It’s difficult at times to drive around Seattle and not recognize the ultramega imprint that Chris Cornell left behind on his hometown. At least it is for me. Even for a city that’s widely known for ruthlessly tearing away and repurposing its own history in the name of “progress” – think bigger, taller, glassier high-rises as far as the eye can see – Chris’s fingerprints are everywhere.

Rolling down Leary Way in his old, childhood stomping grounds around Ballard, you’ll pass triangular-shaped Reciprocal Recordings, where Soundgarden recorded their debut album Screaming Life in 1987. Studio Litho, where they laid down their final, pre-breakup record, 1996’s Down on the Upside, nearly two decades later is only a couple of minutes further up the street, across from the massive statue of Vladimir Lenin. Ray’s Boathouse, where Chris worked as a young line cook scraping out fish guts to fund his rock star dreams is about 10 minutes in the other direction.

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Across the sound in West Seattle, Cornell’s visage pops up all over the place. Most prominently, it’s muraled on the side of Easy Street Records. Right next to him, memorialized on brick is a similar piece of street art depicting his former roommate, and Mother Love Bone frontman, Andrew Wood. Inside, the shop is a veritable grunge rock museum, where you can pick up his near-entire discography, in vinyl and otherwise.

On 8th Ave., there’s the stately Paramount Theater which Soundgarden rocked in 1992 for their acclaimed “Motorvision” shows. Downtown, on 4th Ave., you can peer through a dusty window, and gawk at the remains of Bad Animals Studios, where he spent months and months and months honing the sounds on his band’s blockbuster 1994 album Superunknown. Two blocks over, is the Moore Theater where Soundgarden recorded their second EP, FOPP. The international headquarters for Sub Pop, the record label he helped legitimize all those years ago, is only a few dozen feet away.

Down on 2nd Ave in the alleyway is Black Dog Forge, where he and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam all rehearsed in the early ‘90s. Over on 1st Avenue, is the Central Tavern, one of the oldest saloons on the entire West Coast, and the scene of dozens of Soundgarden gigs throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. The band also used the upstairs as their own private business headquarters for several years. The Showbox where they reunited in 2010 as Nudedragons is a few miles down the road, across from world-famous Pike’s Place Market.

And finally, there’s his bronze statue set just in front of the Museum of Popular Culture, right around the corner from the Space Needle, waving to passersby for all eternity.

“His songs and voice ignited the alternative rock scene and helped put Seattle on the map as one of the world’s great music scenes,” the plaque around his feet proclaims. “Cornell’s work…greatly impacted popular music and will continue to inspire future artists and bands for generations to come.”

Whatever your feelings about the supernatural, it’s pretty much a fact that some parts of who we are inevitably remain behind long after we’re gone. They could be physical reminders – a painting, a bronze bust, a well-placed photograph – but there’s also an emotional imprint that’s much harder to quantify. A feeling. A collective memory. A tingling sensation when you hear a particular song at the right time of day.

The wake that Chris Cornell left behind is especially immense because the impact he made upon the world was so incredibly enormous. As was the shocking nature of his death. When much of the world went to sleep on the night of May 17, 2017, one of the greatest voices in the history of rock was onstage at the Fox Theater in Detroit, doing what he did best; entertaining thousands of worshipful fans with his singular gift. The next morning, he was gone.

For many people, myself included, the tragedy was nearly impossible to reconcile. For those who knew him best – his family, his closest friends, and his many bandmates – it will forever remain so. Cornell was a larger-than-life person, in both word and deed. He was a 6’3” high school dropout, who fashioned himself into a poet. A self-described music nerd, who became one of the coolest figures in an industry where cool is the coin of the realm. A reclusive drummer, who moved from the rear of the stage to the very lip and then beyond, while transforming himself into the perfect idea of what a rock and roll frontman is supposed to look, sound, and act like.

“He was a really good drummer,” Soundgarden’s guitarist Kim Thayil told me in 2018. “He’s not like Matt [Cameron] but he wrote great as a drummer. I think so much so that [bassist] Hiro [Yamamoto] and I entertained the idea of getting another singer so that Chris continued to write with us on drums. But Chris really wanted to get up from behind the drum kit.”

