As Long As You Are

Rock music, like most popular music, has a certain fascination with itself. Whether it's general, like Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music"  or Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Night," or about what it's like to live the Rock and Roll "dream." In the latter category, some songs are humorous - Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" - while others speak of the negative side of being on the road - Bob Seger's "Turn the Page."

Bad Company, in "Shooting Star" from their Straight Shooter album, attempted to cover the life of a fictional rock star.

Four verses cover the life of Johnny who, like many rock musicians in the '70s and '80s, was inspired after hearing the Beatles. Whether you are a fan of their music or not (given the breadth, it's hard to imagine a fan of rock music who doesn't like at least one Beatles song), their influence can't be denied, or even underestimated.

Johnny buys a guitar and joins a band in the first verse, and leaves home to pursue the dream in the second verse. After two verses the chorus kicks in, and it contains the songs warning. People love you when your hot, but you only burn for so long. The image of a shooting star, that brilliant  flash of light that is as brief as it is beautiful, is the perfect image to convey life of so many rock stars.

Verse three is Johnny's rise to fame ("Johnny looked around him and said, 'Well, I made the big time at last.'") But, as the chorus has already indicated, that fame is fleeting.

Johnny died one night, died in his bed,
Bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head.
Johnny's life passed him by like a warm summer day,
If you listen to the wind you can still hear him play.

Rock music has lost many of it's best young. Some are claimed by the perils of continual travel (Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, and others died in plane crashes) but many, especially in the early '70s, were victims of the excesses that seemed (seem?) to characterize the rock and roll lifestyle. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison then later Keith Moon and Bon Scott all died from alcohol or drug abuse. In his song "The Big Lie" Rik Emmett (formerly of the rock band Triumph) would sing of "the burned out myth of sex and drugs and rock and roll."

Musically, "Shooting Star" is a happy song and perhaps, even given the untimely demise of Johnny in the song, it's not misplaced. Perhaps those shooting stars of the rock world would prefer to be remembered in a happy light. But the message should still be somewhat sobering. Too many people who seem to have everything we would want do not end up happy. Everyone around us is going through some difficulty we do not know, so be kind to each other.