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Are Music Deaths More Likely in Groups of Three?
Another rock & roll passing leaves me counting.
This year may be no match for 2016, but 2020 so far has been brutal when it comes to music and loss. We’ve had to say goodbye to Kenny Rogers (March 20), Joe Diffie (March 29), Bill Withers (March 30), John Prine (April 7), Little Richard (May 9), Betty Wright (May 10), Bonnie Pointer (June 8), Charlie Daniels (July 6), Mac Davis (September 29), Helen Reddy (September 29), Eddie Van Halen (October 6), Johnny Nash (October 6), and a number of other talented performers who contributed to the soundtrack of our youth.
And here comes the rain again. On October 19, Tony Lewis, the lead singer of the ’80s British trio The Outfield died “suddenly and unexpectedly,” his rep revealed October 20 on Twitter, at age 62 near London. Normally my response to such tragic news is to wonder who’s next. After all, isn’t death supposed to come in threes?
Sadly, in this case, it already has — six years ago. On July 9, 2014, Lewis’s The Outfield bandmate, guitarist and songwriter John Spinks, died of liver cancer at age 60. When I bought The Outfield’s Play Deep album on vinyl in 1985, little did I know that 25 years later, they’d have me once again tossing around my theory that members of musical trios might be more susceptible to dying young-ish than…
