Just Say No, Part 2

I also saw Sweet at the Chestnut Cabaret in 1990 or so. Or perhaps I should say I saw half of Sweet. The band was led by guitarist Andy Scott, and the late Mick Tucker was behind the drum kit, but vocalist Brian Connolly and bassist Steve Priest were replaced by other performers. The show was OK - gratifyingly the band's regular set included "Sweet F.A.", one of my favorite Sweet songs - but I left that night feeling that I hadn't seen the real Sweet on account of Connolly's absence.

A few years later, during my time in Britain, I chanced upon an article on Connolly in a tabloid; this was shortly after the release of the film Wayne's World, which to my understanding features "The Ballroom Blitz" in some way (I haven't seen it). Frightfully, the article reported that Connolly was confined to a wheelchair - it was accompanied by a photograph of Connolly in a wheelchair - and that he had a medical condition that caused him to shake constantly. Nonetheless, the article put a positive spin on the situation, saying that Connolly was heartened by Wayne's World-triggered public re-interest in Sweet and that he wanted to go out on the road and perform with Sweet as he once did.

But that photo, oh my goodness, what happened? To make a long story short, Connolly had 'stepped into the ring' with alcohol, and lost. For a period of about ten years - from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s - he drank and drank and drank and as a result ran his health into the ground. By the time he finally woke up and realized "This has to stop" the damage had been done. For the last ten years of his life, his body was not much more than a shell; he limped to the age of 51 before dying in early 1997.

In the song "Cooks County" from the Who's It's Hard, Pete Townshend, himself a Sweet fan, says:

So don't you abuse that body
It'll snap without assistance my friends

I thought of these lyrics when Whitney Houston died and I thought of them when Amy Winehouse died; they apply to Brian Connolly, to Elvis Presley, to a lot of people.

Speaking of Whitney Houston, at the time of her death a local talk-radio personality here in New Orleans, WRNO's John Osterlind, played an audio clip of her singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", and I have to say that it was as impressive a rendition of the national anthem as I have ever heard. At the height of her vocal powers, Houston was a force to be reckoned with. And now she and her talent are gone.

As much as we might wish we could go back in time and force people to take better care of themselves, it's just not possible to do that.

So be good to yourself: you can choose to follow Luscious Jackson's philosophy of "Live slow, die old". Sometimes fate deals you a bad hand - by all accounts Johnny Ramone took care of himself, and yet still died of prostate cancer in his mid-50s - but there is no need to tempt fate in this regard. To unnecessarily die before your time is neither heroic nor noble: it is a waste.