Many in Seattle’s underground seemingly sneered as he extravagantly ripped his shirt off night after night and dove headlong into the crowd throughout the ‘80s. At a gig at the Central a few years back, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic was onstage reminiscing between songs, when he called that particular move going, “The full Cornell.” Apparently, they used to take bets on how long the shirt would stay on. As the locals joked, others around the world took copious notes, learning from the dynamic, dark-haired frontman just what’s necessary to keep the roiling masses engaged.

But while anyone can buy a gym membership and do a few stage dives, one thing that couldn’t be replicated from Cornell was his iconic, medulla-scrambling voice. It was a singular instrument that stood out even among the amazing crop of gifted screamers that emerged alongside him throughout the alt-rock era. Even more astounding were all the myriad ways in which he used it. Chris Cornell wasn’t born a great singer. He had the natural tools, but it took him years of hard work and practice to realize his fullest capabilities. But once he did, all bets were off.

I remember I was talking to someone once while writing my book, Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell. They said they were having difficulty once while trying to figure out *how* to sing a particular piece of music. They were stumped. Befuddled. Could not nail it. Then a thought crossed their mind: “How would Chris Cornell sing this.” Suddenly everything became clear. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do. Chris gave them the roadmap.

There wasn’t a lyric on Earth that he couldn’t fill with heart-ripping emotion, stultifying power, or sheer, breathtaking electricity. His low, foreboding rumble could seemingly drop all the way to the depths of the ocean floor, before shooting up into the stratosphere like a F-35 screaming after a recently fired missile. When Chris Cornell stepped to the microphone, everyone took notice.

About four years ago, I was sitting with Kim Thayil backstage at the Metro in Chicago, talking about Cornell. He made the observation that “he didn’t carry a lot of things or materials or relationships within his life. He was a little bit independent of that. He traveled lightly.”

And it’s true.

Chris was always moving on to the next thing, and then the next thing, and the next thing. Sub Pop to A&M Records. Screaming Life to Superunknown. Soundgarden to Audioslave. Hip-hop beats to solo acoustic tours. He was always searching. Always looking around the next corner to find what interested him most. And then he was gone.

But for as light as Chris traveled through life, the legacy he left behind remains enormous. It’s in his children, who have taken up his craft and fashioned themselves into spectacular singers in their own right. It’s in the old haunts around town, and the memories of musical conquests left behind. It’s in the hearts and minds of the millions of fans who turned to his words and melodies in times of trouble, in times of sorrow, and in times of self-doubt. For as long as his records remain, they always will.

Chris Cornell may no longer be with us, but he’s always there.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Leonard Cohen has been a huge inspiration for me as a songwriter. But in a different way than most other artists or bands, which one might otherwise regard as obvious direct musical “influences” on my band Communions.

Although our music isn’t rooted in folk—post-punk, Britpop and alt-rock are perhaps our biggest genre influences—the influence of Leonard Cohen enters through a different route, which is, first and foremost, lyrical. But it wasn’t until I began writing our upcoming record Pure FabricationthatI really allowed myself to embrace Cohen as an influence; that is, I allowed his influence to directly seep into my own writing. Cohen’s poetic approach to music has always cast its shadow over my musical consciousness, but had previously been latent in my expression. I think that’s because there’s something daunting about attempting to emulate guys like Cohen, or similarly, someone like Bob Dylan. For me, both are the two towering giants of my musical upbringing, two pinnacles of 60’s music bred from a time where music had a close-knit connection to poetry, and who constitute the foundation of the kind of songwriter I admire.

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It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where this influence begins and ends in my own artistic output, but I think it begins with an ideal of wanting the lyrics that accompany the music to be able to stand on their own, of wanting the words to be able to have a poetic impact in their own right. This is something I always appreciated about Cohen’s songs. His lyrics aren’t just poetic, they could be gauged as actual poems—surreal, and filled with endless layers, which in turn makes the music endlessly re-listenable. This kind of approach to popular music was certainly incomparable to the popular rock ‘n roll of the ‘60s. In my mind, Cohen was a first-mover, and paved the way for a more introverted and intellectual kind of popular songwriting, proving that that sort of writing could resonate with an audience, and more importantly, that it would have longevity and stand the test of time. That, in itself, is inspiring.

The timelessness of his songs’ imagery is something significant. His songs are so dense with sensual images and provoking scenes that listening to his album Songs of Leonard Cohen is almost like a physical spatial experience—like revisiting an old house that you used to live in, or getting to inhabit a landscape again for a while. There is really no other music quite like it.

Songs of Leonard Cohen isn’t really a record I listen to so much as I ‘live’ with, in the sense that it’s an album I seem to replay during certain parts of the year; there’s something about it, that I associate with the cold, which makes it a fitting listen every autumn and winter—whether its because of the title of the song “Winter Lady” or due to the foggy, melancholic atmosphere of the record induced by the softly played flamenco guitar…I don’t know. Perhaps “living with”, or rather, “needing” these songs amidst the flux of seasonal change isn’t coincidental; there is something so soothing, almost meditative about songs like “Suzanne” or “Sisters of Mercy” that they have a real calming effect on me.

This meditative effect might also attest to the fact that I specifically sought out tickets to a Leonard Cohen concert during a time of personal upheaval. Despite being a musician, I’ve never extensively gone to concerts on my own accord (apart from cheap punk shows during my youth). At least, I can’t recall many times in my life where I’ve gone out of my way and bought “expensive” concert tickets. But one time I remember clearly was when I bought a ticket to see Cohen live in Seattle. After finishing high school in Copenhagen, Denmark (where I’m originally born), I had shortly moved back to Seattle (where my family and I had lived for 10 years) on my own, living on my friend’s couch, and with the intention of moving back to the States permanently. This was a confusing, tumultuous time for me—a time of existential crisis in which I was unsure which country I belonged to. I don’t remember why I went to the concert alone, but I remember being by myself, sitting in this huge stadium amongst others who were twice or three times my age, watching Leonard Cohen perform, and feeling like Ihad intimate access to an alternative world that transcended the world of problems that were going through my mind at the time. It was comforting to know that amid all of the chaos, the connection to this music constituted something unbreakable and constant, something that would not disappear, but would be a part of me wherever I was heading.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

The first time I heard a Leonard Cohen song was through the surrogate voice of a dear friend, Jason P. Grisell, in Venice, CA circa 1991. Sitting on the sidewalk hunched over his beat-up acoustic guitar wearing an army green parka in the middle of a hot summer day, Jason sang an unforgettable version of Cohen’s song, “Suzanne”. The song was sandwiched between a deafening rendition of “Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and a 13th Floor Elevators song. “Suzanne” struck me as nothing short of lyrical perfection; the words and melody remained on repeat in my messy head for hours. It haunted me like the first time I heard Gregorian chants and read James Baldwin.

Within a week of hearing Jason’s version of Suzanne, I owned four Leonard Cohen albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977), and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). I didn’t have a job or anywhere I had to be, so I immersed myself in the world of Leonard Cohen. I bought and read Cohen’s books Beautiful Losers (1966), Selected Poems 1956-1968, The Energy of Slaves (1972), and Death of a Ladies’ Man (1978). It felt as though I had found a kind of church for myself. A place to rest and belong.

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I was drinking a lot of green tea at the time, always in a little ceramic cup with no handle, and I had just been introduced to the scent of sandalwood in a wooden beaded bracelet a friend brought me from Indonesia. Green tea and the scent of sandalwood always takes me back to this simple place and time; a time when all I had to do was drink green tea and worship in the Church of Leonard Cohen. What entered my heart most unguarded was the pure resonance and depth of Leonard Cohen’s voice: a feeling-felt kind of feeling, music embodied, a warm rumbling under the rib cage in my chest cavity similar to a cat’s purr. Leonard Cohen’s gentle masculinity, emotional brevity, and concise and unapologetic song craft awakened in me an unfamiliar depth and perception of the human condition.

