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. Here are the anniversaries of the month of ottobre.
On 3 February 1959, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson crashed, and everyone on board (the three of them plus the pilot) was killed. The accident was apparently due to bad weather and the pilot’s lack of experience but, among the wreckage, a pistol was found with spent rounds. There are many theories about it; what is certain is that the date marks the day the music died. This is where the song American Pie begins.
Don McLean, whose birthday falls on 2 ottobre, started writing the lyrics right after the crash and finished them in 1971, twelve years during which he kept adding verses about all the artists of the era, from king of rock Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan in a James Dean-style coat. This parade of names moves through a contrast: on the one hand the joy of seeing new stars being born, on the other the awareness that carefree music has vanished. The end of the dream. Musicians are now reading Marx.
John Lennon, nato a Liverpool il 9 ottobre 1940, would become the spokesman of the worldwide peace movement. But pacifism would only exist because of the war in Vietnam.
Society changes, capitalism and imperialism set new rules, and no artist can smile as carelessly as Buddy Holly any more. Drugs are about to flood American cities and Lou Reed writes the testament of at least three generations who, dressed in the colours of mourning, express the suffering to which the new civilisation condemns them.
A perfect day becomes possible only thanks to the alienation of heroin, which lets you forget yourself while believing you are a better person. Yes, we have all become monsters, even if we fantasise about being different, and Lou knows this well as he tells how he beats Caroline, who smashes the window with her fist just to get away from him. With Berlin Lou Reed sings the bitter realisation of a personal failure, and perhaps in many ways a generational one too. There is really nothing left to laugh about. At the time of his death, on 27 ottobre 2013, the state of things does not seem to have changed. For anyone.
On the 22nd of the same month and the same year qui in Italia esce Glamour, the second album by I Cani. Niccolò Contessa describes the same lump in the throat, the same smug faces of real tough guys with serious problems that kids have worn ever since the music died.
