BUDDY, GONNA SHUT YOU DOWN!
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were Mike Love instead… There’d definitely be ten million words penned by me for utter legend Brian Wilson if I still had the energy for more fun fun fun with the obitwriting. His Beach Boys were at the forefront of the surf rock movement of the 60s with tracks like “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, “Fun Fun Fun”, and “I Get Around”. After mastering the art of cars, beaches, and chicks, Wilson’s desire to out-Spector Phil Spector and out-Beatle the Beatles drove the band to their creative apex including the beauty of “Don’t Worry Baby” and “God Only Knows” and the out-there ambition of “Good Vibrations”, and the Pet Sounds album remains one of the most acclaimed to this day. He split acrimoniously with the Beach Boys whilst mental struggles and drug addiction took their toll, but he ultimately pulled through, enjoyed a second wind to his career, and lived to old age. Last year his dementia diagnosis became real well-known, the DDP knew it and didn’t leave him alone.
Some more Hot Fun in the Summertime with another music legend who made his eighties against all odds. Sly Stone formed the eventual Sly and the Family Stone in 1966, which tapped into the free spirit of the Woodstock era with its multiracial, multigender lineup and pleas for peace on hits like “Everyday People” and “Stand!”. That groundbreaking psychedelic soul put him on the throne like Cynthia, but drug abuse toppled him off it by the mid 70s. Coverage of his ill health in recent years increased his deadpool interest, and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo…
Caaaaaaancer is striiiiiiiiiiiiking agaiiiiiiiiin… Lou Christie is yet another 60s singer to die aged 82, jolting his falsetto on the charts with hits like “Lightnin’ Strikes” and “I’m Gonna Make You Mine”, as well as co-writing the girl group cult classic “Egyptian Shumba”. Bobby Sherman had to settle for dying at 81, was one of the teen idol heartthrobs of the late 60s-early 70s with sunny fare like “Little Woman” and admirers including Marge Simpson. No segue quite like teen idol to hard rock, and adding on to the pile of all the old dudes is Mott the Hoople/Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs. Lalo Schifrin composed for numerous films and TV programmes, including Dirty Harry and the Mission: Impossible theme.
Sandy Gall was a familiar face as newscaster and foreign responder for Reuters and ITN, bravely reporting from the front lines to get the truth no matter the risk. He had been jailed by Idi Amin and formed a charity to help those suffering in Afghanistan. Frederick Forsyth too reported from the battlefield, covering the Nigerian Civil War before segueing to his greatest success as a thriller author including The Day of the Jackal. Another literary demise was New Zealand author Maurice Gee.
Though James Van Der Beek was the main crying meme on the DDP this year, it turns out we should’ve focused on televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. A cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, his sex life took after the Killer too and his God-bothery empire came crumbling after multiple prostitution scandals. Kim Woodburn was the “Queen of Clean” for her presenting of cleanliness programmes like How Clean is Your House? and a fixture of celebrity-based reality TV, and MTV host Ananda Lewis landed on many top radars in light of the stage 4 breast cancer and “alternative treatments” one-two.
A couple of deadpooling blasts from the past: pioneering gay author Edmund White was one of the few survivors of an 80s/90s DeathList, peer Henry Mountcharles felt a Reptile pick for the entire past decade (though not this year), and Nicaraguan leader Violeta Chamorro was one of the premier drol immortals during the same era as Dilip Kumar and Shivakumara Swami.
Adam Adamant dies! Gerald Harper was one of the suave adventurers of 60s TV as the Edwardian swordsman Adam Adamant, who got frozen and wakes up in the swinging sixties. He also played the dapper squire star of Hadleigh. Kenneth Colley played Admiral Piett in the Star Wars films and WAS the Messiah in The Life of Brian. Gailard Sartain was a regular in Jim Varney’s Ernest movies, Lynn Hamilton played girlfriend to Redd Foxx’s cantankerous Sanford in Sanford & Son, Pippa Scott acted in The Twilight Zone, and Harris Yulin was a reliable character actor including in Scarface and Ghostbusters 2. Jack Betts was probably best known as Oscorp board member in Spider-Man, and of the Vigoda/Dunn vintage he also portrayed an octogenarian on One Life to Live back when he was 53.
The 100 Club lost Dole CEO David H. Murdock (whose 102 years fall short of his goal to reach 125) and astronomer Francis Graham-Smith, one of the first to accurately pinpoint radio galaxies. Settling for a Sulu are pioneering neurosurgeon Gazi Yasargil and Ariana’s mum Marjorie Grande. Sport lost Middlesbrough forward Alan Peacock, cricketer David “Syd” Lawrence, racehorse trainers Peter Easterby and D. Wayne Lukas, ice hockey player Alex Delvecchio. Bill Atkinson contributed many functions to Apple computers, Bill O’Brien was former Labour MP for Normanton, and Bill Moyers was LBJ’s press secretary and among the last noteworthy survivors of his administration.