MickyD":1p3rnf0e said:Indeedy. They were all in their late sixties (save for Lemmy who was a couple of days over 70 and probably helped himself on his way out following his diagnosis, I suspect) and three of them had cancer. Frey died of "complications arising from rheumatoid arthritis, colitis and pneumonia" (Jeez!) and Buffin had Alzheimer'sLG":1p3rnf0e said:I think it's just a fact that we're getting older.
That's probably just a fairly average sample of those who die in their late sixties, sad to say. They just happen to have been famous to varying degrees and to have died in a little cluster, at least from our narrow point of view. (I doubt that many under 50 who are mourning the loss of Bowie, Lemmy or Frey will have much of a clue who Buffin was, or Rickman aside from his Snape role.)
It's logical that we're going to see more and more 'household names' passing away than used to be the case. It doesn't just seem there are more, there will be more.
Why?
Because the men and women who rose to prominence in the many vehicles to 'celebrity' that spung up in the post war years just happen to be reaching the natural age humans pass away.
Sure you had music, radio and films pre-war but the stars, the names that 'households' would remember were few.
The post war years gave us the growth of the film industry, the introduction of music charts, rock 'n' roll, the widespread expansion of television, the growth of the cult of celebrity.
There were therefore vastly more famous people than there were before. This growth continued through the remaining years of the 20th century and nowadays you can even be famous without any talent beyond self publicity, virtually everyone is famous now.
Before long 'celebrity deaths' will be a daily feature on the news, there are just so many famous names that were created during the massive explosion of popular cultures during the middle of the last century onwards.
It's inevitable they'll just keep coming (or going!), time has simply just caught up with the increased numbers of well known people there are now in the world.