Older than that now

Older than that now. Older then than now.

I just watched "No One Gets Out Alive" on Ovation. (They are going pop music-crazy this week – right now I am recording Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, a documentary that promises to put the concert in "its historical perspective" which mean what I do not know.) "Alive" is a one hour tribute to Jim Morrison replete with the necrophiliogical ramblings of Ray Manzarek who has made a cottage industry out of semi-inept keyboard playing alongside a died-too-soon rock legend.

So here is the deal – why is it that departed rock stars, some departed rock stars, have a certain age impinged on them. Meaning they never look their true age. Morrison should, through my eyes, look like the twenty something punk that he was. Janis too – should look all of her twenty two years. Pigpen – a young man drinking himself to death. But they don't, they just don't. They look older, not wiser, older.

True, some of this could be due to the ravages of the excesses that bought them an early seat in Rock and Roll Heaven. Much like the coroner who examined Charlie "Yardbird" Parker and determined the thirty-four year old to between fifty and sixty.

Lennon – older than the above, to be sure, less ravaged too, but he will always appear to me to be my elder. Cobain – there's the rub, there's the 'some'. To me he does look like a twenty seven year old. Is it because I never wore Nirvana Boots or sported a Nirvana Haircut? So is it my infatuation that colors my perception?

A twenty-two year old ordering a caramel whatchamcallit looks like . . . well, whatever she looks like it is nothing like the woman belting "Piece of My Heart" at Monterey.