Poet/Punk Rocker Who Included Sharon in one of his songs has died

Poet and punk rocker Jim Carroll, whose life story was famously documented in his autobiography The Basketball Diaries, died following a heart attack on Friday, September 11th in New York City. Carroll was 60. A contemporary of Patti Smith's, celebrated by Ginsberg and Burroughs, Carroll embodied 1970s NYC downtown culture.

“I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation,” Patti Smith told the New York Times this weekend. “The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty.”

Why mention him here? He wrote a song that included Sharon's name in it called "It's Too Late."

It's too late
To fall in love with Sharon Tate
But it's too soon
To ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb



I think it's time that you all start
To think about gettin' by
But I have that need to go out and find somebody to love

It's too late
There's no one left that I even wanna imitate
You see, you just don't know
I'm here to give you my heart
And you want some fashion show

But it ain't no contribution
To rely on an institution
To validate your chosen art
And to sanction your boredom
And let you play out your part

It's too late
You know when they got nothin' to give
They only part their legs for what's negative
They're so decadent . . .
Until their daddy's money from home's all spent

So I think it's time, because it's too easy
To rely on worshipping devils and strangers in bed,
Though they do get good drugs, and they do give good head

It's too late
You shoulda realized I was worth the wait
Ah, but you didn't hesitate
When he took you off, you let him seal our fate

So I think it's time
that you all start
To think about gettin' by
Without that need to go out and find
Somebody to love

He also wrote another song that had to do with people who passed away too soon called "People Who Died." In it, he says:

If I could break through I could be certain
But this obsession is like some fiery curtain
All the numbers reduced to zero
And those who died young, they are my heroes
They are my heroes, they took the walk
Where the heart made sense and the mind can't talk

May he rest in peace.