If only he would have just moved his body some and not been such a statue.
I know that physicality has its appeal, but I've never been opposed to the "plant & play" types. I'm Old School that way, I guess. My Classical heroes are guys like Henryk Szering, Leonard Rose and Nathan Milstein... all from the previous generations of great virtuosi. Plant. Play. Knock it outta the park. Night after night, for 50+ years, all of them. Every physical gesture they made was in service to the sound they produced. No wasted movement.
Jazz is my first love... even before I took up the cello and adopted 'Classical' as my voice. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams- all were fabulous singers who'd never think of splitting their attention on stage moves. Even energetic Bebop players like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie stood stock-still during their solos, so they could focus their entire attention on making the right sounds the right way.
So far, there's a theme in my post: ALL these artists are from an earlier generation, and none of them are from the rock genre.
Even so, when we look at film footage from the era that gave us Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, they still were pretty stationary onstage. The emotive quality of their music was more than enough to get the audience moving, but they were really quite boring by today's standards.
I don't remember when big body movement became a feature of live stage shows (probably the big arena rock shows of the mid 70's), but Big Movement seems to dominate nowadays, especially in the Pop world. 3-chord thrash groups are big on jumping around, too.
Now, that said... Joe could pull off the physical as well as anyone, and could really "sell" a song, but I've often wondered how much more he'd have brought to the mic if he was more like the old school folks I mentioned.
well, I'm starting to ramble and free-associate, so I'll draw this one to a close:
When they music's very good, that's all the artist needs to bring for me to be satisfied. I listen with my ears, head and heart before I ever listen with my eyes.
J another HO