They are lost to me. Life has too few days, and too many songs I don't wince in anticipation of. But I give up on artists much less readily than I give up on individual albums, so I bought Sand and Water with the impervious hope that it would find Beth back in human form. Beth's husband, Ernest, was diagnosed with cancer during Beth's 1993 tour, and died in August, 1994. In rock, of course, death is part of the idiom of the form.
Rock stars are inherently fragile and evanescent.
Their planes go down, their tour buses overturn, they OD, they drown while swimming, they're shot in drive-bys. Each loss is tragic, but the pattern is unsurprising. We knew why, all too clearly. We'd been steeling ourselves for his death ever since we met him. Quiet songwriters and their husbands, on the other hand, are supposed to live forever.