Much like a child lost in play, I experienced a profound sense of inspiration when immersed in Leonard Cohen’s music and words, a calling to listen better and to create something out of nothing. Looking back on this time now, I suppose I was searching for what one might understand or describe as “God.” I sometimes sensed a holiness was present in Leonard’s presence and in the sonic space and mood of his poetry, grace and melody and this was comforting to me. This was a kind of spiritual beckoning. A way to make meaning of things. A landing. I felt my general sense of existential confusion, teenage angst, and aloneness was soothed by this newfound comfort in Leonard. I was soul-lost, a misfit, a seeker, and a baby-queer punk who was wholeheartedly and heartbrokenly disappointed by the world and gender I was born into, but I also had the innate capacity to rest in things like gratitude, humor and solitude, much like Leonard, who I fantasized might understand me. Resting in Leonard Cohen’s embrace I relaxed into a kind of knowing that it was all as it was supposed to be—that it all mattered and also didn’t matter—and unbeknownst to him this is when I adopted Leonard Cohen as my Godfather.

Leonard Cohen died in 2016, the same year as Prince, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Carrie Fischer, and Abe Vigoda. He was also a Zen Buddhist monk and devoted many years to his practice.

Tamala Poljak is in the legendary pueer punk-pop band Infinite X’s. They released a remastered reissue of their eponymous LP last February on Jealous Butcher Records, making it available on vinyl and digitally for the first time ever. 

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Editor’s note: Prince died five years ago today, a moment that shook the entire music and cultural world. Dywane Thomas Jr., better known as MonoNeon, worked and performed with Prince in his latter days. Here, he shares some of his memories of what it was like to be with and work with the artist.

My time with Prince was a life-changing thang. I started working at Paisley Park in early 2015 as Judith Hill’s bassist, Prince hired me to join her new live band.

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Prince was super chill. I never felt nervous or under pressure playing with Prince, I just wanted to play some music with him. If Prince wanted me to play a certain thang he would tell me but other than that he just let me play (and of course know the song). I did get some little butterflies in my belly when Prince first walked into rehearsal but that went away immediately (haha!)… then I was just anxious to jam with him.

 

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It wasn’t any weird thangs happening when I was at Paisley with Prince… we just played music till Prince said lunch/dinner break or see ya tomorrow.. haha! Sometimes Prince would invite us to hang with him to see some live music. I remember hanging with Prince and the band to check out Fred Wesley and Jabo Starks at Dakota Jazz Club and we also saw KING perform at the Ice House in Minneapolis.

In late 2015 to early 2016, I started playing bass with Prince’s new band with Donna Grantis, Kirk Johnson and Adrian Crutchfield. The jams we had with Prince in the NPG Music Club Room were so funky. The Paisley Park After Dark shows we played brought down the mothership a few times (haha!)… even Madonna came to one of those shows in October 2015. That was actually one of my first Paisley Park After Dark shows I played with Prince. One of the songs I loved playing with Prince was “Stare,” also a Billy Cobham tune Prince covered called “Stratus” (there’s a video on YouTube of us playing that song in the NPG Music Club Room, the video is titled “Laughing Stallions” which you can see below).

But yea… P was in a great mood that night, honestly, Prince was never in a bad mood when I was there with him… we played music!

Prince and I eventually started recording together along with Kirk Johnson and Adrian Crutchfield for a project Prince named “Black Is The New Black” (P told me and Adrian he would name it that). I think we recorded around six or more tracks. The only song Prince released from the project was “RUFF ENUFF” on Tidal under the artist name MONO NEON, he played guitar and keyboards on that song. I loved being in the studio with Prince. I would sit next to him playing my bass in the control room of Studio A and he would be playing on a clear see-thru Fender Rhodes Suitcase with a black Yamaha Motif keyboard on top. Prince would record the sessions to tape as well, rolling back and forth from the Studer A827 remote controller to the keyboards.

The last time I was with Prince was February of 2016 at Paisley. He actually posted video snippets of two of the tracks we recorded together on his Instagram (Princestagram) on February 2, 2016… one of the songs is called “Soul Patch.”

