@q00w2

For sure!

I read somewhere once that he and Miles Davis were planning to make a record. That would’ve been something.

And given how keen Jimi was to try whatever new tech came his way, I reckon he would only have gotten more and more interesting over time.

@DyDave

Huge loss.

@q00w2

Yep. I’ve always thought Prince might’ve been the closest analog for what Hendrix might’ve been if he’d got past 30. Another huge loss tho 😔

@DyDave

Yeah, too much easy access to it and 'handlers' and managers who turn a blind eye because it makes them easier to manipulate and rip off.

@q00w2

The saddest thing to me is that Hendrix’s death appears to be just a combination of a misunderstanding about the dosage of a sleeping pill, and that British ambulance drivers had no EMT training back the.

It’s a bit like Stevie Ray Vaughan riding a helicopter into a mountain after he worked so hard to get clean.

@DyDave

Yeah, don't get me started on SRV. 😭 And Hendrix was more into hallucinogens than anything else …

@q00w2

I was playing the Wonderboy in Monsterland machine in the Manning Bar at the University of Sydney when my mate Paul came in and told me SRV died.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

@DyDave

Yeah, I have a few of those myself. Sometimes dreaded getting the NME from the newsagent's …

@q00w2

The Australian edition of Rolling Stone for me, but yeah.

I was working the overnight shift as manager of a hotel when a manager from another hotel called to tell me that he’d found Michael Hutchence of INXS dead.

Then, they had the wake for him at my hotel and it was quite a shitfight: the police blocked off all the streets and distraught celebrities were collapsing all over the place.

@DyDave

Wow. It sucks, doesn't it? I was just a kid (living in the UK) but I will always remember getting that NME with my comics and looking at the cover and stopping dead in my tracks on the footpath … I knew death for the first time, a kind of weight and disbelief.

@q00w2

Yeah. Bowie was the one that’s hit me the hardest so far TBH. They give us so much art that we feel a connection with them that’s far beyond what’s real

@DyDave

Yeah, Bowie's stung me quite a bit—he was old school to me, but when I got older I discovered his genius and how he lived his life without fear of censure for his orientation, clothes, music, anything. He was sharp with interviewers, too—he could cut them up if they pissed him off. 😂

@q00w2

He was a smart bloke and a real artist, eh?

I always liked how he wrote unusual chord changes - for pop songs anyway - into his songs. He had no fear.

@DyDave

God yes, and very generous, too—he saved Iggy Pop from himself more than once. Loyal.

@DyDave

Yes, you make a connection with people you don't even know, but what you know about them resonates in you, like they're kindred spirits or something … and when they're taken away it's heart wrenching. Last one for me was Gord Downie of the Canadian band The Tragically Hip. Sometimes can't listen to them anymore without tearing up. He was more poet that lyricist/singer, but he reached so many of us through his songs. Go figure … 🤷‍♀️

@q00w2

Gord was a blow.

I was born in Montreal and all my family is still in Newfoundland and Manitoba. Everyone felt that one.

@DyDave

I saw him at the end of every concert on that final tour, staying on stage at the end and trying to look into every single pair of eyes in the stadium even though he only had months and then weeks to live.

@DyDave

I saw them several times up in Canada and then down here in Minneapolis when I moved to the US—very intimate venues when they played in the US. It was such a treat compared to the massive stadium crowds they drew in Canada.

@q00w2

They were even more of a big deal in Canada than I thought - and I thought they were a big deal. 🤷🏼‍♂️

@DyDave

They didn't sell out their Canadian identity to pander to the US market, and I loved that about them. 👍

@q00w2

That kind of attitude is why I want to stay a dual Canadian/Australian.

This is my home, and I chose to get naturalised as a citizen in 1988, but I ❤️ 🇨🇦 and always will.