John Robert "Joe" Cocker OBE (20 May 1944 – 22 December 2014) was an English singer known for his gritty voice and dynamic stage performances that featured spasmodic body movements.
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| Joe (right) age 6 & brother Vic age 10. |
Joe Cocker was born in Sheffield on May 20 1944. He left Sheffield Central Technical School at 15 to work as a gas fitter and perform as Vance Arnold, in which guise he supported the Rolling Stones and the Hollies at Sheffield City Hall. As Joe Cocker’s Big Blues he recorded the Beatles’ I’ll Cry Instead, but the record failed to register. After a tour of GI bases in France and another stint with the Gas Board he teamed up with the keyboards player and bass guitarist Chris Stainton, and formed the Grease Band, whose first single, Marjorine, dented the foot of the charts.
It was the release of With a Little Help From My Friends that propelled Cocker into the big time. But Cocker’s signature was not confined to his voice. His onstage mannerisms – legs bolted to the floor while his hands, arms and upper body convulsed – caused him to be likened to “a dancer in a wheelchair”. When he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show some members of the audience found it so distasteful that the singer was largely obscured by dancers.
Despite this, America embraced his furnace-like roar. Throughout 1969 he toured extensively, appearing at all the major rock festivals, including Woodstock, at which he gave a towering performance, cementing his reputation as one of the biggest voices and most compelling acts around. Joe Cocker! (1969), which included a turbulent rendition of Leon Russell’s Delta Lady, proved the valedictory outing for the Grease Band, who had become little more than a background to his vocals.
But without a band, and with a touring contract to fulfil, Cocker assembled 21 musicians, wives, hangers-on, managers, roadies, children, a film crew, a spotted dog and a bus driver and set out across the States on the chaotic “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour, performing 65 concerts in 57 days. The experience, in addition to the cavalier range of substances Cocker ingested, so exhausted the singer that he was forced to return to Sheffield to recuperate.
As the album Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1970) and its accompanying single, Cry Me a River, stormed the American charts, a desolate Cocker was dividing his time between his parents’ house and the pub, lamenting “the three o’clock break – that’s the endless gap between lunchtime and the pub opening again at six o’clock”.
His only appearance, as he wrestled with his demons and life-threatening addictions to whisky and heroin, was a supposedly triumphant homecoming at Sheffield City Hall. But, singing alongside the Mad Dogs veteran Rita Coolidge, his performance merely confirmed that his recuperation remained incomplete, and 1971 passed in a haze. He found the strength to resuscitate his career after seeing Ray Charles interviewed on television. When Charles was asked: “Who are the greatest living blues singers?” he answered: “Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Joe Cocker.”
Inspired, Cocker returned to the stage. He toured America and Europe, but was forced to leave Australia overnight with six of his band members to avoid 18 charges, including assault, having already been fined A$1,200 for drug offences.
Cocker relocated to Los Angeles in 1973 and continued to enjoy periodic chart success. Cocker’s voice ensured that the curtain never quite came down on his career. When he sang the Crusaders’ I’m So Glad I’m Still Standing Here Today at the 1982 Grammy Awards, he received a standing ovation and renewed record company interest. It proved a turning point. Up Where We Belong, his duet with Leonard Cohen’s long-time backing singer Jennifer Warnes, was propelled by the success of the Richard Gere/Debra Winger film An Officer and a Gentleman to become his first American No 1. It also won the Oscar for Best Film Song.
On the back of this success he filled large arenas in the US and Europe, especially Germany, where his popularity had never waned. He enjoyed a triumphant return to Sheffield almost 10 years to the day after his last drug-fuelled appearance there. Attracting higher quality songwriters, such as Jeff Lyne and Bryan Adams, he enjoyed greater success with albums that achieved platinum sales.
Renewed success brought a relative harmony to the singer’s personal life. Supported by his new wife, Pam, whom he had met at Jane Fonda’s house while he was living in Santa Barbara, he rejected heroin, forsook spirits for beer and, after a long struggle, overcame his nicotine addiction. He rejoiced in less turbulent times and bought a ranch in Colorado that he rechristened the “Mad Dog Ranch”. There he raised animals, grew his own food, opened a café and indulged his passion for fly-fishing. In2008 Joe was awarded an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music.
Cocker kept recording and touring throughout his later years. 2012's Fire it up, which would turn out to be Cocker's last studio album, was followed by an extensive tour, consisting of a US leg in 2012 and a European run in 2013. He played 25 shows in Germany alone on the European leg of the tour, which reflects the popularity Cocker enjoyed there. Cocker's final live performance, was at the Loreley Open Air Theatre in Sankt Goarshausen on 7 September 2013.
Cocker died from lung cancer on 22 December 2014 in Crawford, Colorado, at the age of 70. He had smoked 40 cigarettes a day until he quit in 1991. (Edited from The Independent & Wikipedia)