Amy: From Life To Legend

It will go on as long as there are drugs, sex and rock and roll, prodigies will perish, geniuses will have gone off, the brilliant will leave behind the bereaved, the virtuosos will vanish and the creative will become casualties.

Jimi Hendrix said in his song ‘If 6 was 9’, “I’m the one who’s gotta die when it’s time for me to die…so let me live my life… the way I want to.”

We, the fans, the freaks and the fools who listen to and idolize them in both life and death are left with only a question…why?

Amy Winehouse is now among them, a great voice and talent gone from the world as flesh and blood to be another flawed being immortalized as a hero to rock and roll. She is one, like the others…who’s vices became so dominant in her life that those vices took her life. She will be celebrated for her defiance and her brazen soul sound that took us back to the 60’s and 70’s. Ironically, that is when some of the best of the others…the legendary famous dead rockers lived.

You know who they are, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison aka The Lizard King, Brian Jones and Roger McKernan to name a few. These are the ones who have left here as mortals and now live forever on the airwaves, the internet, CD’s, vinyl, tape and i-pods. It is a short hard life when your big star bound without any way to stop the runaway horses of drugs, addiction, fortune and fame. She had been married, divorced, cheered on stage, booed off the floor and she ran away from rehab.

Many news outlets report that she is also a member of the ‘27 club’ that is not only a famously dead recording artist, but dead at the age of 27. I have already mentioned some of them, Jimi, Janis, Jim, and Brian but let me not forget Kurt Cobain and blues master Robert Johnson. But now what? There will be a coroners inquiry, there will be a funeral, there will be unanswered questions, along with a long stream of flowers and tears.

But this sultry untamed spirit that was Amy Winehouse will continue with her famously dead contemporaries as a rock/pop/soul music immortal. Songwriters John Holman Stevenson and Alan Earle O'Day put it best in a song they wrote for Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield (aka: The Righteous Brothers) their words describe it best:

"If you believe in forever
Then life is just a one-night stand
If there's a rock and roll heaven
Well you know they've got a hell of a band, band, band

Jimmy gave us rainbows
And Janis took a piece of our hearts
And Otis brought us all to the dock of a bay
Sing a song to light my fire
Remember Jim that way
They've all found another place
Another place to play

If you believe in forever
Then life is just a one-night stand
If there's a rock and roll heaven
Well you know they've got a hell of a band, band, band"

Amy, no longer mortal, no longer has to worry about being trampled by the horses of drugs, addiction, fortune and fame.

Now she will join all our other rock heroes in the hereafter waiting for us to get where they are, waiting for us to join them in the hereafter and forever.

Until then, we will always have Amy, like we have the others, on our CD’s, records, tapes and I-Pods, ready to perform at a moments notice.

RJ