Whenever I hear that another rock star from my youth has died, I think, “Who are the next two?”
Maybe I’m morbid or jaded. I’m a Boomer, so lately a lot of my contemporaries are checking out. Rock stars aren’t supposed to live long. It’s much better for your legacy to expire at 27 – like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
They’re all richer now than when they were alive. Wherever they are now, do they compare notes and compete about croaking as a career move?
I wonder if Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain, also 27ers, join in. I think, “Whew! Not me, ever!” and “I’m being so heartlessly crass.” But most of all, “I need a really tacky third thought.”
I’m a scholar; I look at patterns. Why do rock stars, some of them the people I admire most, go in threes?
Why do household appliances, like fridges and washers and toasters, always die in threes?
And now, in the ninth month of the quarantine (3 x 3), it’s a wonder I can think at all.
