On the Death of Joe Cocker – A life like a roller coaster ride – Süddeutsche.de

• Joe Cocker died of lung cancer at the age of 70 years.
• The British singer had his breakthrough at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 with the Beatles remake of “With a Little Help From My Friends” .
• The 1970s were marked for Cocker of drug and alcohol excesses.

By Bernd Graff

We want Joe Cocker call a rock star? Was he, the Englishman who in working on themselves at the Woodstock festival in a strange song and his own voice, he, the steelworkers boy from Sheffield, a trained installer who then served these sticky Radio lubrication charts, it was something with rock in the name? Let’s say this: Yes, Joe Cocker was a rock star, a even though he seemed to have forgotten himself and his musical origins of the better early even. But that was not even his fault.

Joe Cocker has a life and a career denied the roller coaster rides equalized. Ups and downs were not raised and dents, but complete disaster, both when it uphill, as if it went downhill. The psychology would call this manic-depressive. The man was preferably completely on the ground, to then aufzurappeln again. And though at times we gave him as a hopeless case to oblivion, he was always as surprising. Was, as he himself once said of himself and his music. “Audible sign of life”

Money interested Cocker never

Joe – actually John Robert – Cocker was born on May 20, 1944 , There was another war. As a teenager he was crazy about black music, especially for Ray Charles. When he started in 1963 itself act as a musician, he played the Beatles by: a first single with their “I’ll Cry Instead” brought in 1964 but no breakthrough. Cocker met the organist Chris Stainton know. It was called the Grease Band, recorded a single, “Marjorine” on and climbed the British charts. The second single, another Beatles cover, Cocker then made the same world famous: “With a Little Help From My Friends” landed at number one on the charts. Cocker toured, went to Woodstock and captured the hearts of Americans, not least because of its expressive tense body language

Cocker but then fell immediately on the nose. Money never no longer interested him, his Grease Band. He toured with Leon Russell and then on a large session band by the US, called Mad Dogs & amp; Englishman, was incredibly successful film and live double album of the tour, Cocker alone was completely overrun and overwhelmed by the success. Physically, psychologically and financially it was after the tour at the end – and went home to his native Sheffield

Reactions to Joe Cocker’s death – “Thank you shared your soul”

His status as a rock and roll superstar limited to continental Europe

In 1972, he tried again, but that was nothing. Cocker was commissioned in 1976 to Kingston, Jamaica, where he became the acceptable LP “Stingray” on. Successfully sold it has not, however, too. What makes Cocker? He makes: Disco-Funk. 1978 flop comes the album “You Can Afford Luxury” commercially. What makes Cocker? A “Woodstock Revival Tour”. In 1979 he klampft with Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens and Country Joe McDonald in a musical and commercial fiasco with a loud concert crashes. What makes Cocker? He drinks.

In 1982, he then get lucky. He plays in a duet with Jennifer Warnes the largest single success since “With a Little Help From My Friends” a: the Kitsch tearjerker “Up Where We Belong”. She appeared in the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman” and brought him number one on the US charts. He also gets an Oscar and a Grammy for best film song of the year.

1987 appeared “Unchain My Heart”, just as tacky, but it placed itself on the German charts for several weeks at number one. Then again a godsend for Joe: the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three days after the wall occurs Cocker in a spontaneously organized festival, the “Concert for Berlin”. Here he brings again, “With a Little Help From My Friends” to be heard and thus touches the reunified German

but is becoming increasingly clear then. Cockers status as a rock and roll superstar limited to Continental Europe, in Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. Here he receives platinum, around 1992 for “Night Calls” and a “Best Of” album. In the early summer of 1996, Cocker was the German EMI boss Helmut hard to persuade one of his “acoustic sign of life” for Europe, and especially Germany to send: “I think,” Cocker said at the time, “he had the Christmas season in mind!” A quickly-made plate came in October 1996 on the European continent under the title “Organic” on the market. “However, one should not be regarded as new Joe Cocker-wheel them as a kind of statement, like old songs of mine sound today,” the master said to

This trend is unfortunately at:. Cocker is used specifically by its producers. More significant than “Across From Midnight” from the year 1997, this has become rare. A whole bunch of songs is here composed just for him, including “That’s All I Need To Know” by Eros Ramazzotti. The LP is designed entirely on chart success out. Cocker expressed in 1997 to decidedly in Mirror . That he “delivered producers and managers,” even though he’s not allowed to have a say in the final selection of the pieces, “but I also have to make compromises I can not follow the zeitgeist by singing. When people from the record company want a light summer hit, I deliver the “.

Not only summer hits, but also jingles. Shaking their heads about the sponsorship agreement made with the Bremen brewery “Becks”. On the 50th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth you experienced Cocker in June 2002 in the gardens of Buckingham Palace along with other old men at a “Royal Pop Party”. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth marks him out with a Merit, the Officer of the British Empire (OBE).

He breathed some gecoverten songs a soul more than they had in the original

Yes, maybe you will be the “master of ceremonies of the cover songs” ( Kieler Nachrichten ) only fair that you see the life and power failure the artist at the same time and in equal parts. The man enchanted tens of thousands, he breathed some songs gecoverten more soul than they had in the original. But he was not always master of his music. Its duration flirtation with commercialism can not blame him one. He was a sorry but if he was pushed from his management on the ramp to sing what was thought to be suspicious chart. His voice was emotionally fired – it seems – no longer himself, they had to serve: For example, was “You Can Leave Your Hat On” world famous in 1986 Cockers version. A song that was “9 1/2 Weeks” used in the film -. And since then all anthem striptease dancers is

On Monday, Joe Cocker, the man who started as a rock star and became world famous as a pop star , died at age 70 at his home in Crawford, Colorado on the consequences of a lung ailment.