Joe Cocker, Described by Ray Charles as one of the greatest blues singers in the world, has died at the age of 70 after battling lung cancer. He was known for his gravelly reinventions of other songs and his signature onstage contortions.
He toured with Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin and won a Grammy for Up Where We Belong, the theme tune for An Officer And A Gentleman. Here are five things you might not know about the singer:
Reworked The Beatles in the toilet
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Cocker hit the big time in 1968 when he reworked The Beatles' track With A Little Help From My Friends and made it to number one in the singles charts all over the world. The Fab Four publicly congratulated him and heaped praise on his version of the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track. The Daily Mirror says Cocker later admitted that he came up with the arrangement for the track in the outside lavatory of his parents' home.
First sang with brother Victor
Cocker first performed at the age of 12 when his older brother Victor asked him to sing with his skiffle group. Cocker went on to lead a wild rock'n'roll lifestyle, from a sweat-soaked performance at Woodstock to a duet with Jennifer Warnes at the Oscars in 1982, and an alcohol and drug addiction in between. Meanwhile, his brother Victor became the chief executive of Severn Trent Water.
Imported tea from England
Cocker hadn't lived in Britain for decades, preferring to reside in the US with his American wife Pam Baker. "England to me was always the three o'clock break – that endless gap between lunchtime and the pub opening again at six," he once said. However, he refused to give up his British citizenship and continued to import his tea from England. "I've been living in the States so long that I thought about becoming a US citizen," he told the Daily Mail. "But I'd have to renounce my allegiance to the Queen. As a proud Englishman, I don't think I could do that."
Jane Fonda gave him pigs
Actress Jane Fonda apparently gave Cocker two pigs named Rita and Earl. After divorcing his first wife in 1978, Cocker moved into a ranch owned by Fonda in Santa Barbara, California, where he met his second wife Pam. They eventually moved into another ranch in Crawford, Colorado – dubbed the Mad Dog Ranch after his Mad Dogs And Englishmen LP. It was there that Cocker died of lung cancer this week.
Mistaken for a tramp
In the 1970s, Cocker was battling a heroin problem but managed to turn his life around. According to the Birmingham Post & Mail, the singer first realised his life was a mess in 1978 when two social workers mistook him for a tramp while he was waiting outside his lawyers office. With the help of his second wife Pam, he kicked the habit and enjoyed a commercial renaissance in the 1980s.
