The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

Funny, isn't it. Not only did he not credit the woman (Rosalind Franklin) that gave him the idea in the first place, but actually criticised her, even her appearance. the ungrateful wretch.

And why is it always "Crick and Watson", when Wilkins shared the award?

Sounds like a right wanker.

DNA pioneer James Watson dies aged 97

James Watson, the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, has died aged 97, his former lab said.
The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career.
He became among the 20th century's most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick.
But in his later years, Mr Watson's reputation was tarnished by comments on genetics and race that led him to be ostracised by the scientific establishment.
Along with Mr Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their work - momentous research that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to new insights including on genetic code and protein synthesis.
It marked a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics - ranging from criminal DNA testing to genetically manipulated plants.
Mr Watson went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome.


But he came under fire in 2007 and bowed out of public view for controversial remarks regarding the intelligence levels between races of people.
He apologised, but was swiftly removed as his lab's chancellor and his public image never recovered.
In 2013, Mr Watson was asked about comments he made in which he referred to ignorance being the curse of the Irish.
He said he was not implying that Irish people were stupid.
He was also routinely criticial of female scientists, including Rosalind Franklin, whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA offered the clue that made Mr Watson and Mr Crick's modeling possible.
Ms Franklin, who worked with Mr Wilkins, did not receive the Nobel Prize.
She died in 1958 and the prestigious prize is neither shared by more than three people nor given posthumously.

DNA pioneer James Watson dies aged 97

[misskit]

KISS Star’s Surprising Cause of Death Revealed

KISS guitarist Ace Frehley’s cause of death has been revealed as a tragic accident. The 74-year-old died due to blunt trauma injuries to his head from a fall in a studio that caused a brain bleed, according to a report obtained by TMZ from the Morris County, New Jersey Medical Examiner. Frehley’s fall fractured the back of his skull, caused a stroke and created a subdural hematoma, which is when blood pools between the brain and the brain’s protective layer. The report noted that doctors tried to evacuate the subdural hematoma, but were unsuccessful. His manner of death was ruled an accident. Frehley died on Oct. 16 after his family made the decision to turn off his ventilator. Frehley was one of the original members of KISS, alongside Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss. He played guitar for the rock and metal band from 1973 to 1982, when he left the group due to creative differences and substance abuse. He reunited with the band from 1996 to 2002 for a reunion tour and continued to pursue his solo career afterward. Since Frehley’s death, all of the other founding members of KISS have released statements expressing their grief.

KISS Star’s Surprising Cause of Death Revealed

[S Landreth]

Dick Cheney’s funeral service

[hallelujah]

Mani



Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist, dies aged 63

Ian Brown and Tim Burgess were among those to pay tribute to Mani, whose death was announced by his brother and nephew

Alexis Petridis: ‘Mani’s writhing, relentless bass was the Stone Roses’ secret sauce – it taught indie kids how to dance’

Laura Snapes
Thu 20 Nov 2025 17.30 CET

Gary “Mani” Mounfield, best known as bassist of the Stone Roses and later a member of Primal Scream, has died aged 63. The cause of death has not been shared.

His brother Greg Mounfield posted the news on Facebook: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.” His nephew also shared the news.


His Roses bandmate Ian Brown posted on X: “Rest in peace Mani”. Tim Burgess of the Charlatans called him “one of the absolute best in every way – such a beautiful friend”. Rowetta of the Happy Mondays was also among those to pay tribute.

Liam Gallagher wrote on X: “In total shock and absolutely devastated on hearing the news about Mani my hero”. Rough Trade Records also called him “the perfect example of how a bassist can be the beating heart of a band”.

Mani had recently announced an extensive speaking tour of the UK, spanning September 2026 to June 2027, in which he promised to look back on pivotal career moments such as the Stone Roses’ 1990 gig at Spike Island and their comeback tour in 2012.

In 2023, his wife, Imelda, died from cancer.


View image in fullscreen
Mani with Ian Brown in the Stone Roses in 1989. Photograph: Goedefroit Music/Getty Images
Mani was born on 16 November 1962 in Crumpsall. He attended Xaverian college in Rusholme and left school age 16. He later said he befriended Brown when they went to deal with “some National Front skinheads in north Manchester who’d been shakin’ a lot of me mates up”, he told i-D magazine in 1996. “We’ve been mates ever since.”


