“It’s better to burn out, than to fade away. My my, hey hey.” —Neil Young, born in 1945.
There’s an idea baked into rock and roll—a refrain, if you will—celebrating the idea that growing up is the worst thing that can happen to you. Better to go out in a blaze of glory like Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain, a tragic Peter Pan, than to be wheeled on stage wheezing your greatest hits when you’re over the hill. As James Dean said, “Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.”
Which sounds dramatic and romantic until you grow up and still want to make a living.
“Hope I die before I get old,” sang The Who’s Pete Townsend, born in 1945. Sorry, Pete.
“I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45,” said Mick Jagger, born in 1943. He said that in 1975. The Rolling Stones toured in 2024. Guess what their encore was.
John Lennon had a different perspective.
“I hate it,” Lennon said. “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out… Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison—it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survived. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? No thank you! I’ll take the living and the healthy.” Sadly, John didn’t get to grow old.
As someone who hopes to tell stories and get better at it until I’m ancient, I’m biased toward Lennon’s take.
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