What does becoming a rock star do to your life expectancy?
Breaking news, everyone: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll will actually ruin your health. Who’d have thought it?
Listen, without wanting to be overly rude about anyone in particular, I’m sure we can all think of a rock star who managed to last far longer than they should have. Despite insane antics, not looking after themselves, and severe health scares too many to count over the years, they somehow made it to a fairly respectable age. Honestly, give us the details of the doctor they were using.
Of course, not all get to be as lucky, and the cat-with-nine-lives approach is hardly bankable nor recommended. Morbid phenomena like the ‘27 Club’ ultimately exist for a reason, because certain rock stars and the type of lifestyles that come with them are the very definition of how not to create many long and healthy years.
But what exactly does the science say about this? Obviously, certain overindulgent factors can decrease a person’s lifespan in any case, but this seems to transform into a double whammy in the rock and roll world. And indeed, a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health – which makes it sound very official – confirmed this precise worst fear.
Their research suggested that famous singers’ chances of dying young were increased by a sizable 33%, compared to those who were not in the public eye, with the average age of heading to the grave for a star being 75 years old. For some added morbid context, that’s four years shorter than the global average.
Is there anything a rock star can do to live longer?
But fear not: for singers who are now quaking in their boots and rushing to sort out their wills, it’s not all bad news. If you’re already the frontperson of a band, you’re statistically supposed to stick around a bit more than your solo counterparts, with a 26% lower risk. In this context, it does a lot of explaining as to why Ozzy Osbourne lasted so long.
It should be said that this study also looked at musicians who were active over the 40-year period from 1950 to 1990. Particularly for part of the earlier chunk of that timeframe, people just didn’t tend to live as long and rock and roll, in itself, was a whole new-fangled invention. People didn’t know what lay ahead of them, and could easily fall into fatal traps.
Plus, for the betterment of us all and not just rock stars, health care and society have come on leaps and bounds in the past 30 years. You’d probably find that for every blazing musician out there who’s still indulging in the party lifestyle, there’s ten others more interested in self-care and protecting themselves. Hell, Liam Gallagher was practically said to be a monk on the Oasis tour.
So, yes, being a rock star does come with its costs, and you may have to start thinking about funeral plans just slightly earlier than most, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Sex and drugs is all fine in proportion, but when you look back on your average of 75 years, you want to know that you’ve lived it right.