Mani formed the band the Fireside Chaps with John Squire and Andy Couzens in Greater Manchester in the early 80s. After several name and lineup changes, including taking on Brown as frontman, they became the Stone Roses and played their first official gig in October 1984.

Mani had been a guitar player until the Fireside Chaps became the Waterfront. “I found it more rewarding playing the bass guitar than playing rhythm,” he said in 2000. He became synonymous with the Rickenbacker. “I’ve always been into good old northern soul and funk grooves and it was like, ‘This is it’.”

They quickly blew up locally, but national success took longer. It wasn’t until the late 80s that labels started to take notice; meanwhile on the ground at home, the young Liam and Noel Gallagher both saw them live and were inspired to form bands.

Mani later said that being in the Roses probably saved his life, as he watched a number of friends – 17 of them, he told i-D magazine – die of heroin addiction.


Produced by John Leckie, their 1989 self-titled debut steadily became one of the key fixtures of the Madchester movement, synthesising indie music with rave culture, its grooves led by Mani and drummer Alan “Reni” Wren. In 1991, then-NME critic Mary Anne Hobbs called it “the most fluent crossover album of the last decade”.

In 2009, to mark a 20th anniversary reissue of the record, Mani said: “a classic album that is still relevant to the kids of today deserves its recognition eventually. Twenty years on and it is still fresh and stands out amid a torrent of mediocrity, career oriented, dull as dishwater, safe, unimaginative music that dares to challenge for our crown.

“We were light years ahead of our time, and the Stone Roses album will always remain light years ahead of the new so called supergroups. Read ’em and weep guys, you all know who you are!!!! Back to school with you and try harder. Listen and learn from the masters.”





In 1990, the Roses played a calamitous gig at Spike Island in Widnes to 27,000 people. It took four years for them to produce a second album, Second Coming – perhaps the epitome of the so-called difficult second album – which met with a mixed reception. “Anything other than a stone cold classic that sounded like it had been beamed in from another plane was going to be a jarring anticlimax,” wrote John Harris in NME.


In 2000, Mani said that he felt people wrote off the record prematurely. “I think they wanted something that we’d done before but we were never about to do another Herman’s Hermits album like the first one and be lovable mop-tops,” he said. “We’d grown hair on our balls and learned to play a bit better and we were always going to do something a little bit different.”

The group dissolved in 1996. Mani then joined Primal Scream as bassist, prompting a revival of the group’s creative fortunes. In 2006, he compared life in the two bands in an interview with Uncut magazine: “The Primals is more of a democracy, whereas with the Stone Roses we were more looking over our shoulder seeing if Ian and John [Squire] were pleased. Because they were writing the songs and being touted as the Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards kind of thing. For me now there’s a lot more freedom. Primal Scream are as good at bullshit detection as the Stone Roses ever were.”


He remained a member of Primal Scream until the Roses reformed from 2011 to 2017. In addition to touring and festival performances, they released two new songs, All for One and Beautiful Thing.

He was also a member of the bassist supergroup Freebass alongside the Smiths’ Andy Rourke and New Order’s Peter Hook, with singer Gary Briggs of Haven.

Mani supported Manchester United, and in later life espoused a love of fishing – as well as going to the pub afterwards. He is survived by his twin sons, Gene Clark and George Christopher, 12.

In the same Uncut interview, he reflected on his unlikely success. Despite the Roses splitting, he said, “I never can see it as a failed mission – fucking hell, I’m from north Manchester, not the best part of town, and I’ve been around the world two or three times playing music. I’m still comfortable, I’ve got a house. I could have ended up dealing crack or stealing cars or robbing houses, like a lot of my friends.”

I saw the Roses live in the 90s and he once called me a cnut in the pub after a game.


Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist, dies aged 63 | Stone Roses | The Guardian

[hallelujah]

A man and whose band actually can genuinely claim to have changed music in the UK and the wider world in the 90s.

