Jerry Lee Lewis RIP

(29-10-2022 20:27 )seducedx6 Wrote:  I'm not sure what is gained by dismissing his music, because of his life.

Very good comment. I have to agree with you. Whatever his life his legacy is nevertheless huge.

If we look past the private aspect of his life (though I would agree there were instances that maybe some of us would find difficult to comprehend), I'm sure the musical side of his life is one many will want to focus on.

To give a further, wider, longer (historically) view:
(I expect some will think I've strayed 'off-topic', even for a 'wider, longer (historically) view'. However, I think this is all pertinent to the direction taken by this thread.)
I would venture that most people, most of the time, aren't or haven't been, interested in artists' personal lives.
However, as society has become more atomised, scrutinising the lives of others, especially anyone with a public, media presence, has become one of the ways of trying to bring people together.
As I've said before, elsewhere online, social media is often just gossip scaled-up for the global village.
Although in that post linked in post 10 in this thread, I did reference a different, historical view of gossip.
Plus, as I said recently in another thread: https://www.babeshows.co.uk/showthread.p...pid2721952 how people view the division between public and private lives has changed in a confused way.
Added to that, historical difference being a rare kind of difference people aren't politically expected to 'validate', but to exorcise, and people's personal lives dominate much of public life.

I previously posted about the way The Cosby Show was contrasted to No Problem, in the 1980s, the former considered to be a more 'positive image' of 'black people': https://www.babeshows.co.uk/showthread.p...pid2680551 but I recall that an elder sibling who took that view, couldn't even convince their eldest offspring to care, around twenty years ago.
However, the questionable notion of 'role models' has become more inflated, and is part of how public figures are minutely inspected.
As the phrase suggests, the idea of a role model was originally concerned with how people carry out certain 'roles', such as parent, teacher, builder, doctor, nurse, etc, but it's come to be used much more extensively.
No one was much concerned with footballers' lives off the pitch, in the 1980s.
Artists' lives have been of some interest, inasmuch it's believed by some to have a bearing on engaging with their work.
This has probably reached its nadir, with the "sob story" "narratives" seemingly required for participation in The X Factor etc.
The old Romantic idea that an artist has to suffer to produce 'good art', has also meant that some music artists have sought more of that kind of 'inspiration'.
One of the most overrated music artists this century, and for ever, imho, Amy Winehouse, created a whole soap opera around her work, and changed from a good singer into a karaoke version of her 'inspirations'.
She tragically failed to understand the artistic process, by which someone such as Nina Simone, one of my favourite singers, transformed their experiences into art.
I saw Winehouse playing with just an acoustic guitar, at an HMV, when her first album was out, and she was brilliant.
Winehouse became a London Jewish counterpart to Lauryn Hill, another artist I think is overrated, who leans heavily on their 'inspirations', whose troubled life has not been so public.

(28-10-2022 21:51 )Tractor boy Wrote:  I thought he was already dead.

You reckon you are getting mixed up with Jerry Lewis the comedian and actor.