Joe Cocker is dead – He was the grandfather of Air Guitar – THE WORLD

As a singer Joe Cocker was a naive master of the historical moment. In the summer of 1969, the plumber from North England flew to America, got to the stage that stood on a pasture near Woodstock, and sang a song of the Beatles. “With a Little Help From My Friends” was Ringo’s hymn to friends in the band, without which it would not.

Background Cocker sat then be organist Chris Stainton, who supervised him artistically. Who today the Woodstock film by Michael Wadleigh sees his lackluster colors, looks a drunken young man with sideburns and long hair, then 25 years old, he blinks irritated across the sea of ​​people.

People stare back incredulously. Joe Cocker submits the ridiculous song with a fervor that ask the flower children, whether the Blues or to be a joke. Then he screams into the blue sky, waving his hands, and is called “With A Little Help” over, the audience come in agreement: Joe Cocker has to be a star, a sensation

regular at pubs

Before Woodstock, in the sixties, he was one of the regulars at the pubs of Sheffield, he stood on the bars theaters and sang Blue standards and Hit Parade hits, gave himself daring artist names and established bands. With one of these bands, led by that Chris Stainton, he managed in 1968 to America to smaller festivals.

Today wonders rock history that he Woodstock came up and then even into the film. He was there when the pop culture had to part with their great utopias. As citizens children of America once danced in the meadows, rodelten through the mud, happy children witnessed and trying to keep Charles Manson and Vietnam for accidents. He was in the middle and hardly knew what hit him.

was in the spring of 1988, Joe Cocker once before hundreds of thousands in Dresden on the flowering meadow, which has since been in popularly Cockerwiese is, and on the dusty Velodrome in East Berlin. It was like 1969 in America: The singer seemed to know that while he again gurgled his song of Woodstock and screamed something historic happened

. Of course he knew that occupants of a fenced land were easier to excite. But they received him as a savior, it just could overwhelm. He pressed embarrassed his joy and sang in lilac jacket all his borrowed songs of Paul McCartney’s “She Came Through The Bathroom Window” to “Unchain My Heart” by Bobby Sharp.

Joe Cocker unglued

There was another beginning of the end of that GDR, the singer of the world was getting so people remained. From manifestations of a world longing that was no longer silent were. Even whom Joe Cocker and his work were otherwise no matter who preferred rather the post-punk that time, was there, and out of control.

In one of his last interviews for a film about the summer of 1988 in East Germany, the singer still seemed confused by his appearance as a figure of world history. Now he is in Crawford, Colorado, in the mountains of America, where he had before the world, died especially his rest. On 21 December, the darkest day of the year <"p13" p id = class = "text prefix_1 artContent"> 2014th

He was never the hero was, for him, the hippies in 1969 and the bluesman, customers or whatever the lost Ostjugend was called in 1988, held for an evening. He was just a singer who was satisfied that he embarrassed and screw gas pipes no longer had that liked to drink and was glad when friends like Chris Stainton took care of the music and the Manager to the business.

The regularly went wrong. Even as his manager decided to consolidate the glory of Woodstock 1969/70 by a huge concert tour, with the motto “Mad Dogs & amp; Englishman”, everything ended with Joe Cocker became dependent on drugs he not known before and that he had more debt. It was a wonderful band in which he sang. With Leon Russell and Jim Keltner, Rita Coolidge and the recently deceased Bobby Keys on sax as a great helper.

An artist, a cover artist

It was also the time when pop music was grown up and did not want longer content with singing workers. Rock stars had their songs kindly to write itself and not a factory assembly line music any wage authors put forward on the stage and take on plates as was common in the early days of the fifties and early sixties, when the Rolling Stones were allowed to sing: “It’s the singer not the song. “

Joe Cocker was an artist, a cover artist. “Feelin ‘Alright” came from Dave Mason, “Delta Lady” by Leon Russell, “You Can Leave Your Hat On” by Randy Newman and “Sail Away” by Bernie Paul, who wrote the song for Hans Hartz, a German beer commercials.

Joe Cocker itself has never stopped trying to develop ambitions that he would rather leave it to those who had created it. For this he was able to take the most insignificant songs by surprise and fill it with his own life. Wherever he appeared, he just sang.

“I can do what I always feel well, and I would like to say that express only my voice. The is what I do, “he says again and again anywhere. And if he inasmuch as this is sang with that voice, his body became independent, legs wanted to dance, but did not go off the floor, hands played in pantomime any instruments in the air.

So now he himself goes into the music and world history. Joe Cocker was 70 years old.