Singer Elvis Presley died at age 42 in 1977.(Photo: NBC-TV via AP)
Story Highlights
- Music celebrities more likely to die young
- Some problems may be rooted in difficult childhoods
- European stars have same risk as regular folks after 25 years
The latest study to look at rock and pop star deaths suggests the odds were stacked against Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse.
But Keith Richards has statistics on his side.
The study, which expands on an earlier version, reconfirms that music celebrities really are more likely than the rest of us to die young, but shows that solo artists (such as Presley, Jackson and Winehouse) and North Americans may face some extra risks, while those who had rough childhoods may be particularly likely to succumb to alcohol and drugs.
Aging European rockers, though, get some good news: Once they’ve been famous for a quarter century, they are no more likely than commoners to die before their time. (Richards, the hard-living Rolling Stone who turned 69 this week, is British and has been famous for about 50 years).
The research, published today in the online journal BMJ Open, does not detail the risks for any individual, but uses official websites, news stories, biographies and other publicly available records to examine the lives of 1,489 pop and rock stars from Europe and North America who became famous between 1956 and 2006. Of those, 137, or 9.2%, had died
Continue reading more about Health & EMS News from the source article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/19/rock-star-early-death-solo-artists/1780027/
Source:
http://www.newsits.com/news/health-ems/solo-rock-stars-at-greater-risk-to-die-early/