Another One Bites the Dust

Rock legend dies at 64.  I saw the headline and thought “Damn, what is going on this month?”  Michael Davis of MC5 died February 17th.  Then Davy Jones of The Monkees about a week ago.  (no disrespect to Whitney Houston, but I’m just talking about rock and roll stars of the 60s and 70s here, because there’s a pattern)  Then today, Ronnie Montrose.

Ronnie Montrose, in his Prime

I’m not such a huge music afficionado that the name rang a bell immediately, but I looked him up on Wikipedia, and he was pretty big.  Played with Edgar Winter, Sammy Hagar and plenty of other big names.  A lot of people consider him one of the all time greats.

So, every question has an answer, if you want to hear it, and as soon as I mentally voiced the question “What the hell is going on?,” the answer came back: time.

It’s time.  These 3 represent the tip of the wave which is at it’s crest, about to break up.  They are the first spike in an upward trending graph line.  They died young, for people who died of old age, but they were only the first of many.

There were a whole lot of great bands in the 60s and 70s, and anybody who was, for example, 20 years old in 1962, will turn 70 this year.  They are in the statistical danger zone, and getting deeper into it every day.

From now until about 2030 or so we can expect to see these headlines frequently, at least once every two or three months, maybe sometimes two or three a month.  After that, they’ll taper off a bit as a chosen few hang on to extreme old age.

Who will be the rock generation’s George Burns?  I don’t know, I wish them all luck.

The silver lining, because there is always a silver lining, is simply this:  Rock and Roll will never die.