Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Warren Zevon, and Elliott Smith didn’t have a lot in common, musically, and the manners of their deaths–which all occurred this year–were equally divergent. Their passings ranged from sadly inevitable (Zevon, who had inoperable cancer) to utterly shocking (Strummer, who died of a heart attack while recording what turned out to be his final album).
But one thing is true of each of these artists: their music touched their fans deeply, whether those fans numbered millions, thousands or hundreds. You could feel it in the outpouring of support and grief that followed each of their deaths. Hell, Zevon, in one of his final appearances, even managed to choke up the ever-cynical David Letterman.
There are two ways to look at these now glaring gaps in the musical landscape. One way is that they might never be filled by comparable talents. But the other is more optimistic: that somewhere out there a fan, a musician, or maybe even someone who has never heard of any of these four beloved singers and songwriters, is readying something that one day might mean just as much to someone in a future generation.
That’s what makes listening to music through all its ups and downs — and past all its losses — so exciting, so thrilling — the very thought that someone original and compelling lies waiting right around the corner.
Whether that hypothetical musician will ever match the popularity of someone like Cash or Strummer, or even the cult appeal of Zevon and Smith, is really not for us to decide. Each generation picks its own musical heroes, and those heroes often come from very surprising places. Cash grew up poor on a farm, while Strummer was the son on a diplomat. Smith was a punk rock misfit, and Zevon’s dad was a professional gambler.
You never know, but you can always hope that this century’s icons are already hard at work, getting ready to change the world, one note at a time.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Joe Knowles (jknowles@tribune.com)
