You’d think people would know better by now. If history has taught us anything it’s that a life devoted to rock ‘n’ roll can only end badly. Spiraling success ultimately leads to plummeting failure, and each year of fast living is just another nail in the coffin. But thanks to a new book by Jeff Pike, a few aspiring rockers may learn this valuable lesson and save themselves before it’s too late.
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“Along with sex, drugs, and haircuts, death has set the tone for rock ‘n’ roll since its earliest days,” writes Pike in an introduction to the bizarre ironies his research uncovered. “Is there something about the trappings of rock ‘n’ roll–the drugs and alcohol, the obsessions of the fans, the life on the road–that is inherently fatal or dangerous? Or is it that those people attracted to rock ‘n’ roll already have a lifeline that peters out approximately at their middle finger, and are destined for early death no matter what their career choice?” In a nutshell, he says, the answer is yes and yes.
“The hardest to write about were the ones like Elvis and Jim Morrison and Hendrix, because they’ve been written about to death, so to speak,” said Pike. “The ones I liked best were the really weird stories.” One of them is the ballad of the Singing Nun, whose benign popularity from the 1963 hit “Dominique” could hardly have foreshadowed the suicide pact that took her life and that of her lesbian lover in 1985. Or there’s the mysterious case of the singer Sir Walter Scott, who had one hit with his band Bob Kuban and the In-Men in 1966. Seventeen years after “The Cheater” made the pop charts, Scott’s wife and her lover murdered him execution-style and dumped his body in a cistern. “That’s so great,” said Pike. “I really got into that sorta sleazy pulp thing.”
