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All Of My Idols Are Gone
Their lessons, like their music, make them immortal
This photo got me.
I can’t stop looking at it.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one reads like a different novel every time I go back to it.
It’s Scott Weiland, lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, embracing his mom–with a cigarette still burning in his right hand.
His life and his music had a big influence on me, but like so many of my musical heroes, he’s gone.
Drugs took him away at the young age of 48, after years of deteriorating before our eyes.
I’m 53 years old.
That fact alone blows my mind, but I’ve now lived longer than Jerry Garcia ever did.
When I turn 54 I’ll be exactly twice as old as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain were at the time of their death.
None of them lived past the age of 27.
Garcia, in particular, is hard for me to accept because he looked like a biblical figure in his last years — with his Hemingway beard and long white hair being…