 

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I miss Prince so much mane! Everyday I think about him and the music we played. My time with Prince was cut short but I will cherish every single moment I had with him.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Born in 1970, Phife Dawg grew up Malik Taylor writing poems and rapping around his native Queens, New York neighborhood before forming A Tribe Called Quest in 1985 with childhood friends Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Nicknamed “The Five-Foot Assassin,” or just “The Five-Footer” for his stature, Phife’s persona was both larger than life and beautifully honest. Through the decades, the band’s daring and eclectic style would forever change the landscape of alternative hip-hop.

Though Tribe’s first album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990), mostly kept Q-Tip at the forefront, with their sophomore effort The Low End Theory (1991) Phife took on a larger role within the group. On “Check The Rhime,” the call-and-response between Q-Tip and Phife brought his lyrical talent to the forefront: “You on point, Phife?/All the time, Tip.” The music video for “Buggin’ Out” is a greyscale tour of a New York park before Phife’s second verse kicks in: “Yo, microphone check, one-two, what is this?/The Five Foot Assassin with the roughneck business.” All of a sudden, full-color alternating neon backgrounds, Phife gesticulating through a barrage of punchlines, a breakneck contrast to Q-Tip’s steady musings. The lyrical play between the two quickly became a defining feature of the group’s music. Phife’s boasting didn’t have the breezy confidence of his costar, but his off-beat bars about condoms and Cheez Whiz helped define both a new type of hip-hop and a new hip-hop listener.

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Turning away from a mainstream they saw as fossilized by the tough-guy rapper archetype, Tribe aligned themselves with other New York groups De La Soul and Jungle Brothers and soloist Queen Latifah, forming the Native Tongues collective. This Zulu Nation-inspired supergroup prioritized Afrocentrism and positive energy, carving out a space of free expression within hip-hop that would be pivotal to its future—they are repeatedly marked as an influence by figures like Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, and ?uestlove. 

Immersing themselves in the far-reaching samples of their production and praised the social commentary of their lyrics, Phife himself often struggled to move smoothly in-and-out of the world of quirky heroics he was helping to invent. Fighting diabetes since 1990—he famously worked into one of his unconventional boasts: “When’s the last time you heard a funky diabetic?”—Phife was never swept all the way into stardom, despite his increasing popularity and critical acclaim. “I just thought we were going to be celebs in the hood,” he told the New York Times. Though his expressive style became known worldwide, there was still an unsteady future ahead.

After completing their historic three-peat with Midnight Marauders, ATCQ had solidified themselves as prominent figures of ‘90s hip-hop. They were honored as Group of the Year at The Source Awards after receiving both the first five-mic rating and the first back-to-back five mics in the magazine’s history—and Midnight Marauders went platinum even faster than Low End Theory. However, the musical direction was changing. Q-Tip had begun working alongside a young J Dilla (then Jay Dee) and converted to Islam along with Ali, and their shared vision begin to break from Phife’s. After a couple more albums, they mostly stopped recording together. 

As Phife continued accruing medical expenses, the group would support him, returning on tour in 2006. In 2008, after years of waiting, he was able to receive a kidney transplant from his wife, but it failed and he returned to the waiting list. In 2015, after the reissue of People’s Instinctive Travels, Tribe began recording one final album, We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, finished and released by the remaining members after his death from diabetes complications on March 22, 2016.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

When I was growing up, interesting young female protagonists were thin on the ground, especially ones who looked and thought and sounded like me. Enter Scout Finch, disheveled, scrappy and precocious, she leapt off the page and into my heart, compliments of Nelle Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Instantly successful, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and would go on to become the classic of American Literature, selling thirty million copies. So far. A staple of high school English classes, despite its dark adult themes of domestic violence, racism, and rape, To Kill a Mockingbird continues to sell about a million copies per year.

Lee grew up in a small, southern town, the child of an attorney father and a distant mother who struggled with mental illness. Lee’s real-life Dill, her best friend and neighbor, “a pocket Merlin whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fantasies,” was none other than Truman Capote. Once Lee had delivered her novel into the hands of the publisher, she was off to provide Capote with the research, interviewing, and emotional support he needed to complete his nonfiction masterpiece, In Cold Blood.

