Her son succumbed to his drug addiction. In an interview, US rock singer Melissa Etheridge reveals what helped her deal with her grief.
After her son’s drug-related death, certain songs helped US rock singer Melissa Etheridge (63) through her time of grief. “I wrote my last album, ‘The Medicine Show,’ when Beckett was already having problems,” she said in an interview with Bunte.de. “There are some songs on it that are about his addiction. These are songs in which I tried to understand the subject of addiction, even though it was never a part of my own life.” After the 21-year-old’s death in 2020, it was precisely these songs that gave her strength and hope. “Singing these songs, especially ‘Shadow Of A Black Crow’, for other people now is incredibly healing for me.”
Etheridge (“I’m The Only One”) announced the death of her son on her Facebook page in May 2020. At the time, she wrote that Beckett had fought against his opiate addiction and ultimately lost. “My heart is broken.” She was tormented by the question of what else she could have done to help her son.
Beckett was the result of the lesbian rocker’s previous relationship with filmmaker Julie Cypher in the 1990s. Cypher gave birth to daughter Bailey Jean in 1997 and Beckett a year later. The sperm donor was a close friend of the couple, veteran rocker David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, who died in 2023.
Source: Stern
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