Celebrity whose death and subsequent loss you felt most

Sean Taylor

 

of those mentioned here, if i could selfishly bring one back, it would have to be mitch hedberg.

selena and aailiyah kinda bothered me because they were so young (and easy to look at)

i remember being a little upset at the loss of stevie ray vaughan.

 

Pretty bad!

 

Come on guys... Eddie Griffin? Anyone?

I felt like absolute **** the whole day when that happened.

 

I was very sad about Elliot Smith's death.

 

Tupac. Eddie Griffin as far as ballers go...

 

then len bias thing tripped me out, maybe because I was young and it was such a big deal.

 

SRV

 

Heath and Bernie Mac

 

I will say John Lennon

Stuart Adamson Singer/songwriter/guitarist for Big Country

The second tier would be Joe Strummer, John Candy, and John Belushi.

 

Heath Ledger, Richard Jeni and Chris Penn. Ledger and Chris Penn because I think they had a lot more good work ahead of them; and learning that Ledger seemed to have thrown away a really good life bit by bit. Jeni's last two HBO specials were just hilarious; and it was the kind of observational, everyday, husband-wife type humor that made his hard-core depression seem all that more shocking.

I guess as someone who grew up listening to early '90s rap, Tupac's death was disappointing; but I was pretty unsympathetic and a little annoyed at the BadBoy conspiracy theory (which I think was pretty widely believed at the outset). I just don't think there was much more to it than the gang brawl earlier that night. Up to that point I just don't remember the artists themselves getting killed. Biggie's death, while harder to explain, was somehow less shocking; like the anthrax and shoe bomber after 9/11.

 

Syd Barrett and George Carlin.. even if the former had been pretty much an inactive recluse for the past 30 years or so..

i was a very young, immature and unaware preteen when Cobain died.. actually.. i have a faint memory of hearing the news on MTV.. shortly before indifferently changing the channel.. i didn't start to really enjoy his music until later in my life..

 

First name that popped into my head when I read the tread title was Phil Hartman. The quality of my two favorite shows took a major hit when he died. I was dating this girl with a kid and we were both watching The Simpsons when we found out about it. The kid was pretty tore up.

Also while not as painful, I still remember where I was when I found out Selena was killed. I was never a big fan but that lady was about to blow up bigtime. Ironically, she probably would have had Jennifer Lopez's career had she not been murdered.

 

I love John Lennon. If I had been alive (and old enough) when he was killed, that would definitely be my number one.

Jason Collier and Eddie Griffin hit me...hard. I mean, I cried when Malik Sealy died, so ex-Rockets? So, so sad, and they were taken way too young.

I think the most tragic (at least for me) had to be Phil Hartman, as so many others have said. Just the WAY he died, coupled with his absolute genius, it's heartbreaking to think about.

 

BERNIE MAC

 

Has anyone mentioned Layne Staley, singer from Alice in Chains? He's up there with Kurt Cobain for me, as far as musicians whose deaths have affected me.

I didn't get into his stuff until after his death, but Bill Hicks is a great comedian who died too young.

 

Hartman's pretty big.

I'll throw two out there, and I'm cheating on both ...

I didn't become a Queen fan until 1992, a few months after Freddie Mercury's passing, and I've become an obsessive fan since then. I'm not going to tell you that the group's music would put Bob Dylan on notice, or that it's going to top Sgt. Pepper, but I'm a huge, huge fan.

And Freddie, I think would just be the perfect antidote to the overwrought me-me type of music that's been around since the 1990s. Not to say self-obsessed (Fred was one) musicians weren't thinking "me-me" for the last few hundred years, but could you imagine someone like Mercury taking the piss out of these people (musicians or otherwise) in 2009? What I wouldn't give to read a Sunday column of his, just taking people on.

But I didn't feel his loss as it happened, so I'm cheating. I badly wish that he were around right now. Badly.

And my other is a cheat, too, because he's not dead: Muhammad Ali.

Along Mercury's lines, could you imagine someone like Ali taking on the sociopolitical scene these days? Or the sporting scene? Some bastardized mixture of Foreman and Barkley ... but actually with something to say?

He'd put his foot in his mouth twice a month. He'd screw up and lose endorsements and have to go on Letterman and make us all forget about it in a month. That mouth would be perfect for these, and any, times.

What a cruel shame nobody could put their pocketbooks aside and stop him from fighting late into the 1970s. That's not Parkinson's. That's being punchdrunk, and though his own ego is the most to blame, somebody should have known better.

I think we're all going to be killing ourselves over not being more up in arms about Evander Holyfield in 2009, once we see him on some 60 Minutes "interview" in 2025.

 

Kurt Cobain, Hunter Thompson and Spalding Gray all hit me extra hard because they were suicides. HST's was kind of bittersweet though. The other two were just sad. His was sort of triumphant.

Bill Hicks maybe hit me the hardest. He's the one I miss the most. Worse, his death was in a trifecta with Eugene Ionesco and Frank Zappa. Three of my top heroes gone in a matter of months.

Mitch Hedberg was also rough. Phil Hartman, John Belushi, Chris Farley. So many funny, funny guys dead at a tragically young age.

John Entwhistle did a number on me and so did George Harrison and Warren Zevon.

I still remember where I was when I heard about John Lennon (car radio on the way to school in the morning) and Elvis Presley (over a loudspeaker at Dairy Queen). They were both heroes to me at a very early age and both deaths knocked me for a loop.

 

Word. Me too. I don't love anybody better than Dylan or The Beatles but I don't love anybody better than Queen either.

 

I got to see him four times live. Incredible. And I saw Mitch Hedberg three times live too. Very grateful for all that.