Although performers, politicians, journalists and general people of the arts get significant credit for the advancements of societal beliefs, they pale in comparison to the rebel rousing effects of good science.

For the legions of brazen, tell all Hunter S. Thompsonites, there only can be one Charles Darwin. Each Beatle and every member of the Invasion must share in the findings the lone Galileo. Artists advance how we feel; they expand our tastes and progress culture. But great moments in science change how we think and disrupt our belief systems so that what is and is not fact becomes altered. While an artist might stake his or her critical/commercial future on the use of experimental guitars, many times groundbreaking experiments have risked scientists’ lives. And when they pay off, such as with the creation of electricity or penicillin, they can save the ones of many others.

So when Mark Bellis at the Liverpool John Moores University’s centre for public health launched a study as to whether rock’n'roll was hazardous to a person’s well-being, the scientific community was left wondering why he didn’t invest in a topic that might be more difficult to prove. You know, like reporting that water is wet. Or that bicycles have two wheels.

When the scientist’s crack research team made the results of the study public last week – proving that, yes, a life of touring dingy clubs on gas station diets was unhealthy – it was met with a collective shrug and a thunderous “no duh.”

Bellis examined the lives – and very closely, the deaths – of musicians, and compared his findings to those of a nonmusical population. The sample audience was comprised of 1,064 artists featured on a list of the 1,000 greatest rock’n'roll albums of all time. The results show:
- That during performers’ first five years of chart success, the mortality rate increases 300 percent above that of everyday people.
- That during years five through 10 of success, the mortality rate is 250 times that of everyday people.
- That up to 25 years after performers first chart, they are more likely to die than the general population.
- Of the 100 people in the test sample that died prematurely, the average North American age was 42 (Elvis Presley), and Europeans took the stairway to heaven even earlier, at age 35 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).
- 9.6 percent of the men and 7.3 percent of the woman had died by the year 2005.
- Some causes of death included: “Accidents,” which accounted for 16 deaths; “Drug/Alcohol overdose,” which accounted for 19; “Cancer,” which accounted for 20; “Suicide,” which accounted for 3; “Drug/Alcohol accident,” which (apparently different than an overdose) accounted for 4; “Violence,” which accounted for 6; and “Other,” which accounted for 10.

Yet Bellis’ study is hauntingly timely, and the most eerie finding might coincide with the Reagan Administration’s war on drugs. Results show that performers after 1980 only had a 1.5 percent likeliness of dying within those first five years, whereas that chance for rockstars before the days of “Just Say No” was more than double.

Coincidentally, in the past month two of the most seminal figures in the explosion of late-1970s counter culture died – CGBG founder Hilly Kristal and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. Though neither man was as recognizable as the acts that he helped launch, both of their roles were undeniable and groundbreaking.

Kristal, who died Aug. 28 at age 75, was at the helm of the iconic New York punk club for more than 30 years. It was on his dimly lit stage that Blondie, Television, The Ramones and The Talking Heads, among others, turned the Lower East Side venue into an unmistakable acronym: Country Blue Grass and Blues – Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers. CBGB for short.

When it closed in late 2006 amid a slew of leasing issues, the farewell blowout headlined by original scenester Patti Smith paid homage to a landmark that helped make U.S. punk rock a part of every respectable record collection. Anyone who has donned Converse All-star and slug a bass low on a hip during the past three decades owes tribute to the birthplace of the three-power-chord tune.

The club was a museum. It was a shrine. Above all it was a concert venue. A place that bands wanted to play at its final stages as much as they did when it opened in 1973 – mostly because of Kristal’s understanding of individuality. As a musician himself, the New Yorker intended the club to be a haven for its namesake. But never one to stifle creativity, and needing to make ends meet financially, the promoter offered a Sunday night residency in 1974 to an upstart and unknown band from neighborhood. It was these regular Television gigs that would determine the rest of Kristal’s life.

CGBG as it would become known was born, while at the same time a similar movement was bubbling across the Atlantic in part to Wilson.

At the heart of Manchester, England, the journalist for Granada Television would align himself at the center of English post-punk, and he would remain vital to every dominating U.K. musical movement until his death at age 57 on Aug. 10.

It was Wilson’s pace-setting TV show, “So It Goes” in 1976 that first put the U.K. punk explosion on air. Over two seasons – only 19 episodes – Wilson plastered the faces, and more importantly the music, of The Jam, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the X-Ray Spex, to name a few, into households across Britain.

It was for these bands that Wilson began “Factory Night,” a weekly showcase of punk at an area pub. When friend and business partner Rob Gretton introduced Wilson to a slender chainsmoker named Ian Curtis, the concert residency was transformed into Factory Records and launched the short-lived career of Joy Division. As the labels co-owner, Wilson also would take bands, such as A Certain Ratio and The Happy Mondays under his wing. But it wasn’t until Curtis’ suicide, when his ex-bandmates would form New Order, that Factory became one of the world’s biggest labels. Although it never had an extensive roster, the imprint was home to New Order’s 1983 “Blue Monday” – the largest selling 12-inch single in history.

Capitalizing on that success, and the growing rave culture asserting itself in Manchester’s underground, Wilson opened The Hacienda. As one of the first of its kind, half a music venue and half a nightclub, the building would cement rave culture and help to glorify electronic dance rhythms. It’s legend grew, as did Wilson’s, and the establishment even served as the location for Madonna’s first-ever U.K. performance. The club lasted 15 years, closing officially in 1997, two years before co-founder Gretton’s death.

Much like Kristal, Wilson outlived many of his era’s most recognizable figures, such as Curtis, Gretton, producer Martin Hannet, Joe Strummer of The Clash and Sex Pistol Sid Vicious. Kristal lived to see the death of Joey and Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders and Bill Murcia of The New York Dolls, Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys and James Honeyman-Scott of The Pretenders.

The two icons’ deaths – though not unexpected – serve as a constant reminder that the most important names of the first-wave punk explosion are dwindling. And now, the dying include more than the jet-setting musicians, but the men behind the proverbial curtain.

Maybe Bellis can get his team working on a cure for massive amounts of secondhand smoke and chronic liver disease accumulated over years on tour buses. But he’s probably too busy on his follow-up research – proving dead people can’t get up and dance around a room, no matter how monumental they were in life.

Northwest Herald, Sept. 14, 2007