GROW UP & DIE

Rock and roll is the only true art form created for and by the young – children. The Magnificent Seven remained children till the end, even the three longest lived– Lennon 40, Elvis 42, and Garcia a Methusalahn 53. 

As if aging were synonymous with death itself, Elvis drugged himself unconscious on his 40^th birthday after Walter Cronkite ominously announced the milestone on the Six O’Clock News.

“I don’t think of myself as an adult,” said the leader of the Dead in his fifties. “An adult is someone who has made up their mind.” 

John Lennon stubbornly resisted adulthood too. “Grow up means: Shut up, clean up, dress up and die,” he declared. “Then you are allowed to live half-dead which is what most people do. That is the difference between a real artist and people going through the motions. I refuse to be half-dead.”

One of the secrets of survival for other rock stars has been starting a family. Mick Jagger once said, “You can’t have a career and a family,” but now he is a knight and the father of seven. Keith Richards, who claims to have snorted his father’s crematory ashes, resisted parenthood too, but now he’s a father of three. “What kids do is grow you up,” he said after having two daughters and resurrecting. McCartney is the father of five, Dylan six, Springsteen three, Townsend three, etc. 

But the Seven were a different breed, resisting a loss of their own youth by having children of their own and taking the yoke of “adult” responsibilities. This had much to do with their own traumatic childhoods, no doubt; but it also had to do with a creative – some might say narcissistic -- attachment to freedom, and repulsion from domestic routine and conformity.

“Parenthood wasn’t something he could participate in,” said Garcia’s first wife, Sara Ruppenthal, after delivering their first child. “He lived for music.” Years later he told his second wife, Mountain Girl, who bore him two daughters: “Having a family is probably going to ruin my artistic career.”

Many things can be said about procreation and parenthood, but one fact is undeniable: it is the greatest form of conformity on the planet. Otherwise there wouldn’t be 5 billion of us. 

As the leader of the Dead knew, biological creativity can kill artistic creativity. But he and the others resisted this by remaining eternal youths. When divorcing his first wife, Sara, he said: “I don’t have to grow up and I’m not going to.”