I heard about George Harrison's death in that odd, halfway way - someone was talking about a George, and the film industry, in the past tense. And you put it together, and think you know what it has to mean: and it did. Sadness at this death: sadness in the life too? Maybe it was just the way his eyes came to look. Or the way that a presumed superstar, who should have had anything and everything, looked shifty and reluctant. Tiredness; silence. Absences: where is he? You'd remember, every five years or so, that we'd all heard nothing from him: and sigh. But this could be a mere projection: maybe he found the life he wanted. Gardening, playing music with friends, making lazy jokes? In a snippet of quotation on his involvement with the Natural Law Party - who seem the most foolish of follies - he talks of how if the party won, they might really be able to "take on MI5 or whoever runs this country" - and this kind of fighting talk is good to see: suggests that he hadn't quite forgotten the lessons, or the beliefs, of the decade for which he invented some of the shorthand. I didn't, don't, know his music well enough. At least I can say that my attitude to it and him haven't suddenly changed with his death: the distant interest and sympathy I feel now (as you do for the dead) is (for once) what I felt about his records when he was alive. At least, thanks to a sinister comrade, I got to hear All Things Must Pass, on rotation for weeks as washing-up music, before he went. The extraordinary Spectortastickisms, the tumbling cracker-barrel, of 'Awaiting On You All'. The slow acoustic burn of 'My Sweet Lord' - which is beautifully crafted and arranged despite its silly lyrical coda. More distantly, in childhood - the 1980 (?) LP with 'Faster', about the racing driver. The sort of song that a child would like. And great craftsmanship, real musical skill, runs through his work. I always did think of him as a great songwriter in his way. He had his own trademarks (in chords and melodies), which I've wished before that I could identify; and almost everything he wrote was musically subtle. One reason, perhaps, why it also feels frail - weak, in need of protection, or of a hug. Nicky D, who unlike me knows the entire back catalogue extremely well, has had harsh things to say about him, but writes eloquently of crying at his death - crying for himself: for the passing of time, for a (cross-)generational loss: for our childhoods, that were really gone long ago but of whose vanishing we're occasionally reminded, by vanishing acts like this. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping. http://shopping.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+