So why do so many rock stars commit suicide? I was pondering this question tonight as I watched a YouTube video of Chris Cornell from Audioslave singing “Like A Stone,” from 2002. It’s a great song, and Cornell’s voice is eerie and pained.
I was into Audioslave back in the early 2000’s, when I was working at the United Nations, and I especially liked their song “Be Yourself,” which was an anthem for disaffected youth, but also for disaffected young adults like myself.
So when Cornell committed suicide in 2017, I was upset. Not quite devastated, but pretty freaking angry. Why would someone with so much talent take his own life? He was denying future pleasure to his fans by killing himself, and it just seemed wrong. When someone is that talented, their talent belongs to everyone, not solely themselves.
Then I was reminded of Dolores O’Riordan, the former lead singer of The Cranberries, who took her own life in 2018. I had been a huge fan of The Cranberries in the early to mid-90’s, and songs such as “Linger” and “Zombie” resonated powerfully with me.
O’Riordan was a 5’2” dynamo from Limerick, Ireland, and her voice was like a wailing cry into the night. She owned pain.
Once again, I felt as if O’Riordan had robbed her fans of their birthright, which was to enjoy her music for decades to come.
Obviously rock stars who commit suicide leave behind parents, spouses, children, loved ones and friends, and they are the ones who suffer the most.
But fans suffer too.
The litany of rock stars that have killed themselves or died of drug-related overdoses is long and tragic. There’s no need to go into an exhaustive recounting. A few notables include Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Prince.
And there are many, many more.
Why, we ask ourselves, do rock stars feel so much pain, so much angst, at the same time that the whole world adores them?
I don’t have a satisfactory answer for that question.
I think part of it is that their star burns so brightly that their soul becomes too powerful for this corporeal earth. When they die, they ascend to heaven, and their spirit takes its rightful place among the gods of the universe.
That’s where the phrase “rock god” comes from. A titan who lords over the world of music and provides pleasure to the masses.
So long live the rock gods, may they continue to bring us melody for centuries to come.
