When Joe Cocker was the mighty voice of excess

Like that voice that reverberated in the speakers until it seemed that they were going to explode in With a little help from my friends, the innocent and beautiful composition of the Beatles to which he breathed liters of blood and a whole universe of rage and new energy, the best Joe Cocker, the most legendary, was the excessive one. Before the whole planet knew him as a bestseller, the throat that had incited like few others to carnal desire in the contagious song of the movie Nine and a Half Weeks, capable of facing any composition of any style, thanks to the skilful combination of his big voice and experience, the British singer was representative of a fierce and unbeatable soul, which fit perfectly into the hectic world of sixties rock.

It was something of a feat that Cocker entered the Olympus of the sixties counterculture from soul, a style far from psychedelia and electric experimentation, so typical of the sound props of the summer of love. Also that he dedicated himself to it in the United Kingdom when all his generation mates were between rock and blues. But if he did it, it was because of a groundbreaking and addictive musical character since he debuted in 1969 with two impressive albums like With a little help from my friends and Joe Cocker!

Among the grooves of these artifacts, there was a true soulman, a white throat with the pride of the black ones, who like the great masters of the genre, among whom direct influences such as Ray Charles or Otis Redding can be cited, had his own formula to make other people's songs their own emotional weapons, bathed in powerful drama. Sometimes he would slow down his pace like in Bob Dylan's Just like a woman or Leonard Cohen's Bird on wire, other times he would phrase, as if he were in the pulpit of a southern church, like in Something by The Beatles or Leon Russell's Delta lady and in others he accelerated everything until he went crazy with ecstasy as in With a little help from my friends by The Beatles.

More informationJoe Cocker diesThe volcanic Joe CockerThe power of a voiceThe soul of the plumber

That ecstasy was what the countercultural generation of the sixties claimed before exploding into a thousand pieces, like those adolescent dreams that end up becoming an adult joke. For this reason, his live performance at the famous Woodstock festival is as remembered as Jimi Hendrix's and was included as the best of the massive event. Because the other virtue of Cocker was to bring to the stage all the soul of him torn from him.

With his image as a shaggy, sloppy guy, moving as if possessed by a blessed rhythm devil, the Sheffield-born musician, who, unlike many British stars of the 1960s, was from a blue-collar background and was a plumber before he was a singer, represented everything. the torment of his own tense, dramatic and passionate music. Apart from the recording of the Woodstock festival, the live album Mad Dogs & Englishmen, released in 1970, shows the power of that cavernous and nerve-filled voice. To top it off, in those early years, Cocker, who was guilty of violence, led a disastrous lifestyle that embraced all the excesses of the time with drugs and alcohol. As with his music, he had no middle ground, reveling in the extreme.

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Joe Cocker with the Mad Dogs & Englishmen performs The Letter.

After a journey in the desert, he survived his own excesses. Aided by a conscientious manager, Cocker adjusted from the eighties to the expectations of an industry that knew that that deep voice could be adapted to ballads for all audiences. Because of his vocal cords, classics like When a man loves a woman or What becomes of the broken hearted began to fall. Also the soundtracks that led to the greatest of successes such as those of the blockbuster films Officer and gentleman with Up where I belong or Nine and a half weeks with You can leave your hat on.

He would only wear the image of a mature dandy, as if out of an advertisement for a luxury clothing brand, who sang the emotional You're so beautiful in tribute to Diana of Wales. But if a Joe Cocker must be vindicated, no matter how much we are hundreds of thousands of us who once wanted to be Mickey Rourke contemplating Kim Basinger live and direct during the little more than four minutes that You can leave your hat on lasts, It has to be the young man unleashed from the sixties, that incarnation of sentimental excess that made a song by the Beatles themselves already their heritage, our anthem of friendship, a fortress against helplessness.

Joe Cocker sings With a little help of my friends at the Woodstock festival.