24-12-2014, 11:08
JOE COCKER
...our very different careers
Part 1:
John Robert "Joe" Cocker(1944-2014) was an English rock and blues singer who came to popularity in the 1960s in the first years of my young adulthood. He passed away two days ago as I write this personal retrospective. He was known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance, and cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of the Beatles. His life-narrative is divided into several phases, at least that is the pattern at that useful online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Cocker began playing drums and harmonica in 1959 with a group called the Cavaliers. I joined the Baha'i Faith that year. I was in grade 10, in love with at least 3 girls, and was a home-run king in a little town at the centre of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe.
Part 1.1:
I found the delineation of the several stages of Cocker's life in Wikipedia helpful in providing a framework for my own life-experience: 1959 to 1966, 1966 to 1969 and 1969 to 1971, and so I utlize that framework below. I'll leave it to readers who are interested in the evolution of Cocker's career to go to Wikipedia. In my case these 3 phases were characterized by:
1959 to 1966: finishing high school and university, finishing my adolescent baseball, hockey and football careers
1966 to 1969: finishing teachers' college, starting marriage, starting my teaching career, and moving away from home and hearth.
1969 to 1971: recuperation from first episode of bipolar disorder; moving to Australia
Part 2:
Mr. Cockerâs career began to take shape around 1965 when he and the keyboardist, Chris Stainton, formed the Grease Band which played in pubs throughout northern England before relocating to London in 1967. The year 1965 was also the year my own career began to take shape, and in 1967 that career began. While I was a student in my last year of a sociology degree, I decided to teach among the Inuit in Canada's eastern Arctic.
Cocker broke into the big time with his chart-topping 1968 cover of The Beatlesâ With A Little Help From My Friends. He sang the song at Woodstock in 1969. His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film âWoodstock,â established him as one of popâs most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. That song was released in October 1968 in the UK while I was in a large psychiatric hospital recovering from an episode of what came to be called bipolar I disorder.
Part 2.1:
Cocker, too, had mental health issues, mainly depression, and drug addiction mixed with alcoholism. I was protected from both alcoholism and drug addiction by my bipolar disorder. I had the severe form of BPD and, if I had got mixed-up with alcohol and drugs, my life would have made much more of a nightmare than it already was with the symptoms of BPD. Cocker injected some American soul into English rock-n-roll; he was the first white English singer to really sound black. Cocker moved beyond the fluid soul of Sam Cooke and jazzy extemporization of Ray Charles to just lose himself in the musical moment.
Part 3:
Cocker also came to Australia in October 1972, some 15 months after I did. Just as my career and personal life was taking-off in 1972, Cocker's was beginning to descend into the alcohol and depression mentioned above. By the 1980s, his wife, Pam, had helped him get onto the straight-and-narrow. By the 1980s, marriage, career and psychiatric treatment for my BPD, all helped to regularize my life. âUp Where We Belongâ resuscitated Mr. Cockerâs career in 1982 as my own career was also resuscitated by a job in Australia's Northern Territory as an adult educator in the small country town of Katherine. By the time Cocker passed away yesterday, 23/12/'14, he had millions of fans from his 20 albums, from Woodstock releases, and all sorts of activities on the celebrity circuit from 1988 to 2014. I, too, had millions of readers thanks to the developments of the internet from 1988 to 2014. But I was still a two-bit player in the world's celebrity minor leagues.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia and several obituaries published in the first 24 hours after Joe Cocker's death.
Part 4:
I'm not in your league, Joe.
But I found looking back at
the road you travelled, and
the road I've travelled that
there were some useful ways,
means to make comparisons &
contrasts that throw light on my
own modus operandi......modus
vivendi, my own raison d'etre.
There was some crazy stuff in my
life-narrative, but nothing as crazy
as what you got into, Joe, in your
70 years of battling-away with the
intensities in your emotional life...
I had my own over-the-topness, too,
but was pleased to have moderating
influences of prophylactics[SUP]1[/SUP] from the
medical specialty of psychiatry which
have kept me from depression, mania--
all sorts of emotional imbalances in life.
[SUP]1 [/SUP]pharmacology's precautionary, preventative, preventive medications
Ron Price
24/12/'14.
