perfidy

Writing on the death of punk icon(oclast) Robert Quine, Phil Dennison asks "[w]hat the hell is it with these guys – Quine, Dee Dee Ramone, John Entwhistle – who lived through the worst the 70s and 80s had to throw at them, only to OD as old men? Cripes!"

Cripes, indeed.

Not being a big ol' druggie myself, apart from a few desultory stabs at self-medication here and there (nothing hard, nothing to write home about, nothing even that fun), I have a hard time understanding, much less identifying with, folks who fail to die before they get old, then manage to go and succeed at the end of a needle. This is particularly so when it's someone unexpected. Dee Dee Ramone isn't that surprising, actually, if you've ever listened to the lyrics to "Warthog Boy" or "Fifty-Third and Third." But John Entwhistle was a rock, the trillion-ton black hole that kept the Who from flying apart. Was he a tortured soul, or did he just like to get high a lot? And Robert Quine? What the hell?

And why Quine and not Keef, Iggy, Ozzy, or Phil Lesh? The more I muse on the vicissitudes of mortality and the decisions people make, the less I understand.

Maybe I'll write a little more on this tomorrow when I've had time to think it over. But for tonight... cripes.