People Who Died (RIP Jim Carroll)

Jim Carroll, the author of the prep-school jock turned junkie memoir The Basketball Diaries, and the singer/songwriter behind the great punk anthem “People Who Died” died himself over the weekend from a heart attack at age 60.

Carroll made his mark as one of my least favorite musical archetypes: The Tragically Gorgeous Street Poet Turned Glamourously Hopeless Drunken Angel and/or Junkie. Other links in this self-destructive chain would include Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Gram Parsons, Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain.

Nevertheless, “People Who Died” was a brilliant blast of universal truth; one need not live on the streets to feel overwhelmed by the litany of deaths around us.

Carroll was discovered and embraced by the matriarch of the Beautiful Loser genre, Patti Smith (pictured above w/Carroll), who never met a high cheekboned tragically romantic poet she didn’t like. She got him to read his poetery onstage to the accompaniment of her band, and liking the results, he formed his own band.


Keith Richards, who is neither beautiful nor a loser, and who brilliantly channeled the sound of the downtown New York music scene on the Stones’ Some Girls, got Carroll signed to a three-record deal on Atlantic. His debut album, Catholic Boy, is considered a punk classic, and The Basketball Diaries has enjoyed a long shelf life as a book and film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Personally, I have never understood romanticizing throwing away one’s life for just one more shot in the arm. As long as we’re glorifying horrible life choices, why not romanticize people who eat too much bacon or hand their life savings to Bernie Madoff? The Bacon Diaries, starring Kevin Bacon? I smell Oscar!
Anyway, I’m glad Mr. Carroll found it within himself to cleanup his act and live to age 60. RIP and TCB. Here's another tune from Carroll called "Day and Night" - sounds more like Springsteen than the Sex Pistols but hey a poet's a poet right?