[Happy As Larry]

Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now

Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81.

A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.

With hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want, I Can See Clearly Now and Wonderful World, Beautiful People, Cliff’s upbeat musical temperament brought him a large and longstanding fanbase. His lead acting role in 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come was also acclaimed, with the film seen as a cornerstone of Jamaican cinema.

He is one of just a handful of musicians, alongside Bob Marley and others, to be awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit.

Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness was among those paying tribute to Cliff, calling him “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world … Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.”



Cliff was born in Saint James, Jamaica in 1944, and his music career began in the early 1960s after he moved to the island’s capital Kingston and began collaborating with producer Leslie Kong. Kong’s family owned a record shop called Beverley’s and Cliff wrote a song namechecking it to help persuade Kong – who would go on to become key producer in reggae – to work with him.

He had a number of local hits and was selected as a Jamaican representative at the World’s Fair expo in New York in 1964, but his career really took off later that decade after he signed to Island Records.
He was initially marketed to a rock crowd – hence curios such as his cover of Whiter Shade of Pale – and found life in his new home of London alienating, later describing the city as “a bitch … I experienced racism in a manner I had never experienced before”. But the sparkling ska of 1969’s Wonderful World, Beautiful People proved to be his breakthrough UK hit, reaching No 6 in the charts.

Its message of hope and unity carried with it a rebuke of the current state of the world (“cheating, backbiting, scandalising and hating”) and that blend of beautiful music and socially conscious lyrics became a core part of Cliff’s artistry. After writing Vietnam, a song pleading for the end to that war, Cliff later recalled: “The critics in London said, ‘Wow! How is he singing this kind of serious song and such a happy rhythm?’ And I said: Wow! I didn’t even realise I was doing that. I was just writing a song to a rhythm.”

Cliff was back in the UK Top 10 in 1970 with a cover of Cat Stevens’s Wild World, before filming The Harder They Come in 1972, after the film’s director Perry Henzell intuited that he would make a good actor.
Its soundtrack album, with Cliff performances such as the title track and You Can Get It If You Really Want alongside others by Desmond Dekker, Toots & the Maytals and more, helped to bring reggae to a wider audience, especially in the US where the film was eventually released in 1975.

The film’s gangster milieu was familiar to Cliff, as he recalled in the Observer in 2022: “When I came to Kingston I lived in areas that were gangster-infested, and to be quite honest, the only thing that stopped me from joining those gangs full-time was I didn’t know where I would bury my head if my family heard that I was in Kingston firing a gun.”

Cliff continued to tour and release albums in the 1970s, and had high-profile appearances in the US such as a booking on Saturday Night Live. He took some time away from music in the mid-late 1970s, travelling to Africa to reconnect with his ancestral roots, and converting to Islam: the 1978 album Give Thankx was partly inspired by those travels.

Bruce Springsteen championed his song Trapped by playing it on tour in the early 1980s, and a live version appeared on the massive-selling charity album We Are the World.
In 1994, he had a huge flush of new fame with his version of I Can See Clearly Now, which appeared on the soundtrack to the Jamaican bobsled drama film Cool Runnings: it returned him to the UK Top 40 for the first time since 1970, topped the French charts and was a hit elsewhere.

Cliff collaborated with numerous other artists over the years from the Rolling Stones to Sting. More recently he worked with the lead singer of punk band Rancid, Tim Armstrong, on an EP and album, the latter winning a Grammy for best reggae album – one of two wins from seven nominations over the years.

Cliff’s most recent album is 2022’s Refugees, made with Wyclef Jean, capping a discography of more than 30 studio albums.
Despite the success of The Harder They Come, Cliff only occasionally returned to acting, most prominently with 1986’s Club Paradise, opposite Robin Williams, Rick Moranis and more.

Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81 | Jimmy Cliff | The Guardian

[Norton]

RIP...Jimmy, ganja and an ice cold Beer Lao! Ah, those were the days my friends!

[misskit]

Goodbye, Jimmy.

The first time I paid any attention to reggae music was when I saw the movie The Harder They Come as a teen. It’s a movie you don’t forget.

[Neverna]

I like this song, though I prefer the Johnny Nash version.

