Mid-Life Crisis Songs #97: Live Forever

When you're young, you think you'll live forever. At some point, you realise that's not the case and the end is approaching faster than you'd like. I guess this realisation hits us all at some point, but clearly it's hit me very hard since turning 50 and losing my dad. This blog has become my therapist's couch. It's not answers I'm hoping for, it's acceptance. 

Immortality is craved by many, but I don't think I ever wanted to live forever. I'm already sick of the selfish, self-destructive tendencies of the human race, so the idea of sticking around and watching folk devise new ways to screw up society does not appeal at all. In fact, I'd readily welcome the apocalypse... were it not that I have a son. Sam is my reason for not giving up on the world, or wishing it to end. Because I'd like him to have a good life, to grow old without too much strife, to do his bit to keep the dance alive. That's the immortality I crave right now.

I'm Gonna Live Forever was written by country artist Billy Joe Shaver, with his son Eddy, who recorded together as the eponymous group Shaver back in the 90s. Clearly, Billy Joe sought immortality through art...

Nobody here will ever find me
But I will always be around
Just like the songs I leave behind me
I'm gonna live forever now

Eddy Shaver died of a heroin overdose in the year 2000. Billy Joe lived another 20 years, but I'm guessing with a broken heart.

You fathers and you mothers
Be good to one another
Please try to raise your children right
Don't let the darkness take 'em
Don't make 'em feel forsakеn
Just lead them safely to thе light

I'm Gonna Live Forever was also performed by Robert Duvall in the excellent movie Crazy Heart. And last year, it was covered by Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams on a Billy Joe Shaver tribute album. So that's a kind of immortality right there.

2020: The Year That Keeps On Taking

 

No sooner had I scheduled my tribute to James Broad of Silver Sun than the news hit me of two more musical deaths in the year to end all bad years.

I don't know much by Billy Joe Shaver, but what I have heard, I like. 

I've spent a lifetime making up my mind to be

More than the measure of what I thought others could see

Good luck and fast bucks are too far and too few between

For Cadillac buyers and old five and dimers like me

Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five & Dimers Like Me

Billy Joe passed like week, aged 81. 

A few days earlier, another name from the same era of country music, Jerry Jeff Walker, died of throat cancer.

The eulogies came thick and fast for Jerry Jeff, mostly concentrating on his most famous tune... one that's been covered by everyone from Harry Belafonte to Edwyn Collins, Neil Diamond to Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan to Robbie Williams... and, of course, Sammy Davis Jr.

Jerry Jeff Walker - Mr. Bojangles

Everyone likes to have their heart broken by a dying dog, eh?

Unlike Billy Joe, who I only knew a couple of tunes by, I was more familiar with Jerry Jeff's back catalogue, having dipped my toe into it on more than one occasion over the years. Here are a couple the music player tells me I listened to a lot.

Jerry Jeff Walker - Pissin' In The Wind

Now we worked and we suffered and struggled

Makin' our record till we got it right

Now we're waiting on the check to come sneaking down the hall

Like that old time feeling

That we never should have ever put the record out at all

If you're interested in keeping up on who passes each month from the world of music, there's no finer blog to read than Any Major Dude With Half A Heart. I've been following The Dude since my earliest days of blogging - indeed, only his blog and JC's are still around from my earliest forays into the blogosphere. Every month, the Dude posts a list of all the musical names - big and small - who have passed, with links to choice songs by each of them. But that's not the only reason I've kept reading his blog for so long - he also posts amazing themed mixtapes that in many ways were the original inspiration for the Top Tens I began compiling on Sunset Over Slawit, eventually leading to the creation of this blog.

A week or so ago, 2020 did a number on The Dude. He's already lost his job this year, and then his blog was attacked by malware hackers. (He suspects it may have been in response to an anti-Trump mixtape he posted... but I guess we'll never know. That may just be fake news.) Anyway, The Dude was thinking of packing it all in at this point, unable to afford the anti-malware software needed to rescue his blog from the brink... but in a last ditch effort, he threw an appeal out to his readers. They quickly rallied round with Paypal donations (I threw him a couple of quid myself, for all the great reading & listening over the years) and in less than 24 hours he'd raised the money he needed to keep his blog afloat. 

 

A little bit of good news goes a long way this year. 

Here's one of the many, many great tunes I first heard over at The Dude's place...