OK. It might seem like an odd topic as Baby New Year slides down the firefighter's pole of life into 2025. But I've been thinking about dead rock stars a bit since the Morrison Hotel in downtown Los Angeles caught fire a few days ago. Perhaps this year, too, this blog will go back to its original focus — pop culture of interest to Gen Xers.
Somehow, the Morrison Hotel endures, even though Jim Morrison has been deceased for 53 years. Morrison, as many are fully aware, is on the list of dead rock stars at age 27. ... Gone. Gone as a mere youngster.
Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are the most significant members in the 27 Club. They all were hugely famous singers, and I realize something else. They're all American.
That's got to mean something. I mean, we have other a few others in the unfortunate 27 Club that are British, including Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. But Jones was no singer, and Winehouse is pretty late to the game as the only significant 21st century member of this unfortunate club in my estimation.
The 27 Club is a decidedly American phenomenon, and it's got to mean something about our culture. Right? Well, let's explore.
Truly, if you took away the Americans, there really would not be a 27 Club. Also, let me mention that famous downtown New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is in the club, and Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson — described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as "the first ever rock star" — started the club when he died at 27 in 1938.
As Sinead O'Connor might sing, "nothing compares to..." these American icon deaths at 27 — or really American icon deaths at any age. Paul McCartney, 82, is still going pretty strong for his age as is Mick Jagger, 81. If the United States has any vague counterpart to those two Brits, I'd go with Michael Jackson (dead at 50) and Prince (dead at 57). Both had drug-related deaths.
I am not qualified to talk about addiction, or mental illness, or even life if the limelight. But the premature deaths of all of these American pop icons has to mean something. And it's just now that I'm mentioning mega-icons James Dean (dead at 24) and Marilyn Monroe (dead at 36).
I suppose all we can do is accept the fact that on some level, American pop culture has been toxic, absolutely toxic, for decades. So, yeah, we're heading into 2025, and my wish remains that American culture would become a little less toxic. But I just don't see that happening.
On Christmas Day, I noticed that the most streamed movie on Netflix was Carry-On, a mid movie that probably keeps your attention but has no real substance and is about terrorism at LAX. Merry Christmas!
Also on Netflix, it aired two highly watched NFL games, and as anyone knows, football is the most violent sport on planet earth. Somebody might say that's not right. What about boxing or MMA? But football is played on such a ginormous scale in the United States — and is such a fabric of American culture — that I deem it as more violent than any other sport. American football is hardly played in other countries, by the way.
Dead rock stars, the NFL, some guy named Jake Paul, divisive politics — when the market place dictates the culture, the lowest common denominator prevails. We all lose. We all lose because we are indeed better than this junk.
The market place determines way more than pop culture in the United States nowadays. Gen Z is the most stressed generation in history, and a big part of that is the impending doom of trying to maximize themselves as human resources. Kids are forced to think of themselves as human resources exceptionally early in life. I mean, in the Long Beach Unified School District, for example, students pick their high school and a career pathway when they are in eighth grade.
I just feel we need some type of return to humanity and not human resources. We have signs all around us that this market-first American culture does not work. On the pop culture front, I see a huge desire for us to have music and books and movies that have staying power and are not so dang disposable. We're so desperate to have that — and feel that — that many now look back on 1988's Die Hard as "a great Christmas movie."
We want culture with staying power. We want McCartneys and Jaggers. We don't want disposable pop stars and movies.
Dead at 27?!? I actually wonder how many 27-year-olds are truly alive. I bet by the time many turn 27, they are just working their butts off on hamster wheels of paychecks.
I hope to god our kids are alive at 7 — although I hardly see any playing outside. I hope they're also alive at 17, but the ones I see are so stressed about their schoolwork and getting into college that I question if they actually enjoy that age.
This wide-open marketplace comes with a price, and I don't think it's a stretch to say part of the cost of this disposable culture is the destruction of American icons. OK, then. Happy New Year!