In 1962, Gregory Peck won the Best Actor Oscar in a film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird that played to his strengths. With eight Academy Award nominations and three wins, the film was obviously well-received, but it lost something precious by shifting the focus from Scout to her father. 

Don’t get me wrong. Atticus Finch is a wonderful character, stoically brave and admirable for his unflinching sense of justice. The rabid dog scene, eloquently penned by Lee and expertly executed by director Robert Mulligan, reveals Finch’s reluctance to stand in the spotlight. He dispatches the dangerous animal with quiet efficiency and a complete lack of bravado. No bluster. No swagger. When the sheriff compliments his precise marksmanship, Finch shushes him and heads back to work, his children gaping in amazement. The scene is a master class in characterization, but it is important to note that Atticus Finch has no discernable character arc. He is the same hard-working, dedicated father at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. Scout, on the other hand, is far more fascinating.

Adventurous, outspoken, and extraordinary, Scout Finch careens her way into her reader’s imagination, charming all but the most rigidly conventional, just as Little Miss Nelle must have done so many years ago in Monroeville, Alabama.

Too young to go to school, Scout is determined to understand playground culture and conducts reconnaissance through her tree house telescope. She is always hungry for adventure. Once she makes it to school, Scout makes a name for herself. She trusts her fists and is more than willing to draw first blood when she feels she’s been wronged. No matter the size of her opponent, this girl will not be bullied. Neither will she be easily dissuaded from a good idea. When Jem is out of creative ways to pass the time, Scout suggests, “Let’s roll in the tire.” Jem sighs into the complaint that he’s too big to fit inside a tire, but Scout is undeterred. “You can push.” She refuses to be left out of Jem and Dill’s plans, no matter how hair-brained or dangerous. Jean Louise Finch refuses to let life pass her by.

Always direct and often impertinent, Scout Finch speaks her mind. Her precocious vocabulary occasionally wanders into what her uncle refers to as “bathroom invective”, an affliction her father considers “a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.” Scout’s willingness to speak when others hesitate calls out bigotry, recognizes the disenfranchised (Hey, Boo), and quite possibly saves her father’s life.

One of the things that makes Scout Finch extraordinary is her appearance. She will wear a dress if the occasion demands it, but she’s never comfortable in it. She admits, “I was usually mud splashed or covered with sand.” Despite her Aunt Alexandra’s admonishments to dress properly and act like a lady, Scout dons her most comfortable uniform – overalls. Societal norms are confining. After all, she’d look silly wearing a dress while rolling down the street in a filthy tire. At the end of the novel, Aunty sees Scout for who she really is. Following the traumatic attack from Mr. Ewell, she brings Scout her overalls. “Put these on, darling.” Scout does put them on, and proceeds to illustrate the characteristic that makes her most extraordinary of all: her compassion. She refuses to allow her guardian angel to be pitied by spying neighbors. “I would lead him through our house, but I would never lead him home… if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.”

Scout Finch is extraordinary because Nelle Harper Lee was extraordinary. Lee left this life Feb. 19, 2016. Let’s take a moment to appreciate her and her exquisite creation, To Kill a Mockingbird, a work whose publication is etched into the timeline of our cultural landscape. The lessons taught in its dog-eared, coffee-stained pages – to walk in another person’s skin, to treat even the smallest of creatures with respect, and to live our lives with honor – resonate not only with Southerners like me, but with people all over the world. To Kill a Mockingbird always was, always is, and always shall be relevant. 

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

The celebrated Italian intellectual, Umberto Eco, died five years ago today. During his time, he was the preeminent expert in the field of semiotics, the study and interpretation of signs and symbols, lecturing at numerous universities. He was also a prolific writer, penning seven novels, over 40 nonfiction works, and even three children’s books.

He is best known for his extremely erudite and theory-intensive novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Foucault’s Pendulum is his postmodern magnum opus full of esoteric allusions to secret societies, pseudoscientific sects, and other medieval arcana. The encyclopedic novel is a fat pill to swallow and its reward is simply coming out the other side of it. It is a test of one’s will. Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange) says the novel is “crammed not with action but with information” and quipped that it “needs an index” and that “forests have been chopped down to print it” in his New York Times review.

