HOPE I DIE BEFORE I GET OLD

The shelf life of rock stars – like race car drivers, matadors, cliff divers, mountain climbers – tends to be short. 

27 is the first cut-off point. Joining Janis, Jim, Jimi, and Kurt in Club 27, were the Stones’ Brian Jones, the Dead’s Ron McKernan, Robert Johnson, and other luminaries. All were only a few years removed from childhood when they died. 

The next cut-off is the thirties: this decade notably claimed the Who’s Keith Moon, Zeppelin’s John Bonham, the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, Butterfield’s Mike Bloomfield, INXS’s Michael Hutchence, Bob Marley, Jeff Buckley, and the original bad boy of rock, Gene Vincent.  

If a star makes it to 40 he is over the hump and his odds improve. But the fact remains: rock and roll is a young man’s profession. Though the over-40 group is substantial now, few of these veterans have anywhere near the fire they once did. But, rather then retire, some perform old hits posthumously. 

As one of them, Peter Townshend, once famously said: Hope I die before I get old. But, after spending years at the effort, My Generation’s hero finally admitted “I haven’t been able to achieve that one great ambition I had when I was nineteen. But I’ve tried to compensate by actually making myself happy.”

Meaning that he somehow exorcised the teenage anger, angst, and alienation that had fueled his most powerful work just as it had done with most of his colleagues. 

Happiness is nice but it rarely makes for great art in rock or any other form. Why? Because happiness becomes contentment, even complacency. Why create anything if you are satisfied with what is? You might sing a silly McCartney love song or a Simon & Garfunkel confection, but not a Lennon Revolution, a Morrison The End, a Joplin Ball and Chain, or a Cobain Rape Me.  

These killer compositions were not the products of old age, much less of contentment. Happiness is static energy, Unhappiness kinetic. Static energy is not a creative force. Kinetic is. Kids are uniquely equipped to harness and channel it. The trick is to do so before it drives you off a cliff at age 27.