Forgotten while you’re here,
Remembered for a while
– Nick Drake
Words by James Scott
Throughout history, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, there has been an enduring fascination with people who live fast and die young. Consider the haunting image of Jeff Buckley, whose life was cut short by his mysterious drowning, or the countless young soldiers who marched off to war, never to return. These stories resonate because death seems both eternal and inevitable, in a way that life itself is not. It is this juxtaposition, the fleeting nature of youth against the unstoppable permanence of death, that continues to captivate us, evoking a sense of awe that feels more engrossing than the lives of the dead.
Silenced Songbirds
Something that particularly strikes me is how this applies to music, most notably to musicians who never made it to see their own success blossom. Why is it that we are so drawn to the haunting omnipresence of the dead musicians we love? The likes of Bach, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, Bradley Noel, both Tim and Jeff Buckley, Elliot Smith, and Kurt Cobain (to an extent – as their fame grew more posthumously) come to mind. Do we resonate with the lost ghostly sounds of the unfound or neglected because we ourselves feel unfound? Maybe not, or maybe we do, but regardless of the matter, there seems to be some kind of mythos behind the names I mentioned; an ethereal, spiritual sort of beauty behind these people that permeates. Perhaps people resonate with this music because there is something eternal and transcendent about it. It may also be that the music from these late artists, in its raw vulnerability and emotional depth, resonates with something within us — a sense of longing and the unfulfilled.
Death and Music
Music not only has the power to shape, but the power to destroy whoever makes it. It feels as if sometimes fame itself becomes a hamartia, and death an inevitable curse for those such as Jim Morrison or Amy Winehouse, who succumbed to the weight of their own image and public expectation. Fame for them isn’t a gift, but rather a crushing burden. Conversely, I see a sort of morbid irony in that the tragedy for some artists’ was instead a distinct lack of fame. Take Nick Drake, who spent the final years of his life in isolation after a relatively quiet and unnoticed career. It seems the theme between these lost artists was a dream and want of the weight of fame, and not reaching that makes for a tragedy — a tragedy that sparks a notice and acknowledgement that came too late. This brings everything back to Drake’s lyrics which I opened this article with. It’s from a song called ‘Fruit Tree’, which poetically captures everything I have mentioned here. Drake and all the other artists who weren’t fully recognised until death are fruit trees in themselves. There is a whole orchid of fruit trees out there, yet so few are known.
Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
‘Till its stock is in the ground.
Another article you may enjoy: Why Liam Payne’s Death is a Complete Tragedy.