Ironic images or songs preceding a passing

How about a recent song or picture that preceded an untimely death? Keith Moon sitting on a chair that says "Not To Be Taken Away" on the cover of Who Are You, Lennon's "Just Like Starting Over" on Double Fantasy and Skynryd's "Street Survivors" LP cover come to mind.

 

Kurt Cobain singing...And I don't have a gun... Or 'I Hate Myself...And I want To Die'.

Wouldn't the correct word in this context be, 'prophetic', not ironic?

 

The original Lynyrd Skynyrd "Street Survivor" album cover comes to mind. It had the band pictured in flames only weeks or months before the plane crash.

 

Will MY GENERATION be ironic once Pete and Roger get around to dying? Or is it already, since they're old?

 

2Pac's Makaveli album, completed in the course of a week a month before his death (but released a month after), is full of this stuff. From the central Machiavellian theme of a dead man returning, to the darker-than-usual soundscapes that accompany almost all the tracks and increasingly-paranoid and death-focused lyrics, to the artwork containing the phrase "Exit 2Pac, Enter Makaveli," the whole album seems like one big creepy coincidence.

 

Chicago putting out "Baby What A Big Surprise" (right before my very eyes) as a single around the time guitarist Terry Kath accidentally shot himself in the head in front of his wife comes to mind.

 

Harry Chapin's February 1981 concert (released on the Bottom Line Encore Collection CD in 1998) marked his band's 2000th concert. During the final applause at the end of the show, he calls out to the audience, "How about 2000 more, huh?" He died five months later. Equally ironic, one of his last songs (inspired by the assassination attempt on President Reagan, so it must have been less than four months before he died) was called "Last Stand".

 

wow. didnt think about that one. tragic.

 

The one album that Jeff Buckley released during his lifetime, Grace, has a lot of sadly prophetic stuff on songs like "Last Goodbye" and "Eternal Life" ("Got my red glitter coffin, man, just need one last nail").

 

Yes

 

Joy division's Closer LP has a funeral scene on the cover, decided on by the group before Ian Curtis died.

 

Lennon signing that ******e's Double Fantasy cover hours before....

 

His wife wasn't there when it happened....he was at a party at a roadie's house, she was at home in Malibu.

NJB

 

Would Buddy Holly singing "that'll be the day that I die" be considered ironic, given that the day was presumably much, much further in the future than it turned out?

 

Except that there was no fire involved as the plane had crashed due to its running out of fuel.

Still a bit spooky though.

 

Jimmy McCulloch's last song was called Heartbreaker. Great song but this line makes it spooky.

Can't you see I'm dying
I'm dying on my feet
Every way I'm trying
Your game has got me beat
Way I play is easy
Russian Roulette's so much fun
Bullets made of silver
and the odds are five to one

 

Death and the idea of death is in every songwriter's vocabulary. Some of these things only take on that macabre irony, once an artist or member of a band passes away.

So, it's always going to be uncomfortable listening to Lennon say "Shoot Me" on Come Together or Freddie Mercury singing "Build your muscles as your body decays" on Hammer to Fall or singing "Who wants to Live Forever?"(granted these are May songs, but perhaps Bohemian Rhapsody can be interpreted as a death sentence?).

I would think Post Toastee would fit for Tommy Bolin, telling of a foreboding of the Rock n roll excesses he was becoming victim to(I got that out of a magazine, I never use the phrase "rock n roll excess" ).

But, literally, there are millions of them.

 

Just about all my favorites are from Nick Drake, the most prophetic/ironic being Fruit Tree, My favorite couplets: Forgotten while you're here, remembered for a while—A much updated ruin from a much outdated style:

Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.
Forgotten while you're here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.

Life is but a memory
Happened long ago.
Theatre full of sadness
For a long forgotten show.
Seems so easy
Just to let it go on by
Till you stop and wonder
Why you never wondered why.

Safe in the womb
Of an everlasting night
You find the darkness can
Give the brightest light.
Safe in your place deep in the earth
That's when they'll know what you were really worth.
Forgotten while you're here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.

Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stock is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.

Fruit tree, fruit tree
No-one knows you but the rain and the air.
Don't you worry
They'll stand and stare when you're gone.

Fruit tree, fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year.
They'll all know
That you were here when you're gone.
​

 

"Leaving On A Jet Plane" - John Denver

Of course he died in an experimental plane many years after he wrote the song.

 

That rap album with the WTC being detonated...which came out before 911...

 

Bobby Fuller's last single: "Never To Be Forgotten"

 

The last song T.Rex released in Marc Bolan's lifetime, "Celebrate Summer", ends with a long fade out and Marc repeating the line "Summer is Heaven in '77". Of course he didn't mean it that way, but given the tragic accident that was waiting just a few months down the line, it's very ironic. Added to that, Marc's vocal here sounds as though it's been compressed or something, which makes it even worse. It's as though he were singing from beyond the grave. I've always loved this simple, perky little song but that ending always gives me chill.

 

I remember seeing that album cover in an article or something the day of, or the day after 9/11 and being really creeped out by it.

 

Terry Kath singing Little One on Chicago XI is ironic and sad.

Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle is another one.

 

Another album released on 9/11 is Dream Theaters Live Scenes From New York that had the NYC Skyline with the Twin Towers burning. It was pulled off the shelves within the week.




Bob