No Time For Sadness: It's Time To Rock

One of the things we never thought about growing up loving rock music in the 1970s was that one day, all our heroes would die. That, given the generation they were drawn from, we would likely outlive most of them.

I always knew from an early age that I'd love rock n roll my whole life and that age wouldn't diminish my passion for it, and I knew this because I felt it so deeply. It was a profound thing from an early age, but I knew that it wasn't like that for everyone; I knew I was different.

And so it has proved. I never stopped liking any band I ever liked and it is still my abiding passion in life. But I've still not come to terms with the rock people who I've lived my life around via their artform, passing away. I think this is because they seem immortal in all of the important ways; they have changed the molecules of our existence profoundly.

But Lemmy dying still feels like a big loss, even though you couldn't say it was the least likely of things to happen. It's amazing he made it to 70. My dad died at 65, never having taken a drug in his life, much less played a bass guitar as though it was a machine gun.

So feeling sad doesn't seem right. Lemmy gave so much joy to the world. He unleashed a noise which helped generations just get through this veil of tears we call life, perhaps especially those who were born to lose, but lived to win. That is as immense an achievement as any of us could hope for with our existence, It is fundamentally an unselfish and human act.

Lives well-lived should be celebrated and not mourned. We're here for a good time, not for a long time and that is surely one of the basic tenets of rock n roll; one thing which is implicit to its understanding and one thing that Lemmy certainly knew to his core.

Another hero has gone, another old musical friend, but we, the classic rock generation are so lucky to have had them in our lives for almost all of our lives. What more could we wish for? They helped make us who we are and gave us more pleasure and more good times than anything else. And , just as valuable, they helped us through the bad times.

So, it's no time for sadness. It's time to rock.