Any way you cut it, the most beautiful word to be written for İlhan İrem in Turkish pop and rock history book will be “one and only”.
When we look at Turkish pop and rock history and think about, “Who is İlhan İram, how he looks and who are his predecessors and successors?”, we asked a question that cannot be answered easily. I think, the answer is “no one”, because any way you cut it, the most beautiful word to be written for İlhan İrem in our Turkish pop and rock history book will be “unique”.
Passed away on July 28, İlhan İrem was at the top of the list of artists that can be described as “one and only”. His name was written on the most critical turning points of Turkish pop and rock music. And at every turn, he held his own destiny in his own hands with his celestial stance.
In his life journey that started in Bursa in 1955, he has always been a representative of a quest, and has always succeeded in revealing what is different at the end of his painful creation processes. Instead of making songs that have been chewed hundreds of times and guaranteed market success, he preferred to write non-daily songs. İrem was one of the pop singers of 70’s with long hair, his earrings, sunglasses (even nail polish on his nails); he wrote naive love songs, but made his heart tremble more deeply than his contemporaries. The Gold Record he won with his second extended play, “Haydi Sil Gözlerinin Yaşını / Yazık Oldu Yarınlara”, did not spoil him unequivocally, but also gave him the determination to work to reach higher heights.
When he was about to enter the 80’s, he was not content with what was happening, although his fame was getting stronger, and he accelerated his spiritual searches. The most obvious breaking point was the album “Bezgin”, which he released in 1981. On its cover, a musician crouching on a Turkish carpet greeted us; with his whiskey next to him, with his local cigarette and matches right in front of him, with his piano and notes waiting for him behind him. On the back cover, we cannot see the musician in the same frame. The whiskey was drunk, the cigarette was out, and the notes were scattered throughout the room, some crumpled.
That unique man who haunted the rock world, who took away Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, made “Bezgin” when he was 27 years old. The album was born under the fashion of arabesque and pianist singer; on the one hand, in a country that is in the grip of a military dictatorship. İlhan’s most magical theme was loneliness. Although it sounded like pop, “Bezgin” was implicitly signaling future symphonic rock albums.