[harrybarracuda]

Big Bird.

youtube.com/watch?v=kDjkhxgTMbI&feature=youtu.be

Danny Seagren, Better Known As Big Bird, Dies at The Age of 81 - mxdwn Television

[NamPikToot]

Psittacosis a terrible way to go

[david44]

ir Tom Stoppard the great Czech writer from Zlin which I know well has died.

Michael Billington can say it better than I. Saw Professional Foula great play and his support for Civic Forum which prepped teh velvet revolution and removal of cmmunist tyranny.
Tom Stoppard: a brilliant dramatist who always raised the temperature of the room | Tom Stoppard | The Guardian

[Takeovers]

I dont know how famous they were outside Germany. Alice and Ellen Kessler, known as the Kessler twins died age 89.

They were singing, dancing and acting, always together. It is said, one of them was seriously ill. They decided to go out together, like they always were together in life. It was assisted suicide. Some discussion if this was legal, since only one of them was terminally ill. At that age I can understand their decision.

[Happy As Larry]

Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T & the MGs, dies aged 84

Steve Cropper stood at the side of musical legends and toiled in the shadows of the studio, never a star. But his work with his fellow musicians and singers at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, established him as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 1960s.

Actually, pretty much every rock icon of that fabled decade looked up to Cropper, who has died aged 84. The Beatles seriously considered recording at Stax, and the Stones covered songs he played on and emulated his crisp rhythm and lead guitar playing. As a jobbing musician in 1964, Jimi Hendrix drove from Nashville to Memphis to meet Cropper (they chatted about guitars and jammed), while Janis Joplin insisted her new band play Stax’s Christmas party so as to rub shoulders with Cropper and co. Across the world, garage bands played songs he had helped to shape.

If it was just for his guitar playing then Cropper would be venerated. His incisive, tasty, never ostentatious style marks him – alongside Lowman Pauling (his main influence), Curtis Mayfield and Bobby Womack – as someone who defined the sound of original R&B. But this slim, somewhat gawky youth also developed into a remarkable engineer, producer and co-writer of soul anthems. Cropper was not a solo songwriter (nor did he ever seriously attempt to be a solo artist) but, paired up with such great soul singers as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Eddie Floyd, he helped give structure to the song ideas they had, ensuring they had intros, verses and choruses that leapt out at the listener. Cropper never felt the need to act as a “guitar hero” – his playing was economical, complimentary rather than seeking attention: even when Sam Moore of Sam & Dave shouts “play it, Steve!” on Soul Man, Cropper plays a fill, embellishing the song rather than showing off his own prowess.

Cropper grew up in Memphis and formed his first band, the Royal Spades, while in high school. Back then, Memphis practised extreme segregation and his school was all white, yet he and his fellow band members loved R&B. The band’s tenor sax player, Charles “Packy” Axton’s mother, Estelle, had co-founded Satellite Records, a tiny independent record label, with her brother Jim Stewart. The Spades recorded an instrumental called Last Night, and Estelle – a doting mum as well as a discerning, fledgling record exec – convinced Jim that Satellite should release it (although she was wise enough to insist the teens change the band’s name to the Mar-Keys).

Last Night was a US hit and helped establish the label, which was forced to change its name to Stax after a legal complaint from another Satellite Records. Cropper didn’t enjoy touring – Packy was already a heavy drinker and the band partied too hard for his liking – so he requested a job helping Jim in the studio.

He learned to engineer and produce records, alongside playing on sessions. He was Stewart’s most trusted – and well remunerated – employee at Stax and here he formed Booker T & the MGs with teenage organist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson Jr and bassist Lewie Steinberg (both veterans of the Memphis club scene). In 1962, Stewart thought that a studio jam that the quartet had worked up showed potential, and so Green Onions was released – quite possibly the most influential instrumental record of the 1960s and a mod club favourite to this day.

