Early death can’t guarantee immortality for celebrities

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Even for millionaire rock stars, dreams don’t always come true. Look at 77-year-old Roger Daltrey and 76-year-old Pete Townsend whose stated ambition all of 56 years ago, in the Who’s 1965 classic My Generation, was the snarling hope they’d die before they got old.

They should have known of course that once they made it past 27, they were destined for old age, because that’s the age that rock stars check out – or else they don’t check out at all.

Brian Jones from the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse – all died at that age. Richie Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers disappeared without a trace at 27, so he can probably be added to the list too.

And while dying young is always a tragedy, as American author Gore Vidal once put it, death isn’t a bad career move.

Think of iconic actors like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Lee, Heath Ledger, River Phoenix, Jayne Mansfield – all dead way ahead of their time, and all perhaps more famous because of it.

Compare them to Marlon Brando, for example – as big a heartthrob as Dean at the start and throughout his life a fine actor, but ultimately an overweight, mumbling veteran whose silver screen looks were a long distant memory.

Think in a sporting context of the Busby Babes, victims of the Munich Air Disaster – Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor, our own Billy Whelan – who forever remain at their prime in photos, 63 years on from their death.

Compare them to their contemporaries, the England World Cup-winning squad of 1966, so many of whom have only passed away in the last couple of years.

So many of that team died pitiful deaths, having suffered from dementia or Alzheimer’s in their latter days – household names like Jack Charlton, Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles, Ray Wilson, Peter Bonetti.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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