"Genius and Heroin"
Michael Largo
Creative minds have long sought to unleash their talents through the help (or detriment) of alcohol and drugs. Rock favorites such as Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin and even opera-legend Maria Callas all indulged in substance abuse, causing their premature and tragic deaths.
Check out tracks by artists who overdosed with Webjockey Louis Monoyudis' Rifflist:
Dead Musicians
Genius and Heroin by Michael Largo seeks to understand why many creative artists are inherently self-destructive. His work chronicles the lives of the famously talented in several fields, including writers, artists, musicians, actors, politicians, military leaders, sports figures, and even scientists, whose creative path took them down a road of self-ruin.
With a veritable cornucopia of deleterious chemicals and self-obsessed thoughts to choose from, ranging from opiates, alcohol, pills, absinthe, or the slow-motion suicide of obsession, the heroes of
Genius and Heroin are tormented souls whose art and accomplishments we continue to celebrate.
Complied as an encyclopedic reference of data and personality profiles, this book tackles one of the most perplexing questions about the creative mind: does genius create torment, or does torment create genius. In addition, Largo complies fascinating statistics such as this about the "Average Age of Dead Rockers" (p. 145):
The sixties had only a few pop and rock musicians dying of overdoes, Frankie Lymon, and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, most notably. But by the seventies, starting with Joplin, the roll call began in earnest: Jim Morrison (27), Jimi Hendrix (27), Gram Parsons (27), Billy Murcia of the New York Dolls (22), the Grateful Dead's Ron "Pigpen" McKeran (27), Nick Drake (26), Average White Band's Robbie McIntosh (23), Vincent Taylor of Sha Na Na (51), Tim Buckley (28), Tommy Bolin (25), Uriah Heep singer David Byron (27) and bassist Gary Thain (27), Paul Kossoff (25), The Who drummer Keith Moon (31), and Sex Pistol Sid Vicious (21) - making 27.9 the average age of an overdosed seventies rocker. In the eighties the average age for a dead rocker was 27.8. The nineties had the most overdosed rockers since rock began, with the average age of overdose at 34.8 years.