A Person Who Died... Died: Jim Carroll, 1950-2009

Patti Smith was visiting San Francisco in the late 70s. I was one of a tiny handful of radio djs playing her music and heralding her advent. That I had met her years before and that she probably didn't know that many people in San Francisco must have impelled her to ask me to look out for a close and somewhat fragile friend of hers who was living in Marin County, a guy named Jim Carroll. Jim and I hit it off fine; he reminded me of Greenwich Village and a life there I had just missed out on by a couple of years. He gave me a signed copy of his autobiography, The Basketball Diaries when it first came out and I still treasure it. When he formed a band, Amsterdam, he played me the music before it came out. He played it for the Rolling Stones too-- and they made sure it did come out.

"People Who Died " from Catholic Boy, Jim's musical debut, was a San Francisco smash but he wasn't really part of the local Bay Area scene. He was always an international star, even before he was a star. In the end, I became closer with his wonderful wife, Rosemary, and in recent years the only times I've run into Jim have been at parties she and her current husband, Danny, also a close friend of mine and of Jim's, have had. Jim led a poet's life, a beatnik's life, a free spirit's life. He died in his home in New York City on Friday. He left the world a better and a more beautiful place by his brief presence.

I'm guessing more people have seen the Leonardo DiCaprio filmthan have read Jim's actual book, which is inspiring and unnerving at the same time. I heartily recommend it to non-teabaggers... well at least not to the right-wing type of teabaggers (unless they're Larry Craig teabagging teabaggers. Anyway, great book! If you like the song, you'll like the book. This is another song I always used to play on my radio show from Jim's first album; so New York and so not San Francisco: