Stairway to Heaven: The coming death of just about every rock legend ...

One real advantage of being rich and having awesome health care, access to trainers, etc etc, is that you live longer. Plus you can buy fancy super-nutritious non-fattening food that tastes good too.

John Entwistle, I believe, coked out at age 61-62. (Edit: 57.)

If you haven't drugged out by your early sixties, you probably won't.

So I'd guess a fair number of those guys (and gals) will make it well into their eighties.

When the final stats come in in about 2050, and 108-year-old Keith Richards is the only person from the "classic rock era" of 1960-1990 still alive, the final actuarial numbers will probably be about average.

 

At the rate things are going, they may outlive print editions.

 

Back when I worked at a struggling cable TV network that fancied itself as a E!/Discovery ID hybrid, I half-heartedly pitched the id of rebranding the network RIPTV, with the focus being on all the celebrity deaths that will be happening for the rest of our lives.

It's not just rock stars -- the fame machine really kicked in with the advent of TV and hasn't let up since, so everyone we're familiar with will be dead soon enough, and the celebrity grief industry will be there to chronicle every Alan Alda to Steve Zahn who croke in the coming decades.

 

Yeah, but maybe not so brightly?

 

Dick VanDyke is the last man standing among classic 50s/60s teevee stars.

 

Dave Clark, Gerry Marsden, Eric Burdon and Stevie Winwood are still alive. So are Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of the Hollies and Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits. Robbie Robertson and John Fogarty too.

 

Krieger and Densmore of the Doors are still alive.

 

At age 57, in his sleep, after having presumably filthy sex with a stripper. Smoked 20 cigs a day and had heart disease.

 

Pure "rock" as a genre is pretty much dead, which isn't a unique observation on my part at all. I think I first heard it from Steve Hyden or Chuck Klostermann, but it's weird to realize that like, depending on how you want to slice it, the "rock" band that's sold the most copies since 2000 is like, Linkin Park, Coldplay, Nickelback or the Black Keys.

 

This is why the Archies were ahead of their time. They will never die.

 

Who needs them alive when the music they created will never die?

 

Neil Diamond (78)?