This man did SO MUCH stuff for music. Another true legend. This is up there with some of the other top legends. I’m talking Maurice White levels, maybe higher. This one hits me hard. I listened to Parliament and Talking Heads so much growing up.
As david byrne said, he was an invisible influence. He did so much to push synthesizers and music forward but few people realize it. So much of what is done on synths today was done by him first.
Fun fact, if you didn’t watch the video I posted last, apparently the bass in Flashlight, arguably one of the top 10 most important funk songs of all time, that’s also Bernie playing not Bootsy. Bootsy recorded the bass bits but bernie is overdubbing them and playing em all on keyboard when done on the album or live performances. It’s sick as hell.
Without Bernie and Parliament in general we might never have had much of the SoCal hip hop sound. Parliament was KEY to Dre, NWA, and Snoop’s music. Fun fact: Parliament is sampled on 4 different songs off of Ice Cubes “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” album.
Dammit, 2016, not another one.
And funny enough, I was listening to some Parliament stuff after checking out a Daft Punk remix. (Mothership Reconnection)
Yeah, but it ain’t even about celebrities. There are dozens upon dozens of celebrity deaths every year, the increase in social media and brought to attention more and more of them as the years ago by. Hell, it ain’t even about the age as most of them are dying late 60s early 70s, which is getting up there. It’s the fact that the amount that are important specifically to music, especially people that had HUGE influences on music in general. Not just like a good band that had some great albums. People that inspired others and pioneered musical directions. I mean, if we lost Billie Joe of Greenday that’d be sad but hardly on the level of losing someone like Prince or Bowie.
I mean, losing Ali was probably the only super crazy big deal that wasn’t from music. Losing Lemmy, Bowie, Prince, Maurice White, Worrell, George Martin, Merle Haggard, Lonnie Mack, and a few others. These were all people at the forefront of their genre, massive influences across music.
Agreed Eternal, the lost of Worrell is huge. Coupled with when you look at the climate of electric keyboardists in the 70’s and 80’s like Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Keith Emerson, Tony Banks, Rick Wakeman, Jan Hammer (he did so much before the Miami Vice music, many people don’t realize. Very few would realize the keyboardist on John Abercrombie’s “Timeless” or Billy Cobham’s “Spectrum” is the same guy who did the Miami Vice theme) he had such a huge impact on the sonic palette of keyboardists after him, this loss will be strongly felt for a long time. Worrell’s sound is such a part of the landscape it’s easy to forget how path breaking it is.