There's a line in The Dandy Warhols song Welcome to the Monkey House that goes, 'When Michael Jackson dies, we're covering Blackbird...', so when he actually did die, they put on their website, rather tongue in cheek, that they had no foresight of the event
Steely Dan - Rikky Don't Lose That Number. Mistakenly thought of as a love song, this was written about Rick Derringer. Derringer had been working with the duo and they had been trying to get him to join full time but he was not sure because he had other commitments including possibly working with Eric Clapton, hence the reference in the song of " we can go off driving on Slow Hand row"
Can I play with Madness - Iron Maiden.
Nothing to do with Madness of course , but I longed for Madness to bring out a song called 'Can I play with Iron Maiden',
Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd is dedicated to and the lyrics were adapted before it was recorded, apparently, to be about Duane Allman, the leader and founder of the Allman Brothers band, who was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 1971. Duane is my avatar - left - and probably my all-time guitar hero, alongside Django Reinhardt and Ry Cooder.