Open Call | Autumn
2 min
On Jim Ellison: 18 April 1964 – 20 June 1996
Kylie Sturgess
In 1996,
a singer in a band
(a firecracker of talent)
who had everything going for him
took his own life.
Today,
I took my copy of Material Issue's CD
(International Pop Overthrow) -
which I played endlessly around the same time as he died -
and realised only now
that I had no idea
what happened to its lead, Jim Ellison.
Reading about Ellison's death this evening was a shock.
I thought of Kurt Cobain who died two years prior.
Both Cobain and Ellison died by suicide.
I thought about how much the music of that time
built my identity:
how their tunes helped me continue
on to the next year,
and the next.
Then the next.
Until I was here.
Cobain said, over and over, that
the stress of success was just too much.
Ellison didn't have that problem.
He was still waiting for fame.
Ironically, "Rocket Boy", the song he did with Liz Phair in '96?
It sounds like a hit.
The sort of hit you'd want as a songwriter -
Phair sings:
"You used to be my favourite toy / But what happened to my rocket boy? /
Rocket Boy, Rocket Boy / Where are you gonna land?"
He landed nowhere.
That's where Ellison went.
I try to find reasons and find nothing.
From everything I read online, it seems that his relationship failures
led him to depression.
Maybe "Rocket Boy" is the tale of Ellison,
where the question "what's next?"
becomes endless waiting
with no answer:
"Didn't see; I had no idea, never heard it before"
The weight of depression crushes the spirit.
I remember the times I experienced it, where it seemed
that every day was empty, colourless and without ending
and the same for the next
and the next
a smothering feeling that nothing will change.
I remember the end of 1996.
Everyone else was heading away, far from me.
I was stuck here.
I would be trapped for another three years.
But I was hopeful, not helpless.
I knew I'd find my landing, somewhere.
I knew I had friends there for me.
Ellison knew his friends were worried about him.
"You used to be my pride and joy, my boy /
You had me..."
When it comes to Jim Ellison
and the story of his passing,
I can only think that my heart is torn in two directions.
First comes the ache of loss
knowing that this light was extinguished before its time,
and how much this music meant to me then and now
how it stokes the fire and keeps it alive.
But beneath my grief burns something harder:
A bitterness at this final act,
and the tragic after.
What of his friends and his family
those who supported his career?
What of his relationships, his promises?
I look, but cannot find evidence
that Phair ever sang the song they did ever again -
"You used to be my favourite toy;
but what happened, my rocket...?"
I think now, as I used to think then:
find a future, find a landing.
Keep on playing.
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