...our very different careers
Part 1:
John Robert "Joe" Cocker(1944-2014) was an English rock and blues singer who came to popularity in the 1960s in the first years of my young adulthood. He passed away two days ago as I write this personal retrospective. He was known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance, and cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of the Beatles. His life-narrative is divided into several phases, at least that is the pattern at that useful online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Cocker began playing drums and harmonica in 1959 with a group called the Cavaliers. I joined the Baha'i Faith that year. I was in grade 10, in love with at least 3 girls, and was a home-run king in a little town at the centre of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe.
Part 1.1:
I found the delineation of the several stages of Cocker's life in Wikipedia helpful in providing a framework for my own life-experience: 1959 to 1966, 1966 to 1969 and 1969 to 1971, and so I utlize that framework below. I'll leave it to readers who are interested in the evolution of Cocker's career to go to Wikipedia. In my case these 3 phases were characterized by:
1959 to 1966: finishing high school and university, finishing my adolescent baseball, hockey and football careers
1966 to 1969: finishing teachers' college, starting marriage, starting my teaching career, and moving away from home and hearth.
1969 to 1971: recuperation from first episode of bipolar disorder; moving to Australia
Part 2:
Mr. Cockerâs career began to take shape around 1965 when he and the keyboardist, Chris Stainton, formed the Grease Band which played in pubs throughout northern England before relocating to London in 1967. The year 1965 was also the year my own career began to take shape, and in 1967 that career began. While I was a student in my last year of a sociology degree, I decided to teach among the Inuit in Canada's eastern Arctic.
Cocker broke into the big time with his chart-topping 1968 cover of The Beatlesâ With A Little Help From My Friends. He sang the song at Woodstock in 1969. His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film âWoodstock,â established him as one of popâs most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. That song was released in October 1968 in the UK while I was in a large psychiatric hospital recovering from an episode of what came to be called bipolar I disorder.
Part 2.1:
Cocker, too, had mental health issues, mainly depression, and drug addiction mixed with alcoholism. I was protected from both alcoholism and drug addiction by my bipolar disorder. I had the severe form of BPD and, if I had got mixed-up with alcohol and drugs, my life would have made much more of a nightmare than it already was with the symptoms of BPD. Cocker injected some American soul into English rock-n-roll; he was the first white English singer to really sound black. Cocker moved beyond the fluid soul of Sam Cooke and jazzy extemporization of Ray Charles to just lose himself in the musical moment.
Part 3:
Cocker also came to Australia in October 1972, some 15 months after I did. Just as my career and personal life was taking-off in 1972, Cocker's was beginning to descend into the alcohol and depression mentioned above. By the 1980s, his wife, Pam, had helped him get onto the straight-and-narrow. By the 1980s, marriage, career and psychiatric treatment for my BPD, all helped to regularize my life. âUp Where We Belongâ resuscitated Mr. Cockerâs career in 1982 as my own career was also resuscitated by a job in Australia's Northern Territory as an adult educator in the small country town of Katherine. By the time Cocker passed away yesterday, 23/12/'14, he had millions of fans from his 20 albums, from Woodstock releases, and all sorts of activities on the celebrity circuit from 1988 to 2014. I, too, had millions of readers thanks to the developments of the internet from 1988 to 2014. But I was still a two-bit player in the world's celebrity minor leagues.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia and several obituaries published in the first 24 hours after Joe Cocker's death.
Part 4:
I'm not in your league, Joe.
But I found looking back at
the road you travelled, and
the road I've travelled that
there were some useful ways,
means to make comparisons &
contrasts that throw light on my
own modus operandi......modus
vivendi, my own raison d'etre.
There was some crazy stuff in my
life-narrative, but nothing as crazy
as what you got into, Joe, in your
70 years of battling-away with the
intensities in your emotional life...
I had my own over-the-topness, too,
but was pleased to have moderating
influences of prophylactics[SUP]1[/SUP] from the
medical specialty of psychiatry which
have kept me from depression, mania--
all sorts of emotional imbalances in life.
[SUP]1 [/SUP]pharmacology's precautionary, preventative, preventive medications
Ron Price
24/12/'14.
married for 47 years, a teacher for 32, a student for 18, a writer and editor for 15, and a Baha'i for 55(in 2014)