Rolling Obituary Thread: 2021

RIP Steve. Still my favourite version of Smalltown Boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXVzyaosPwA

"Hit That Perfect Beat" is my favourite Bronski Beat single, I always thought it a real shame they fizzled out afterwards. RIP Steve

Chris Achilleos, artist and book illustrator. Mainly worked in SF and probably the most famous cover artist of the Target Doctor Who line.

(No official sources as yet but several well-placed ones)

Achilleos created the controversial cover for Whitesnake's 1979 album, Lovehunter, which showed a naked woman straddling a giant serpent. In an interview with MelodicRock, Gary Hughes stated that Achilleos thereafter "had a policy of not working with bands".[9]

aw RIP

what's wrong with being sexy xp

The mighty Mike Nesmith

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/monkees-michael-nesmith-dead-1270079/

Wow, thought that would never happen. RIP.

Aw, no. Micky, take care of yourself!!!

Nooooo

And another oh no.

Aww, no.

Mike & Mickey were booked on Mike Love's Beach Boys Bahamas Cruise for March... including Mark McGrath & Joe Piscopo. Mickee is now the last Monkee.

nooooooooo

Writer Keiko Nobumoto, known for her work on Cowboy Bebop and Tokyo Godfathers amongst other things.

https://www.crunchyroll.com/en-gb/anime-news/2021/12/10/famed-anime-screenwriter-keiko-nobumoto-passes-away-at-57

Wow that's a terrible loss!

Thomas "Mensi" Mensforth of Angelic Upstarts (covid)

Fuck sake! RIP Mensi.

Al Unser Sr.

https://www.espn.com/racing/story/_/id/32835497/al-unser-sr-four-winner-indianapolis-500-dies-82

Mike & Mickey were booked on Mike Love's Beach Boys Bahamas Cruise for March... including Mark McGrath & Joe Piscopo. Mickee is now the last Monkee.

I'm very sad about Mike Nesmith, but at least he won't have to suffer through a boat ride with Mike Love and Joe Piscopo.

!

#sgtpepper2021 pic.twitter.com/UG07ZS69Id

— christhebarker (@christhebarker) December 11, 2021

So the last one standing is the one who looks the most like an actual monkey. Seems fitting.

!

rude

Anne Rice, author of ‘Interview with a Vampire’.

As if millions of goths cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

out in terror-lust

ftfy

how can we be sure she's dead?

hunting for further unkind joeks made me think of aaliyah and now im sad for reals 😔

rip anne rice yr books were p bad but i have friends who loved you

Vicente Fernandez

Such an amazing performer. I took my mom to see him in 2010.

Rest In Peace to el mas grande. Also, PYTWAD

"Problematic" and flamboyant Toronto politician Mel Lastman, 88.

Oh wow, as a native of North York (where he held office until his contentious mayorship - which has course been since vastly eclipsed as far as problematic and flamboyant figures go), he was an ever-present name growing up and, later, a kind of emblem of a certain time and place.

The death of an unlikely hero: Riccardo Ehrman, the Italian journalist whose question at an East German press conference on 9 November 1989 triggered the unexpected opening of the Berlin Wall, has died aged 92.

Ehrman asked the East German press secretary, Günter Schabowski, when new travel regulations were going to come into force which meant that East Germans could apply for permission to travel abroad without having to meet the previous requirements for these trips. Schabowski, who hadn't been present at the Central Committee meeting when the text on travel regulations was discussed, improvised an answer: "As far as I know... effective immediately, without delay." East Berliners rushed to the city's six border crossings and the Wall was opened the same evening.

Addio a Riccardo Ehrman, fece cadere il Muro di Berlino. Era corrispondente ANSA a Berlino est, pose la domanda cruciale #ANSA https://t.co/wyMaJia7RN

— Agenzia ANSA (@Agenzia_Ansa) December 14, 2021

Les Emmerson, frontman for Five Man Electrical Band and songwriter of the hippie-era classic "Signs," has died at the age of 77.

RS paywalled article.

bell hooks. RIP.

ah fuck :(

ah dammit

:( :( :(

:( and ffs

dammit

I just found out that she was still alive just at the time she died. Thought she had been dead for a while.
Whodathunkit.
Think I was just looking up what she'd written since I was just starting to read her. & wanted to know what else I needed to read

https://www.fayobserver.com/obituaries/m0028451

RIP Leonard "Hub" Hubbard, founding member and bassist of the Roots.

so sad :(

RIP hub

aw no!

Eve Babitz:

RIP Eve Babitz, the L.A. Woman incarnate, the insider-outsider whose books & life reveled in the absurd, flamboyant, and technicolor. A genius in a feather boa, poet laureate of Tana's & Musso, all dissolute Hollywood glamour & gilded insight, who said all the wrong things right. pic.twitter.com/6g00SXnAZM

— Otto Von Biz Markie (@Passionweiss) December 18, 2021

Eve's Hollywood is so good, and I thought I would hate it, thinking OK this is probably gossipy bullshit from yet another shallow LA "personality," but in fact it was engaging and she was surprisingly likable as the narrator.

She was such a brilliantly enjoyable writer, as effervescent about LA as Frank O'Hara was about NY. Very sad this morning.