It was Cropper who recognised the potential of a youth from Macon, Georgia, who arrived at Stax as a valet to guitarist Johnny Jenkins for a failed session. When Otis Redding grabbed the last minutes of the session to demonstrate two songs he had written, Cropper played piano behind him on These Arms of Mine and a legend was born. The two young men would work together for the rest of Redding’s brief life – Booker T & the MGs provided the ideal backing for Redding at his famous Monterey pop festival performance in 1967 and Stax’s subsequent European tour – trading ideas, licks and song titles, so helping shape the remarkable canon of work that Redding left. It was Cropper who turned a brief reminiscence from Redding, about watching boats go in and out of a bay, into a fleshed-out set of lyrics and one of Redding’s greatest hits.

Redding died in 1967, and Booker T decamped to California, furious that Stewart gave Cropper a more preferential contract (racial tensions ran high at Stax in the late 1960s). Cropper slipped into a sideman role: after leaving Stax he played on sessions for John Lennon, Rod Stewart and other famous names. Then he became part of the Blues Brothers band (and films), which surely paid well even if it reduced those great R&B anthems to comedy pub kitsch. No matter: Steve Cropper helped shape a whole genre. Rest in peace, soul man.

From Otis Redding to Booker T, Steve Cropper was a strong yet subtle force that shaped so many soul classics | Soul | The Guardian

[harrybarracuda]

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mortal Kombat and Man in the High Castle star, dies at 75




Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the Japanese-American actor known for his work in such films and TV series as Mortal Kombat, The Last Emperor, and The Man in the High Castle, died Thursday in Santa Barbara, Calif., from complications of a stroke. He was 75.

Tagawa's publicist, Penny Vizcarra, confirmed the news to Entertainment Weekly.

Sally Phillips, his former wife of 30 years and mother to their two children, shared in a statement that Tagawa "came to L.A. and began teaching his own style of martial arts called Chu Shin. He was discovered by [Bernardo] Bertolucci and cast him in his first film, The Last Emperor. From there, he became a high-profile Asian actor in more than 30 films and in the series The Man in the High Castle."

Born in Tokyo on Sept. 27, 1950 to the Japanese actress Mariko Hata, Tagawa's father's work in the American Army forced the family to ramble across the country throughout his childhood. He was raised in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas before settling down in Southern California, where he caught the acting bug at Duarte High School.

Growing up in the long shadow of the WWII-era Japanese internment policy had an impact on Tagawa's upbringing that he spoke about throughout his lifetime. He noted in 2001, "We know that Japanese weren't received very well after the war. So this was ten years after the war that I grew up in southern America."

Tagawa continued, "I know how to deal with the odds. I'm the kind of guy when you say one in a million, I say I'll take it. You tell me there's none in a million, I say I'll make one and then I'll take that one. So nothing ever stops me."

Tagawa's big break came in 1987, and endures as one of the finest films he ever made. Italian master director Bernardo Bertolucci cast him as the eunuch Chang in The Last Emperor, his sweeping biopic of Puyi, China's final monarch.

"It was mind boggling. You know, to suddenly be working with one of the top-10 directors in the world," Tagawa reflected in 2015. Plus the film was in China, I almost blurted out, 'How much do I have to pay?' It was just like a dream come true. That was an amazing experience."

From there it was off to the races. Tagawa would go on to play the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 movie Mortal Kombat (based on the popular video game series) and Trade Minister Nobusuke Tagomi in the Prime Video TV series The Man in the High Castle (based on the Philip K. Dick novel).

His other screen credits included movies like Licence to Kill, Pearl Harbor, Rising Sun, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Planet of the Apes, and TV shows like Nash Bridges, Heroes, and Revenge.

Tagawa was living on the Hawaiian island of Kauai at the time of his death. He is survived by his three children, Calen, Byrnne and Cana, and his two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa dead: 'Mortal Kombat' star was 75

[david44]

Steve Cropper

So many great songs and the instrumental which just gets better over the years



A real Blues brother in movies and life RIP

[Happy As Larry]

The actor and comedian Stanley Baxter has died at the age of 99.

Baxter enjoyed a decades-spanning career on radio, TV and film, and was famous for impersonating famous people including Queen Elizabeth II

Born in Glasgow in 1926, Baxter was best known for helming TV sketch series including The Stanley Baxter Show and The Stanley Baxter Picture Show.

