When I returned from Calcutta yesterday, I was shocked to learn from my CNN news feed that Joe Cocker had died. He was only 70, but the BBC reports that he died from lung cancer, so I suspect he was a smoker. (This was the same malady that killed George Harrison—born a year earlier than Cocker—at age 58. How I wish that smoking wasn’t so faddish back then.
Cocker had many songs, and most didn’t thrill me, but there was a handful that became classics. Back in the Sixties and early Seventies, as Cocker lurched and stumbled around the stage, occasionally singing from a supine position, many of us suspected that he had some kind of neurological defect. I still don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was simply his bodily reactions to the music. Regardless, his jerky performances, usually covers by other bands, had a mesmerizing kind of beauty. I’ll list a few of my favorites, with the original artists in parentheses:
- I Shall Be Released (Dylan)
- With A Little Help from My Friends (Beatles)
- You Are So Beautiful (Billy Preston)
- Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (Nina Simone [!]; The Animals)
- She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (Beatles)
And here’s two performances to remember him by. The first is his fantastic rendition of “With a Little Help from My Friends,” performed at Woodstock when he was just 25:
And perhaps his best, “You Are So Beautiful,” released in 1974. Who would have thought that a gravelly voice like his could produce one of the greatest love ballads of rock?
Here’s Cocker as I remember him: clad in a sweaty, tie-dyed tee shirt, unruly hair flapping as he spasmodically played the air guitar while bobbing around the mike:
Another falls victim to tobacco addiction. I’m always depressed when I see a young person with a cigarette.
Or someone at a hospital going through chemo outside smoking.
In his last year my brother-in-law tried to smoke when he was under an oxygen tent.
Authenticity is always preferential to the contrived. Joe embodied unprocessed sincerity.
I read in one obituary that he used to smoke up to 80 cigarettes a day, along with a lot of other substance abuse.
John Belushi did a hilarious Joe Cocker impression on SNL.
Balance is restored. Now Joe Cocker is doing an impression of John Belushi.
Kind of harsh and yet I LOLed. I have to say, I think these rock stars are made of sterner stuff than I: there is little chance I would live to see 70 years of age if I abused my body the way so many of these guys have.
Who would have given odds on Mick Jagger making it past forty?
Or Keith Richards. He looks like he has been dragged through a hole backwards & he’s still alive!
Oh! Too soon! 😝
God I love black humor! 😀
Joe was certainly a one of a kind and it was that Woodstock scene that did it for him. Kind of like Santana.
The cigarettes may have gotten him but you also have to remember – back in the late 50s, which is probably when he started, lots of people smoked.
Gotta Say, I love “The Letter” … had it as a 45rpm …
His covers of “I Put A Spell On You” and ‘St. James Infirmary” were also very good.
I especially like “Spell”.
Brings back many fond memories….
The gravelly voice gets me in the gut every time.
More than most, (if not all), artists in rock/pop, Joe Cocker was an *interpreter* of other people’s songs. That’s something much more common in the jazz traditions.
Joe, when at his best, was able to strip a song down to the most basic elements, get inside the message and then re-interpret the song in a way that usually added to, never subtracted from, and always completely respected, the work of the original songwriter.
In the same vein as current artists recognizing they have “made it” when Weird Al Yankovic records a parody, any songwriter should instinctively know that when Joe Cocker covered your song…..you wrote something of substance.
I believe that the same artistic instincts that led Van Gogh to look up, and then paint *The Starry Night* were in play when Joe Cocker first heard “With a Little Help From My Friends”, and led to his now famous re-invention of the song.
If only I had sideburns like that. A great voice is gone.
I guess, what also contributed to his unique “spasmodical” (as Jerry put it) style is the fact that, as a singer with no instrument, you’re very exposed in front of the band. I know that from experience. Everyone has a different way of handling that. I guess, Cocker’s approach was to just put everything into the song, every moment, and not think about how it might look.
Yes, we thought he was “spastic” back in the day. Watching the Woodstock performance recently, it was obvious to me that a lot of his motions were actually early air guitar…a concept we hadn’t hit upon, yet.
“A little help from my friends” by Joe is a completely different song from the Beatles jaunty original. We’d probably never have discovered it without Joe.
When I first saw him as a young teenager on TV, I thought, “How wonderful that someone with CP has been able to achieve his success! Love his music.
Yes, CP–same here.
Good songs… I’m curious, have you been to the Wookstock music festival? Or any reader here have been there?
Joe was from my part of the world (Sheffield – Steel City) and when I was a student there it was rumoured he was so grounded he could be found drinking in pubs on West Street. He never lost his connection with his roots. He had a great voice although I agree with PCC that his back catalogue has highlights but generally doesn’t do him justice.
I remember seeing him alongside Marti Pellow of Wet Wet Wet, who also covered With a Little Help From My Friends, with an all star backing band(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITAVcm1iCNc) but in the end poor Marti gave up in the face of Joe’s power!
In respect of George Harrison (an often underrated artist) who PCC also mentions, I have two very poignant images; one of him lighting a ‘fag’ (cigarette) outside the Star Club in Hamburger when he was aged 16/17, the second is the last taken of him before lung cancer claimed his life. In addition to cigarettes I can’t help believing that George’s strong belief in an afterlife, he regularly said this life was preparation for the next, contributed to his quiet acceptance in the face of his life threatening illness.
George’s last recording was Horse to Water which is well worth looking up, it’s thought he was too weak to play the lead solo on this track but did a decent job with the vocals. Sam Brown does an excellent version in the Concert for George which is also worth looking up…
RIP both…
John
Very cool all-star performance–thanks!