Maybe that’s a really obvious truth. But there are some people so influential, who’ve left a mark so indelible you can’t even see it. Some people would add: and those that came first, so super-influential, also feel a bit pat now. Or trite. I don’t think so. I think a little work is needed is all.
Aretha Franklin, for example. Yes, “The Queen of Soul” and all that. But listen to any song off “Aretha Now” and then to, say, “Innocent Til’ Proven Guilty” by Honey Cone. Both are great. And both don’t sound that different. Some people might even say: they sound the same.
Not true, of course. They don’t sound the same, Honey Cone’s lead singer Edna Wright sounds like Aretha. I don’t mean she’s biting her style: Aretha just defined what a soul singer is for so many years and everybody else to some extent was just her guest. And Aretha herself was a guest at one point. Listen to her early work and you’ll hear Mahalia and Ella. But of course you’ll also always hear Aretha.
Same with Peter O’Toole. The perpetually drunk actor dandy is beyond cliché now. (A cliché I enjoy a lot, by the way.) O’Toole invented it though. He was not as brooding as Richard Burton and not as tough as Richard Harris but more flamboyant than both of them. It’s beautiful to see that now after his death all these stories are told. (He was Irish, after all.)
They all seem to involve whiskey, a kitchen accident and a witty statement. So it’s not just his great parts, it’s his stories he’ll be remembered for. He was great as Alan Swann, TE Lawrence, the 14th Earl of Gurney – but he was at his best just being Peter O’Toole. And he wasn’t even acting.