“I want to know as much as I can about her,” he explains. He began watching her films, listening to her music and learning about her life. “The pain in her voice, knowing what was to come soon after, you can hear it all.” Having seen The Wizard of Oz as a child, Ross was further drawn towards Judy Garland in his late teens, around the same time he came out as gay. “I cry every time I listen to that recording,” he says.
The rainbow is gone.”įifty years on, Garland superfan Ross Semple, 27, still listens to that Copenhagen concert religiously. One of the headlines would read: “Judy’s voice stilled.
Four months later, 47 year-old Garland was found dead in Chelsea, London, after accidentally overdosing on the drugs she had self-medicated with since childhood. As she reached the crescendo of Over the Rainbow – the song which made her a global star aged just 17 – it was unknown to the audience that they were watching her final live performance. On 25 March, 1969, Judy Garland took to the stage at the Falkoner Center in Copenhagen.