Eco’s other highly allusive (and elusive) 500-page phonebook of a debut novel, The Name of the Rose, was a bestselling whodunit novel riddled with semiotics and medieval theology (like Foucault’s Pendulum) selling over 50 million copies and making it one of the highest bestselling novels of all time despite its abstruseness. But, Eco infused his beloved scholarship into his creative works, requiring the reader to decode the signs Eco intentionally implanted within them. 

You wouldn’t be wrong to conjecture that even his very name seems to be coded. He inherited it from his grandfather who was a foundling at the time city hall officials were elected to name forsaken children. So, the abandoned boy that was his grandfather was christened “Eco,” an acronym for “ex caelis oblatus” meaning “given by the heavens” in Latin. In a display of his patent cynicism, he supposed it was “better given by the heavens than by hell.”

Eco wasn’t just a world-famous novelist slash professor gracing the earth with his brilliance, he was also somewhat of a pop cultural star, whether the mainstream knew it or not. In a famous lecture, he coined the term “semiological guerilla” – the concept of undermining the dominative mainstream mass media’s control over the system of language; published an essay about America’s obsession with simulacra and counterfeit reality, going for the jugular on popular Americana miscellanies like wax museums, Superman, holography, and the implications of tight jeans; and even had a cameo in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, La Notte, on the set of the publishing house at which he worked as a well-known editor.

His achievements seemed without end, even for a consecrated man. But like all other aged mortals, his end loomed. He developed and suffered from pancreatic cancer for about two years until he finally checked out of this world for the next.

Or should I say, was taken back?

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Denise Matthews was a model, actress, singer, songwriter, and dancer, and she left a blazing mark on the cultural landscape of the ‘80s. If the name isn’t familiar, it’s because we came to know her as Vanity, so christened by her one-time boyfriend and bandmate, Prince.

She started out competing in beauty pageants in her native Canada. A modeling career brought her to New York in 1978, where she did some commercials and a couple of movie roles before meeting Prince. The details of their first encounter vary: some say she was there for work, others that they met at an afterparty, but at some point in the early ‘80s they both found themselves at the American Music Awards. I prefer the one set in 1982, where she arrived as Rick James’ date, if only because that night he would win Favorite Soul Album for Street Songs, and shimmy and step his way through a performance of the hit “Super Freak.”

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• Denise Matthews, Singer and Prince Affiliate Known as Vanity, Dead at 57

She started dating Prince and took on the frontwoman role of the girl group Prince was forming at the time, originally called the Hookers. She took Vanity as a stage name, and the trio was renamed Vanity 6. In this role, she personified Prince’s sexual drama: sharp, scanty costumes, raunchy dances, and explicit lyrics. She did this so well it became a popular theory that her stage name reflected what Prince saw in her: a reflection of himself. Her skills for performance and holding the public gaze allowed her to forge herself as a new type of pop star. The label “Prince girl” somewhat captures the boundary-breaking work required by Matthews to perform the daring allure of His Royal Badness. “I had to do it,” she clarified in a 1993 Jet interview, “if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t get paid. I got into it.”

On the cover of the group’s hit single “Nasty Girl,” she wears the first of many eye-catching all-black looks: choker, blazer, bodysuit, and knee-high boots. The group opened for Prince during his 1999 tour, and shortly after they appeared together on the cover of Rolling Stone with matching mascara smolders, her hands playing at the tuck of his frilly shirt. She was intended to co-star alongside him in Purple Rain, but after the end of their romantic relationship, and a plum offer from Motown Records for her solo work, she left the film and the group behind, both of which were reprised by Appolonia. 

With Motown, Vanity preserved the sexy, taboo aesthetic from her Vanity 6 days, but wrote her own lyrics and melodies. Her debut Wild Animal was released in 1984, with little commercial success, but the next year she was cast in Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon as the love interest Laura Charles. The role stamped her image in what would become a cult classic of ‘80s cinema. 

Her next album Skin on Skin also produced a song for (and a role in) the movie Action Jackson. Crucial as she was to shaping the fantasies of the era, low sales and negative criticism halted her tour through the best of late Blaxploitation films. 

