Date: 24 January 2016 19 92643 386000 1291 AVE: 12109.58 … Mayhew... · 2020. 9. 28. · Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and many others, Johnson died in 1938 after drinking from a

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KNOCKIN’ONHEAVEN’SDOOR

A spate of early rock-star deaths createdthe legend of the 27 Club. But the recentloss of a clutch of elderlymusicianshasmade ‘69ish’ the fatal age, writeMatt Rudd andNicholasHellen

David Bowie, Glenn Frey, farleft, and Lemmy, bottom,failed to make it past 70,while Amy Winehouse, right,and, above her, Kurt Cobain,Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin,died at 27

This has been a tragicmonth for senior celebrities.First, Lemmy from Motörheadpegged out four days afterachieving his three score and

achieving his three score and10. Next, it was David Bowieand Alan Rickman, both 69.Then, lastMonday,GlennFrey,a founding member of theEagles, succumbed in NewYork at the tender age of 67.Tradition has always dic-

tated that 27 is the most life-

threatening age to be a rockstar. Members of the so-called27 Club of rock’n’roll bucket-kickers includes Brian Jones,Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, JimMorrison, Kurt Cobain andAmyWinehouse.Yet new research for The



Sunday Times suggests thatthose who survive their twen-ties are by nomeans out of thewoods. Beware the 69ish Club.In an analysis of 1,042

deceased musicians, 83% diedbefore reaching thebiblical ageof 70, comparedwith just 20%in the UKmale population.While rock stars in the 25 to

29 age bracket are 25.5 timesmore likely to die than thenational average, theprospectsfor 55 to 69-year-olds are farfrom rosy.As the excesses of youth

catch up with them, midliferockers are still twice as likelyas the general population totake the stairway to heaven.Rock-stardeathspeakinthe

55 to69agegroup, awhole twodecades earlier than thegeneral UKmale population.Les Mayhew, professor of

statistics at City UniversityLondon’s Cass Business Schooland adviser to the Office forNational Statistics, undertookthe research. “The ones dyingat this [later] age might haveovercome [wilder rock-starvices] but if they’ve remainedsmokers for the rest of theirlives, they lose the standard 10years,” he said.It is hard to be more precise

about the likely years lost to

other harmful addictions suchas cocaine or heroin.“The ones who have

survived are either lucky orthey’vemanagedtoabstainatamuch earlier age,” Mayhewadded.In the 1970s, Bowie lived to

full rock’n’roll excess. Therecord producer Tony Visconticlaimedthesingertookenoughcocaine to kill a horse andBowie’s former lover RomyHaagsaidhewasn’tdoing linesof the drug but “bowls of it”.Bowie himself described hisintake as “phenomenal”.“I really did think that my

thoughts about not making 30wouldcometrue,”hesaidinani i i 2013 “D h d

interview in 2013. “Drugs hadtaken my life away from me. Ifelt as though Iwould probablydie.”TheThinWhiteDukekicked

his addiction after relocatingfromAmerica toBerlin in 1976,but it wasn’t until 2004 — sixmonths before he survived a

near-fatal heart attack — thathe managed to give up his50-a-day smoking habit.Studies showthat thosewho

quit smoking at 25 to 34, 35 to44, or 45 to 54 years of age livefor approximately 10, nine andsix years longer respectivelythan those who continued tosmoke. Bowie was 57 when hegave up.

If anything, Lemmy madeBowie’s lifestyle look tame.Besides a prodigious intakeof amphetamines, the

Motörhead frontman con-sumed a bottle of Jack Daniel’swhiskey a day from the age of30. In 2013 he switched tovodka and orange “for healthreasons” but by then it was toolate. His autopsy attributed hisdeath to prostate cancer, car-diacarrhythmiaandcongestiveheart failure.Frey of the Eagles had a long

history of intestinal problemsthatheblamedonhisearlieruse

E

of drugs and alcohol. Cancer,drug overdoses and alcoholpoisoning are among the maincauses of death for rock stars,but there are other hazards tothinkabout for anyone consid-ering a career on stage.The first rule is to avoid

twin-engine aeroplanes.BuddyHolly,Otis Redding andJohn Denver are among 18musicians in our 1,042 sampletohavedied inplanecrashes.Afurther 45 died in car crashes,well above the nationalaverage.There are other, stranger

risks. Les Harvey, guitarist ofScottishbandStone theCrows,

l d hil i

was electrocuted while tuningup for a gig in Swansea. KeithRelf of the Yardbirds went thesame way: death by electricguitar in his home studio.Terry Kath, lead guitarist of

