The past few weeks have been a dark time for rock music and the world of entertainment in general. After the tragic passing of Scott Weiland in early December and picking up with the sudden loss off Lemmy towards the new year, it seems we have been losing legendary talents left and right: Angus Scrimm, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Natalie Cole…
In the midst of a double-whammy death of Glenn Frey and Mott the Hoople drummer Dale Griffin the afternoon of January 18th, a third name was suddenly thrown into the thickening pool of macabre news: Dallas Taylor, former drummer of Crosby Stills and Nash. The outpouring of love and remembrance came from both peers in the music industry and fans on social media, some websites were quick to pick up on his death, and many people were quick to feed into sensation of Winter 2015-16 being the biggest celebrity apocalypse since Summer 2009.
RIP to Dallas Taylor and Dale Griffin #MottTheHoople #DavidBowie #CrosbyStillsNashYoung
— DJ ASHBA (@DjASHBA) January 19, 2016
And so on. Which is all fine, and to be expected, in a case like this. However, there is one problem… Taylor died in January 2015, a full year ago as of yesterday.
That’s right, the man’s been dead a full year, and yet people are only now deciding that they care.
What probably happened was that when one individual on Facebook decided to share a memory of that event (a newer function on the website that brings old posts to the top of the feed with the option of republishing for nostalgia’s sake), someone else was quick to share it without actually acknowledging it was a reprint from last year, and the potent virus that is social media was quick to saturate news feeds worldwide with this misconception.
Of course, this raises a few questions… if people supposedly cared as much as they claimed, why act upset now when the man’s been dead for a full year to your complete ignorance? Is there really a “celebrity apocalypse” happening at the moment?
The truth is, the average person is just more prone to reading about the deaths of lesser known individuals like Taylor, Griffin, and Scrimm (which probably happens on a much more consistent basis than people realize) due to the bad timing of having household names Lemmy, Bowie, and Rickman passing away within two weeks of each other, creating a sense of paranoia or superstition, plus an awareness of our own mortality.
Instead of giving into this hysteria and claiming 2016 had already been “tainted”, celebrate their lives and their body of work that has been left behind. Use them as inspiration for the year ahead, which is still young, instead of just turning each of them into a cog in the machine of “death” that has supposedly taken over the entertainment business as of late… a statistic. Bowie himself wanted to go “without a fuss”!
That said, rest in peace Scott Weiland, Lemmy Kilmeister, Natalie Cole, Angus Scrimm, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Dale Griffin, Glenn Frey, and everyone else we have lost in recent weeks. And to Dallas Taylor and other more recently lost souls who may have touched another person’s heart and mind, who died quietly before the mass hysteria of recent weeks, I hope your rest has been peaceful thus far. Thank you for everything.
