he's lost that livin' feelin'
Bobby Hatfield, the screechingly high-pitched half of criminally overplayed blue-eyed soul devils the Righteous Brothers, has been found dead of an apparent heart attack in a Kalamazoo motel room, and all I can say is: RIGHTEOUS!
Now, I'm sure that ol' Bobby (the wide-eyed, spaced-out, chipmunkish one on the left) probably has surviving family members who are experiencing tremendous pain right now, but that's not the reason I'm happy he's dead.
I'm glad because it provides me partial relief for all the torment his music has caused me over the years.
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" is said to be the most frequently played radio song in, like, the history of the universe or something, and Hatfield provided the nails-on-a-blackboard castrati wails which make that gaseously overblown tune such a crime against humanity. But it is "Unchained Melody" (Ohhh, my-y-yy-y looove....my dar-ar-lin'...) on which Hatfield pranced to center stage and delivered the most pussy-whipped, ball-free male vocal ever set to wax. You need her love? No, you need a set of nuts, mister.
I saw the Righteous Brothers live at Madison Square Garden in 1987 after winning free tickets from a NYC radio station. They played an oldies supershow along with Mitch Ryder, Tommy James & the Shondells, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. As the Brothers took the stage and started burpin' out the hits, a pathetic music geek seated to my right looked me in the eyes and announced that they were "one of the ten greatest acts in music history."
In what sort of horrible world, I thought to myself, could such a thing possibly be true?
Now one of them is dead.
And I'm glad.
