Eric Carr & Freddie Mercury

Kiss’ second drummer, Eric Carr, passed away on this day in 1991. For shear press coverage purchases, Eric chose the wrong day to pass on; as Freddie Mercury also claimed to have November 24th as the day he went to the other side.
Press coverage aside, most reputable music publications would have at least found enough space to cover both Mercury and Carr’s death.
But one notable music magazine failed to mention anything regarding the death of Eric Carr.
This upset Gene Simmons and he wrote a nasty mail to Jenn Wenner chastising him for not reporting a word on the drummer who, by that time, had logged enough time behind the kit to surpass the more recognizable Peter Criss.
Apparently, Mr. Wenner did not follow the travails of Kiss and Mr. Simmons made the mistake of considering Rolling Stone to be a “reputable” music publication.
To be honest, I don’t remember them doing an extended piece on Freddy Mercury either. Not that it mattered much to me; my fascination with Queen ended with the Flash Gordon movie (“Flash! Ah! Savior of the universe!”). I will acknowledge that the band’s performance on “Live Aid” ruled and managed to rekindle a little bit of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm quickly diminished as soon as A Kind Of Magic was released.
Queen had just signed a fairly lucrative deal with Hollywood Records around the time of Freddie’s death and some consider the band’s first album for that label, Innuendo, a return to form.
Again, I didn’t notice as the band had produced just as many years of forgettable albums as they did classic ones by that time.
So now maybe its time to acknowledge a few good things about both of these artists, so here goes:
First of all, Queen released some pretty stellar albums. I especially liked the News Of The World album and everyone and their dog seemed to have the shiny silver copy of The Game in their collection.
And Eric Carr? Well, that drum sound on “I Love It Loud” is pretty awesome and I will acknowledge that he is an infinitely better percussionist that the member he replaced.
So there you are: a double shot of rock and roll deaths on this day and neither of their deaths were very, for lack of a better word, exciting. We kind of knew something was up with Freddie, but Eric’s came out of the blue as the Kiss camp seemed to put a pretty tight lid on their drummer’s illness.
So here’s a rare tip of the hat, without the usual amount of cyncism, for a couple of musicians that both found out that their tour ended on November 24th, 1991.