Baxter began his career as a child actor in the BBC series Children’s Hour, and was a part of the Combined Services Entertainment unit, providing live entertainment for troops during the second world war.

Success in radio in the postwar period led to theatre and pantomime work, and in 1959 Baxter relocated to London where his career would span stage work, radio sitcoms and TV roles, notably featuring his impressions of famous figures including the pope and Queen Elizabeth II.

Film roles included Crooks Anonymous, with Leslie Phillips, and The Thief and the Cobbler, notable for having remained unfinished for 29 years.

In 2020, Baxter came out as gay, following publication of an authorised biography, The Real Stanley Baxter by Brian Beacom. In it, Baxter – who was married to his wife Moira for 46 years – described being gay as a “very difficult life. There are many gay people these days who are fairly comfortable with their sexuality, fairly happy with who they are. I’m not. I never wanted to be gay. I still don’t.”

Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99 | Television | The Guardian

[david44]

I recall Parliamo Glasgow a spood language lesson

[taxexile]

^

when comedy was comedy. excellent

[harrybarracuda]

Pulp Fiction and The Mask star Peter Greene has passed away.

The actor, who's played various villain roles, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Dec. 12, according to his manager. The cause of his passing was not disclosed.

Per the New York Times, neighbors heard Christmas music blasting from Greene's apartment for several days and called for a wellness check when it
didn't stop.

Cops ruled out foul play, according to a New York Post report.

Born on Oct. 8, 1965, Greene was known for his roles as Zed in Pulp Fiction, mobster Dorian in The Mask, and Redfoot the Fence in The Usual Suspects. His latest role was in the 2025 film Beggarman, and he will appear posthumously in the 2026 movie Clika.

https://philstarlife.com/news-and-views/232490-pulp-fiction-star-peter-greene-found-dead-at-apartment

[Happy As Larry]

Legendary Texas musician Joe Ely dies at 78

Joe Ely, the legendary Texas songwriter and singer whose raw, rock-and-roll-infused honky-tonk sound spanned five decades and helped define the Outlaw Country and Americana genres, died Monday at his home in Taos, New Mexico. He was 78.

A native of Amarillo, Texas, Ely was born Feb. 9, 1947, and became a central figure in the extraordinary group of artists, including Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, who emerged from the West Texas town of Lubbock before settling in Austin, the state's live music capital. The trio formed the influential folk-country group The Flatlanders in the early 1970s.

Ely launched his solo career after signing with MCA Records in the 1970s, releasing acclaimed albums like his 1977 self-titled debut, Honky Tonk Masquerade, and Down on the Drag. Over his career, his music attracted praise from a diverse group of artists, leading to noted collaborations and friendships with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, and most famously, the punk rock band The Clash, with whom he toured in 1979.

Recognized as one of the best songwriters of his generation, Ely won a Grammy Award in 1998 for his work on the Los Super Seven album and was named the Official Musician for the State of Texas in 2016. He was inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriter Associations Hall of Fame the same year.

Legendary Texas musician Joe Ely dies at 78 | FOX 7 Austin

[cyrille]

I got introduced to Joe Ely by The Clash.



RiP

[KWAN]

Lucky enough to see Joe Ely a couple of times in the UK. Outstanding. One time with a small 'Tex-Mex' band. Brilliant.

[david44]

Zed's dead

- YouTube

[harrybarracuda]

Peter Arnett, Pulitzer prize-winner who reported on Vietnam and Gulf wars, dies aged 91

Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the world eyewitness accounts of war from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, has died at 91.

Arnett, who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his Vietnam War coverage for the Associated Press, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, California, and was surrounded by friends and family, said his son Andrew Arnett. He had entered hospice on Saturday while suffering from prostate cancer.

As a wire-service correspondent, Arnett was known mostly to fellow journalists when he reported in Vietnam from 1962 until the war’s end in 1975. He became something of a household name in 1991, however, after he broadcast live updates for CNN of the first Gulf war.

While almost all Western reporters had fled Baghdad in the days before the US-led attack, Arnett stayed. As missiles began raining on the city, he broadcast a live account by cellphone from his hotel room.

