birthday additions (Jim Carroll style)

David Eddings died last year (2009) on my birthday. When I was a kid, I loved the Belgariad (and started but never got too far with the Mallorean -- bad timing, my teenage years). He was a 'commercial writer', no doubt about that, and had few illusions about the literary value of his work. Can I respect that without admiring it? Natural causes -- Eddings didn't have any sexy diseases or depressions, which perfectly suits the man and his work.

Bo Diddley died on my birthday in 2008. He was 79, and he'd been suffering for over a year from the aftereffects of a stroke, so you can't go so far as to call it a tragedy. Still, this was a legendary guitarist and showman who connected the dots between blues, R&B, and rock and roll. IMHO, he was ten times as important as Elvis when it comes to the sound and development of rock music.

Vince Welnick died in 2006 on my birthday. He was not my favorite Dead member, or even my favorite Dead keyboardist (or even #2, 3, or 4)...but I've thought a lot about how broken he was by Jerry's death, not to mention how the other band members treated him afterwards. I can understand both sides of the story (it does sound like he could be pretty hard to take at times), but I'm fascinated and deeply moved by this sad, crazy man and the horror and pathos of his end. On my birthday.

Ray Combs died in 1996, following a pretty ugly period in which he: A) was fired from his only gig that most people remember (hint: Family Feud) B) was in a car accident that screwed up his back for the rest of his life; C) separated from his wife and kids; and D) tried to commit suicide (his wife claimed that he only did it "to get attention"), spent a week in the hospital, came back and trashed his house by banging his head into everything, got sent to another hospital, and (while on suicide watch) made the sheets into a noose and hung himself successfully in the hospital room closet. On my birthday.

Andreas Segovia, died in 1987 on my birthday. He was 94. He was one of the most incredible guitarists of all time -- not simply because of his technique, which was groundbreaking, but also because he took a 'folk instrument' dismissed by most classical purists, and proved to the entire world that it could in fact be a solo instrument of unmatched grace and expression.

Oh, and just so nobody accuses me of being biased towards my own lifetime:

Lou Gehrig (no prize if you guess the cause of death), died in 1941 (so exactly three decades before I was born). Not only was this the day that "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" died, but coincidentally it was also the day in 1925 when Gehrig went from being an overlooked pinch-hitter to a home-run king who would never miss a game for the next fourteen years. By all accounts, one of the nicest guys ever to play the game...and he died young, of a poorly-understood disease, after giving his all to the game.

Oh, and by the way -- celebrity births on this date include Cagliostro and the Marquis de Sade. Suck on that.