Random play: Video killed the radio star

Death by plane crash is one of those unfortunate showbiz traditions but it makesfor great legends, writes GRAHAM REID.

When news rippled out that R&B singer Aaliyah had been killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas last weekend there was a sense of deja vu.

The body count in the entertainment industry is pretty high. On the roll call of those who gravity got the better of: big-band leader Glenn Miller (who disappeared over the English Channel in 1944), Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper (1959), country star Patsy Cline (1963), soul great Otis Redding (1969), half of Lynyrd Skynyrd (1977), Stevie Ray Vaughan (1990) and many others in between and since.

Aaliyah, reluctantly, has stepped on to a very big concert stage in the sky.

But this is an international business which demands its young leave the nest and fly, with all its attendant risks. You don't hear of too many suffering from deep vein thrombosis, but Bryan Ferry had a recent near-miss in a sky-jacking, and there's a hilarious scene in Almost Famous as the band prepares for a sudden descent, tray tables firmly secured and seat backs upright.

It's always sad and sickening when the news gets out of another one and you never quite know how to feel. Poor jokes work - some wags say it would have been better for jazz if Glenn Miller had lived and his music had died - and searching for a few ironies often helps.

The Lynyrd Skynyrd album released just a few days before their Corvair 240 plummeted into a swamp in Mississippi was Street Survivors and pictured the band surrounded by flames. Cue much knee-slapping hilarity.

So someone somewhere is already making jokes about Aaliyah having been in a movie with the title Romeo Must Die, and scanning her album for clues. The final track was Try Again, maybe one for the pilot to consider?

Of course cynics couldn't help but note Aaliyah was killed with her bodyguard, makeup artist, someone from her record company and others while returning to the States from a video shoot.

Buddy, Lynyrd, Stevie and the others mentioned went down while on tour. There's something ironic and emblematic in that about the change in entertainment culture.

When the Beatles couldn't be bothered touring they decided to make little film clips for Paperback Writer and Rain - the first videos? - to send out instead. These days, the video is often the substitute for a live appearance, but not without its attendant risks it seems, especially if you require an exotic-looking Caribbean backdrop.

However, the inconvenience of Aaliyah's sudden death needn't hinder her career. Elvis, Hendrix, and Jim Morrison are bigger businesses now than they ever were when alive.

Lynyrd Skynyrd carried on - still do, in fact - and there's a Very Best of the Doors released this month. The Buddy musical has taken Holly to more people than he ever reached in his short life.

So even though Aaliyah - undoubtedly one of the most promising and talented of the recent crop of r'n'b artists - may be gone ... well, she had been shooting a video, right?

In a largely amoral world do you really think there's an ethical debate going on in a boardroom about whether or not it should be screened? My guess is it's being edited right now.

Aaliyah may be gone, but I doubt her record company is going to let us forget her too quickly.