“There was an explosion right near me, you may have heard,” he said in a calm, New Zealand-accented voice moments after the loud boom of a missile strike rattled across the airwaves. As he continued to speak air-raid sirens blared in the background.

“I think that took out the telecommunications center,” he said of another explosion. “They are hitting the center of the city.”
It was not the first time Arnett had gotten dangerously close to the action.

In January 1966 he joined a battalion of US soldiers seeking to rout North Vietnamese snipers and was standing next to the battalion commander when the soldier paused to read a map.

“As the colonel peered at it I heard four loud shots as bullets tore through the map and into his chest, a few inches from my face,” Arnett recalled during a talk to the American Library Association in 2013. “He sank to the ground at my feet.”

He would begin the fallen soldier’s obituary like this: “He was the son of a general, a West Pointer and a battalion commander. But Lt. Colonel George Eyster was to die like a rifleman. It may have been the colonel’s leaves of rank on his collar, or the map he held in his hand, or just a wayward chance that the Viet Cong sniper chose Eyster from the five of us standing in that dusty jungle path.”

Arnett had arrived in Vietnam just a year after joining the Associated Press as its Indonesia correspondent.

That job would be short-lived after he reported Indonesia’s economy was in shambles and the country’s enraged leadership threw him out. His expulsion marked only the first of several controversies he would find himself in, while also forging an historic career.

At the AP’s Saigon bureau in 1962, Arnett found himself surrounded by a formidable roster of journalists, including bureau chief Malcolm Browne and photo editor Horst Faas, who between them would win three Pulitzer prizes.

He credited Browne in particular with teaching him many of the survival tricks that would keep him alive in war zones over the next 40 years. Among them: never stand near a medic or radio operator because they’re among the first the enemy will shoot at and, if you hear a gunshot coming from the other side, don’t look around to see who fired it because the next one will likely hit you.

He would stay in Vietnam until the capital of Saigon fell to the Communist-backed North Vietnamese rebels in 1975 and in the time leading up to those final days he was ordered by AP’s New York headquarters to begin destroying the bureau’s papers as coverage of the war wound down.

Instead, he shipped them to his apartment in New York, believing they’d have historic value someday. They’re now in the AP’s archives.

After the war’s end Arnett remained with the AP until 1981, when he joined the newly-formed CNN.

Ten years later he was in Baghdad covering another war. He not only reported on the front-line fighting but won exclusive, and controversial, interviews with then president Saddam Hussein and future September 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

In 1995 he published the memoir, Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World’s War Zones.
Arnett resigned from CNN in 1999, months after the network retracted an investigative report he did not prepare but narrated alleging that deadly Sarin nerve gas had been used on deserting US soldiers in Laos in 1970.

He was covering the second Gulf war for NBC and National Geographic in 2003 when he was fired for granting an interview to Iraqi state TV during which he criticized the US military’s war strategy. His remarks were denounced back home as anti-American.

After his dismissal, TV critics for the AP and other news organizations speculated that Arnett would never work in television news again. Within a week, however, he had been hired to report on the war for stations in Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium.

In 2007, he took a job teaching journalism at China’s Shantou University.

Following his retirement in 2014, he and his wife, Nina Nguyen, moved to the southern California suburb of Fountain Valley.

Born 13 November, 1934, in Riverton, New Zealand, Arnett got his first exposure to journalism when he landed a job at his local newspaper, the Southland Times, shortly after high school.

“I didn’t really have a clear idea of where my life would take me, but I do remember that first day when I walked into the newspaper office as an employee and found my little desk, and I did have a – you know – enormously delicious feeling that I’d found my place,” he recalled in a 2006 AP oral history.

After a few years at the Times he made plans to move to a larger newspaper in London. En route to England by ship, however, he made a stop in Thailand and fell in love with the country.

Soon he was working for the English-language Bangkok World, and later for its sister newspaper in Laos. There he would make the connections that led him to the AP and a lifetime of covering war.

Arnett is survived by his wife and their children, Elsa and Andrew.

Peter Arnett, Pulitzer prize-winner who reported on Vietnam and Gulf wars, dies aged 91 | US news | The Guardian