Farrah, Sky, and Michael
I know people often bring up how the deaths of famous people seem to come up in threes, but today was ridiculous. And all three of the people who passed today were pop culture mile markers in my own lifetime.
Farrah Fawcett’s passing at 62 after battling cancer – and a mere day or two after it was announced that her and longtime partner Ryan McNeal were going to marry (they’d been a common-law couple for a couple of decades) – is a sad but not surprising passing. Her cancer battle had been public for some time; a network TV special on her cancer battle also served in part to cast more light on America’s desperately-overdue-for-an-overhaul health care system when part of that special depicted her seeing treatment in Europe for her cancer.
When I was younger, I used to watch Charlie’s Angels during its first-run status on ABC. If I recall correctly, Farrah only remained on Charlie’s Angels for their first season (her character did recur in a later season, but I’d stopped watching by then). Her famous poster from that period (said to have sold 12 million copies) has long become iconic, as is the hairstyle she popularized in the series. She also managed to strengthen her acting cred in her post-Angels career by appearing in roles that were a far cry from her TV character: most notably, the off-Broadway play Extremities (1982) and the anti-domestic abuse TV movie The Burning Bed (1984). Extremities in particular is cited as the role that gave Farrah serious credibility as a dramatic actress, making the choice to have her reprise the role for a 1986 motion picture a no-brainer.
The second passing of today was that of early garage-punk icon Sky Saxon, leader of the legendary 60’s rock group The Seeds, of “Pushing Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” fame. Both songs were minor Top 40 hits in their day, but both songs have gone on to be considered garage-punk classics, a designation that began when “Pushing Too Hard” was tapped to be one of the songs included on the now-classic compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, and both songs have been covered by many punk groups, including the Ramones and early California hardcore punks The Klan, in the 80’s and beyond.
Saxon himself, after being aligned for much of the 70’s with a religious sect/commune called the Source Family (their leader, Father Yod, is said to have given Sky the moniker Sunlight, which stuck almost permanently for the rest of his life), spent the rest of his career working both with various reformations of The Seeds and with other pickup groups. More recently, Saxon had collaborated with Billy Corgan on some new material and would later appear in the Smashing Pumpkins’ video for “Superchrist”. Saxon had recently moved to Austin, TX, initially after only intending to stay briefly for some performances. He had checked into an Austin hospital with a suspected infection of his internal organs, but succumbed to whatever was ailing him not long after being admitted. He was 63.
And then, there is the most shocking death of the three.
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