It's a weird and uncomfortable feeling for a journalist when a musician you have interviewed has died
When news of Smiley Culture's death during a police raid broke on Tuesday, I was as shocked as anybody. He'd only had two hits in the 80s, but his singles Police Officer and Cockney Translation pioneered a cheeky, narrative street style that reverberates through pop today. They were great, great singles and the manner of his death was shocking. But something else troubled me about his passing. Just months ago, I'd been speaking to Smiley on the phone.
For a journalist, it's a weird and uncomfortable feeling when someone you've interviewed has died. On the one hand, an interview is a short, transient, sometimes even formal process. I must have had Smiley on the phone for all of 20 minutes. But sometimes, even in short encounters like that one, artists tell you things about themselves and open up emotionally. When they subsequently die, especially in such shocking circumstances as Smiley, it's hard not to feel a personal connection, even grief.
The one that really got me was World of Twist's singer Tony Ogden, who passed away in 2006 and whose music and death affected me so much I felt compelled to go to his funeral. Although they never made it big, the Manchester band played one of the best gigs I saw in the 1990s, at Leeds Warehouse. Sons of the Stage (currently being played live by Beady Eye) is one of my favourite singles of all time, and only months before his death Ogden had been reminiscing on the phone. He sent me a CD of his new music and I promised to give him an opinion, but somehow lost his number. He left me messages ? always beginning, "Dave, it's Tony O," ? but never left a return number. I tried to get a message to him through his old record company, to no avail. When he died, my girlfriend found me in floods of tears. The death of someone I never even met had affected me terribly. I felt I'd let him down.
It's no easier when you've met them personally. In 1994, I interviewed Jeff Buckley for what must have been hours. There was a different connection to normal because we'd both lost fathers when we were very young, and, as a new artist, he'd never been interviewed about this before and opened up for ages. I saw him a few times after that and while it would be an exaggeration to say we were friends, I still remember how he ruffled my hair in affection before a gig in Dublin. He's been dead for 14 years ? after plunging into the Mississippi river ? but barely a week passes in which I don't think about him in some way.
When stars you've interviewed die, the chances are they haven't passed away happily at the end of a long life with a pint of beer in their hand. They have probably died young, often in shocking circumstances. I remember Lush's drummer Chris Acland as a cheery, easy-going guy who could talk for hours about punk rock, which doesn't square at all with his 1996 suicide. Similarly, the Michael Hutchence I spent a memorable night drinking with in 1994 just doesn't square with the troubled character who, just three years later, would die a strange and lonely death.
I suppose this tells me that whatever people tell a journalist about their deepest feelings and however much you think you've bonded, you never really know them, and it's naive to feel you do. Meanwhile, their music and articles about them continue to keep them in your memory. When I spoke to a chatty and amusing Smiley Culture last summer, I never expected to be penning his obituary this year. It feels like a bad dream you suddenly expect to wake up from. I'd love to be able to pick up the phone again and ask: "Smiley, you came across like a really happy-go-lucky guy. This week, what the hell happened?"
Missy Peregrym Sarah Gellman Eliza Dushku Bonnie Jill Laflin Joanna Krupa
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