathers the legacy of Joy Division. A dark world that New Order, Ian Curtis’s former bandmates, leave behind when, on 2 May 1983, with Power Corruption & Lies, they choose pop.
ϟ Almost ten years later, on 28 May 1991, the debut of Smashing Pumpkins, Gish, recalls the profound pain of new wave, rewriting it in a psychedelic and grunge key.
ϟ On the evening of 29 May 1997 Jeff Buckley asks his roadie to stop so that he can swim in a channel of the Mississippi. He enters the water fully clothed and sets out singing Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. He ends up in the spiral of a whirlpool created by a boat. He is thirty and has only one record to his name, but he is ready to become eternal. Hallelujah.
ϟ Pochi giorni fa, il 4 maggio 2021, muore Nick Kamen, idol of 1980s teenagers. It is Madonna who writes and produces his first single, Each Time You Break My Heart, which in 1986 climbs the charts all over Europe. Today we want to remember him once more half-naked in a launderette, the one from the famous Levi’s 501 jeans advert, with Heard It Trough the Grapevine di Marvin Gaye in sottofondo.
