"You Light Up My Life" Songwriter Suicide

[3113]

Okay, this is a bit gruesome, but talk about a story! The man who wrote a song that epitomized the Saccharin side of the seventies kills himself with these circumstances surrounding him....

The Academy Award-winning songwriter of "You Light Up My Life" was found dead of an apparent suicide while awaiting trial on charges of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women and just months after his son was accused of murdering a swimsuit designer.

Joseph Brooks, 73, was discovered Sunday afternoon on his living room couch with a plastic dry-cleaning bag around his head and a towel around his neck, police spokesman Paul Browne said. A hose attached to a helium tank was hooked up to the bag, and the door to Brooks' Upper East Side apartment was ajar, he said.

The medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine Brooks' cause of death. A three-page suicide note included complaints about his health, police said. Brooks suffered a stroke in 2008, and his lawyer had said the songwriter's health was deteriorating during the court case. He appeared gaunt and shuffled slowly as he came to recent court dates.

Brooks was awaiting trial on allegations that he lured women to his apartment through an online ad offering auditions for a movie role, then sexually assaulted them after making them drink apparently drugged wine as part of an "acting exercise." He pleaded not guilty in 2009, and his court date had not yet been set

Full story here.

 

[TE999]

A fitting end for someone who inflicted that musical abomination on an unsuspecting public. The song became so incredibly annoying piano players in cocktail lounges were given money not to play and sing it.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

A fitting end for someone who inflicted that musical abomination on an unsuspecting public. The song became so incredibly annoying piano players in cocktail lounges were given money not to play and sing it.

An interesting position. Does a song writer get royalties when a performer is paid to not perform his/her work? You could get really rich being really bad if that is the case . . .

 

[xssve]

The irony is so thick here you could break chunks off it, wrap notes around 'em, and throw 'em through the window of your sweetie/stalking victim.

 

[TE999]

An interesting position. Does a song writer get royalties when a performer is paid to not perform his/her work? You could get really rich being really bad if that is the case . . .

Silence, in that case, would be golden. Too bad it didn't happen to Disco.

 

[Xelebes]

An interesting position. Does a song writer get royalties when a performer is paid to not perform his/her work? You could get really rich being really bad if that is the case . . .

Being simply bad would have you be forgotten by the piano players. What needs to happen is to be obnoxiously good.

 

[3113]

Being simply bad would have you be forgotten by the piano players. What needs to happen is to be obnoxiously good.

I'm not sure it's obnoxiously good so much as mind-fully-tuneful. If the tune sticks in the head, the lyrics will stick with them no matter how awful.

In the case of this academy award winner however, it not only stuck in people's minds, but had the right soppy even religious overtones to make it a hit among the less-than-critical masses. And once that happened it ends up everywhere. Never mind the piano bars, it's now elevator music.

Once that occurs, your stuck with it for decades.

 

[TE999]

I'm not sure it's obnoxiously good so much as mind-fully-tuneful. If the tune sticks in the head, the lyrics will stick with them no matter how awful.

In the case of this academy award winner however, it not only stuck in people's minds, but had the right soppy even religious overtones to make it a hit among the less-than-critical masses. And once that happened it ends up everywhere. Never mind the piano bars, it's now elevator music.

Once that occurs, your stuck with it for decades.

Speaking of stuck with it...

"Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale..."

"A horse is a horse, of course, of course..."

"Greeeen Acres is the place for me..."

"They're creepy and they're kooky..."

"There's a holdup in the Bronx..."

"The end of the Civil War was near..."

"Let me tell ya'll a story 'bout a man named Jed..."

"Boy, the way Glenn Miller played..."

The definition of an intellectual is someone who hears the William Tell Overture and doesn't think of the Lone Ranger.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Or Beethoven's Sixth without Fantasia.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

He could have at least taken the Captain and Tenille with him.

 

[Guest]

*deleted*

 

[estragon]

Please Mr Piano Man, don't sing me a song of the night.