The refrain went “I hope I die before I get old”, and so many rock stars did, according to new research.
Researchers have discovered that being a rock or pop star brings with it a nearly one in 10 chance of dying prematurely.
The risk is twice as high for solo artists.
Researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University studied the cases of 1,489 North American and European rock and pop stars over a 50-year period between 1956 and 2006.
Their research is published in the BMJ Open journal this morning.
They found that 137 (9.2 per cent) of them died prematurely.
The average age of death was 45 for North American stars and 39 for those from Europe.
Nearly half of those who died as a result of drugs, alcohol or violence had at least one unfavourable factor in their childhoods, compared with one in four of those who died from other causes.
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