She also appeared in Miami Vice and posed for Playboy, but by then she was struggling with a crack addiction. In the early ‘90s, she quit drugs, became a born-again Christian, renounced her stage name, and looked to be regaining control of her life. But she relapsed a couple of years later, leading to near-fatal kidney failure. 

That near-death experience deepened her faith. She continued taking film and television roles but incinerated many tapes and memorabilia from her music career. Her career as a performer ended in 1997, but as a minister, she spoke at churches up until just days before she finally died of kidney failure, on Feb. 15, 2016. Vanity left behind a decorated legacy that had many twists, but ultimately, helped usher in a new era where female singers could perform in racy attire and accurately depict the subjects they were singing about in a physical fashion.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Five Years is our new series that takes a look at significant cultural figures five years after their death. We’re kicking it off with a tribute to Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire by David Gomez, the bassist for the L.A.-based queer-core punk band Longstocking.

My sister, Irene, was the oldest of four siblings and as such, anointed house radio DJ by our parents—the rest of us had no say. That’s the way it is in a Mexican family: seniority rules. Smoggy and sweltering L.A. nights, listening to either 93 KHJ or KISS AM/FM in our shared bedroom. It was the ‘70s and Earth, Wind & Fire dominated the airwaves. I can’t remember a time when their songs weren’t on the radio and as much as my sister’s pop tastes drove me crazy and straight into punk rock, I’ve always loved EWF. I appreciate the vision of Maurice White as a musician, singer, producer, wellness advocate and the main architect behind the group.

More from Spin:

• Fred White, Earth, Wind & Fire Drummer, Dies at 67
• 5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Masta Ace
• Kennedy Center to Honor Linda Ronstadt, Earth, Wind and Fire, and More

As a kid, I would trip the “F” out on their album covers, with the band decked out in shiny space suits with Egyptian motifs. EWF were Afro-Futurism before the term existed and although they weren’t “out there” like Parliament/Funkadelic or Sun Ra, they were my gateway to a higher consciousness. The nostalgia of EWF’s sound is like a portal to my first junior high slow dance. I’d had a crush on a beautiful Filipina since first grade and by some stroke of luck, she became my unfortunate dance partner that night. As the deejay played the extended live version of the classic, “Reasons,” I held her tighter and as Philip Bailey wailed ecstatically. She wiggled out of my embrace and exclaimed, “How long is this fucking song!” I was crushed, though my passion for music propelled me to teach myself bass by playing along with records. Though other R&B groups were funkier or way more hip, I tuned into the genius of Maurice White’s arrangements. Each song of theirs is a masterclass in songwriting. As a bassist, I learned how to play along with a drummer, carefully matching each note on the bass to each kick and snare. I learned how to create space and carefully fit bass riffs where the space allows me to. Many musicians attribute a similar experience with The Beatles, but for Black and Brown folks, Earth, Wind & Fire were our Beatles. The power of their positivity, love and self-determination, that you can be a shining star, no matter who you are, rang true for us.

I’ve had the honor of collaborating with Tamala Poljak, the creator and principal songwriter of the band Longstocking, since high school. They are one of the most prolific songwriters I’ve known. When I joined Longstocking, it was a two-piece consisting of Tamala on guitar/vocals and a drummer. At first, my bass lines were standard fare for mid-90’s indie rock bands but before we went back into the studio, we got a new drummer, Sherri Solinger who shared my affinity for funk and R&B records like EWF. She knew how to create and take musical space and soon along with rhythm guitarist Woody Stevenson, we were as lockstep as our favorite funk rhythm sections. We laid a solid foundation where Tamala’s songs were free to roam. I think that is what set our record, Once Upon a Time Called Now, apart from what our peers were doing at the time.

“Radio Agony,” a Longstocking song about pop radio holds my contribution to the long-lost tradition of the hidden tracks—I slipped in a favorite Verdine White bass riff from “That’s The Way Of The World.” The moment perhaps imperceptible to the listener allowed me to warmly telegraph my gratitude to Earth Wind & Fire and my big sister too.

Longstocking’s album is out this Friday. You can preorder it here.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.