Chicago, shot himself with a9mmpistolthathepresumed—wrongly — was unloaded,while Michael Edwards, theElectric Light Orchestra’s cel-list,winstheawardfortheleastrock’n’roll demise: he wascrushed by a hay bale on theA381 to Teignmouth, inDevon.Yet there are, of course,

rockers who defy the odds.Keith “I don’t have a drugproblem, I have a policeproblem” Richards has defiedmedical science to reach hiseighth decade, along withfellow Rolling Stones MickJagger and CharlieWatts.Fifty per cent of the Beatles

are still with us. And bothRoger Daltrey and Pete Town-shend, founding members ofthe Who, perhaps the wildestof the original rock bands, willcontinue their Hits 50! tournextmonth.Their frontman, Daltrey, is

one of the few rock stars whochose to steer clear of harddrugs.“They didn’t work for me,”

he said. “They gave me a drythroat and I couldn’t sing. Itwas a straightforward deci-sion. I was either going to be agood singer, and care aboutwhatwe’redoingona stage, orI could chuck it in right there.“There were some great

bands out there, fantasticbands, and they nevermade it.

Ididn’twanttobepartofoneofthose bands. So I left the otherthree to it.”

As something of an out-lier, Daltrey can offer aunique perspective onlife inside the rock

world. “I’ve watched so manyfriends turn into absolutea******** on drugs,” he said.“When you’re in their com-

i ff d ’ ll



pany, it starts off andyou’re allmates and then someone dis-appears to the toilet and they

come back and then someoneelsedisappears, andbeforeyouknowit,you’renotsittingwithyour friends anymore. It’s likeyou’re at a different party.”Daltrey has lost two of his

bandmates over the years.Drummer Keith Moon died in1978, at the age of 32, over-dosing on prescription drugsafter years of alcohol and drugabuse. In 2002 the bassist JohnEntwistlediedof aheart attackaged57aftertakingcocaineinaLas Vegas hotel.

“So many times in my lifeI’ve had to be tough and theones I was toughwith are stillhere,” saidDaltrey. “Theoneswhere I wasn’t tough enoughdidn’t make it. And that’ssomethingIthinkaboutoften.It’s something I think aboutwhen we perform today. Thetwo of us that are left.”Daltrey himself has sur-

vived plenty of rock’n’rollskirmishes, from car crashesto a fractured eye socket,courtesy of a microphonestand swung by Gary Glitter.Hewas forced topostpone thesecond leg of his band’s latestworld tour last Septemberaftercontractingviralmenin-gitis. He will return to thestage next month just shy ofhis 72nd birthday.For any prospective rock

stars, the statistics might bebleak but the advice is clear.Don’t smoke. Don’t do drugs.Consume no more than 14units of alcohol per week andeat your five a day.It doesn’t sound very

rock’n’roll, does it?

And they say rock ’n‘ roll will never die...

150

100

50

020-24

30-3440-44

50-5460-64

70-4480-84

90-94100+

Age at death

The age at which musiciansdie, based on 1,042 deaths

Musician deaths

Expectedage of deathfor UK malesalive in 2011*

numbe

rofroc

kde

aths

*Source: Human Mortality Database

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HARD DRUGSDIDN’T WORK FORME. THEY GAVE MEA DRY THROAT . . .SO I LEFT THEOTHERS TO IT,SAID ROGERDALTREY OFTHE WHO



Tombstone blues: the 27 Club’s firstmemberHe died years before anyone had ever heardof rock’n’roll but Robert Johnson, theAmerican king of the Mississippi Delta blues,can legitimately claim to be the foundingmember of the 27 Club.A hard-living singer and guitarist whose

music had a huge influence on Bob Dylan,Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and many others,Johnson died in 1938 after drinking from abottle of whiskey that had been poisoned,apparently by a jealous rival.He was 27 and had recorded only 29 songs,

among them such seminal blues classics asCross Road Blues and Hell Hound on My Trail.The mysterious circumstances of Johnson’sdeath prompted a torrid wave of speculationthat he had done a deal with the devil inexchange for his musical talent.Not all rock stars meet a grisly end,

though, and some have lived well beyond theaverage for their ilk.BB King, the son of a sharecropper whobecame a blues icon and played with theRolling Stones, died in his sleep in Las Vegas,Nevada, last year aged 89.Pete Seeger, the American folk singer whowrote Where Have All the Flowers Gone andIf I Had a Hammer, died of natural causes inNew York in 2014. He was 94.

Robert Johnson, top, died young, but PeteSeeger, left, lived to 94 and BB King to 89



David Bowie,Glenn Frey,below, andLemmy, bottom,failed to make itpast 70, whileAmy Winehouse,far right, and,below her, KurtCobain, JimMorrison andJanis Joplin, diedat 27



David Bowie, Glenn Frey, farleft, and Lemmy, bottom,failed to make it past 70,while Amy Winehouse, right,and, above her, Kurt Cobain,Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin,died at 27

Documents

Date: 24 January 2016 19 92643 386000 1291 AVE: 12109.58 … Mayhew... · 2020. 9. 28. · Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and many others, Johnson died in 1938 after drinking from a