Amy Winehouse Dead at 27, Pete Doherty Still Alive...

By now everyone's heard the news. The infamous "27 Club" of dead rock stars claims its newest member, British uber-talented R&B/soul goddess Amy Winehouse.
Millions of fans worldwide are shocked, but no one's that surprised; her masterpiece album from 2006, "Back To Black", was followed up with the remainder of her years as tabloid fodder. Drunken fights, drug abuse, slurring her words and falling over on stage to the sounds of boos from disgruntled audiences; clearly the latter years of her life were not pleasant.

But maybe they weren't meant to be. As part of the 27 Club, once the dust settles, she'll be remembered as an icon, much in the way Jimi, Janis and Kurt are. Her pain, though, is so much a part of what created the music that moved us, in the same way the music of Janis and Kurt did. Would all these artists be who they were musically if they hadn't suffered?

There is a mentality among many music lovers, the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" lifestyle of the musicians whose music we listen to is revered as a part of what makes their music so "real". It reflects us, but it becomes them. They live the lives we wish we could live but realistically know we can't because a)we're not musically-talented, and b)we know it would kill us. So we watch the stars do it instead. And the star that burns twice as bright also burns out twice as fast.

Sometimes.

The horrors of addiction, as seen with artists like Winehouse, Doherty, Cobain, and Staley, can create effective, stunning, beautiful, arousing music that touches true music-lovers into the bottom of their souls. We feel that. I have never had my heart truly broken, but I know how it feels because Amy Winehouse felt it for me and then wrote songs about it that just blew my fucking mind. I've never done heroin but I know what it feels like to be "Down in a hole, and I don't know if I can be saved, See my heart, I decorate it like a grave, and you don't understand who they thought I was supposed to be" (Layne Staley, Alice in Chains) after struggling for years to come to terms with my mother's death. The source of the pain is different, but the way it sounds is the same.

People don't want to admit that "Tortured Artist Syndrome" is among the more attractive sides of rock n' roll, music in general, but deep down we know it is. It's exciting and gives us the opportunity to live vicariously through the music without having to experience the actual suffering first-hand. We like our musicians tortured because ultimately, it makes for better music. Trent Reznor's still making music all these years after kicking drugs and depression, but it's nowhere near as powerful and moving as the music he made when in the throes of all that chaos. How do you compare "You see your world on fire, don't try to act surprised. We did just what you told us, lost our faith along the way and found ourselves believing your lies", to "Something inside of me has opened up its eyes, why did you put it there, did you not realize, this thing inside of me it screams the loudest sound, sometimes I think I could, I'm gonna burn this whole world down." ? Not that what Trent's doing now is bad or of lesser quality, it's just that the raw emotion that fed so many of us Nine Inch Nails' fans has been drowned out by the reality of our rock star hero having money, fame, beautiful women, a nice house, famous friends...and no dope.

Why is this okay? Because rock stars like Reznor, Doherty, and Cobain got paid millions of dollars and led the most fantastic lives in exchange for their misery. They live the pain, do all the suffering, create the amazing music that makes the world respond with money and fame and all the things in life anyone could possibly want in exchange for it. As a result, they become less miserable and life isn't so bad anymore, the raw intensity of the music starts to fade and they live the rest of their lives making halfway-decent songs and becoming rock icons and surviving off the millions they earned when they were still on the edge. And that's okay, too, because the majority of the tortured artists who make this great music don't want to die, and they do have the right to some day be happy. It will make room for the next generation of tortured artists to shine their own light.

But sometimes they die along the way, like Cobain, Joplin, Morrison, and now Winehouse.

And that's okay too, because in their short lives, they saw and did and lived some of the greatest moments that can possibly exist for a human, things most of us will never see. Amy Winehouse was on top of the world at one point. She was untouchable. Treasured by millions of people, bought homes most of us will never come remotely close to affording, toured and traveled the world to places most of us will never see, met and had relationships with others of the most famous and revered people on the planet, won the highest awards available in the music industry, had gorgeous men throwing themselves at her, (at one point) made her parents the most proud parents on Earth, performed for millions of fans screaming her name, people wanting to be near her, people wanting to be her. Is that worth losing it all at just 27 years old?

Sure it is. The music she contributed was timeless and will probably hold up longer than the life she would have lived had she been given a normal human's lifespan.

Not all good music comes from tortured artists; guys like Neil Diamond, the Beatles, Justin Timberlake, U2, Jay-Z, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, all make incredibly good music without the tortured-artist label attached to them. But the music they make still reflects who they are. They're the lucky ones that didn't create music out of misery or need their careers to ride on the back of personal pain. And though they may have used considerable amounts of drugs at some point, none of them were addicts.

It is truly a shame that all that potential for more great masterpieces from Winehouse was lost, and of course it's beyond-the-imagined awful for a family to lose their child, but to say she didn't live a full life and reach the highest attainable successes of human existence is simply wrong. May she rest in peace wherever she's at now, and those of us here find comfort in what we were given by her instead of hoping for what might have been.