Music about the death of a Family Member or Friend

[Jah Womble]

Until quite recently I thought that the 'Mother Mary'-line in Let It Be was a purely biblical reference. Not really sure as to why I never made that fairly obvious connection.

[WOM]

Well, it's not because you're a bit dim.

[Jah Womble]

So, 'besides that', you mean?

[Beatle Simon]

You could argue that the whole of the "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" LP is, on some level, about the loss of Lennon's mother and his substitution of Yoko for her, the tracks "Mother" and "My Mummy's Dead" which bookend the record just being the most explicit examples.

'Julia' from the 'White Album' is not only about his mother, but in the lyrics he refers to her as Ocean Child, which is the english translation of Yoko Ono.

[MsD]

Siouxsie wrote Say for Billy Mackenzie, and PJ Harvey wrote Memphis for Jeff Buckley.

In both cases they were friends of the deceased.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Jojo, by Jacques Brel (a beautiful song written in memory of his best friend, confidant and right-hand man of twenty years Georges Pasquier, aka Jojo, who died in 1974. Brel was inconsolable. He would die - of lung cancer - a year after writing the song which featured in his last album, released in 1977. He was 49).

Lyrics and English translation:

Jojo

So here are a few laughters
A few wines, a few lagers
To my pleasure I tell you
The night will be long
Becoming tomorrow

Jojo

I hear you howling
A few sea shanties
About Bretons guessing
That Saint-Cast must sleep
At the far end of the fog

Six feet under, Jojo, you're still singing
Six feet under, you're not dead

Jojo

Tonight, like every night,
We make our wars all over again
You take Saint-Nazaire back
I turn the end of the graveyard
Into a concert hall again

Jojo

We talk in silence
About an old youth
We both know
That the world is lying dormant
By lack of recklessness

Six feet under, Jojo, you're still hoping
Six feet under, you're not dead

Jojo

You give me, laughing,
News from down there
I tell you "Death to idiots
Who are far more stupid than you
But still alive and kicking"

Jojo

You know the flowers' names
You see that my hands are shaking
And I know you're crying
To drown with modesty
My poor triteness

Six feet under, Jojo, you're still brothering
Six feet under, you're not dead

Jojo

I leave you in the morning
To idle jobs
Among some drunkards
Heart amputees
Who have opened their hands too much

Jojo

I no longer belong anywhere
I dress in our dreams
Orphan up to my lips
But glad to know
That I'm already coming to you

Six feet under, Jojo, you're not dead
Six feet under, Jojo, I still love you.