When Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" was re-released all remastered and whatnot and then I learned it was one of the 1,001 Records I Had to Listen to Before I Die, I quickly procured it.
I was asked whether the album would be so revered had the this Wilson brother not drowned in 1983.
I then countered that most people would not be looked upon with such regard had they not died. In terms of artistic credibility, the best thing to happen to Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison and James Dean was dying. Personally and professionally, it was a poor move or circumstance.
But Hendrix, for example, never had the opportunity to go disco in the late-1970s or release a shitty 1980s record. Joplin was so awful that she didn't live long enough for folks to realize just how much.
Wilson did his friends and family no favors by drowning; but in rock music it's often more about the mystique than substance.
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