Dead rock stars occupy a strange place in the pantheon of Humanity’s heroes. You’ve got brave, doomed soldiers and noble, self-sacrificing leaders and visionary, steadfast iconoclasts and idealistic, graceful martyrs. And then 1938 rolls around, Robert Johnson is poisoned, and shortly thereafter you’ve got dudes who choke on their own vomit in the backseats of cars floating up to Heaven to chill with Hercules and Abe Lincoln and St. Thomas Aquinas. Rock star deaths tend to be violent or self-indulgent, which upon reflection seems to make them the perfect heroes of the Western World’s 20th Century.
Plane crashes, car wrecks, and suicide aren’t the prerogatives of PitchKnives. And though we do cover booze, instances of rock stars drinking themselves to death are pretty pedestrian. There are, however, instances of food becoming entangled with the myths of pop’s premature deaths, one of which I’ll note now, the first in a short series.
Duane Allman was, I was shocked to discover when researching this piece, only 24 when he died. Jesus Christ! The mutton chops on the man made him look 40. And mutton is certainly a food. Continue reading