That life-raft aint gonna save y'r ass.....

January 5th – John Denver had an album out in 1972 called, ‘Aerie’ and, on this day, its certified sales made it a gold album…but that’s not what concerns me; what concerns me is how come he was yet another rock ‘n’ roll airplane crash victim? 

Now I know those who run airlines tell us it’s the safest form of transport (well they would, wouldn't they? I mean, they’re hardly going to end each hostess chat with, “And BTW, we hope you paid real good attention ‘cos there’s a 19% chance you’re goin’ DOWN bro’!”) Yes, you’d be right if you said there has been a steady decline in fatalities;

1999 – 211 crashes, 1138 people killed:

2011 – 117 crashes, 828 people killed.

That’s a very good safety improvement…well, for those of us who have flown in the last 10 or so years and are reading these words it is. However, I would say (and I have calculated these figures by the use of a highly complex mathematical formulae of my own devising) that, if you are a rock musician you will have a higher chance of becoming just another messy statistic lifted from the ruins of a plummeted plane than most other folk. First, let’s look at just a partial show-bill list: 

Richie Valens

Big Bopper

Buddy Holly

Otis Redding

Patsy Cline

Hawkshaw Hawkins

Cowboy Copas

Jim Reeves

Aaliyah

RonnieVann Zandt

Steven Gaines

Cassie Gaines

Jim Croce

Randy Rhoades

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Ricky Nelson

Glenn Miller

Carl Cunningham

Ronnie Caldwell

Phalin Jones

Jimmy King

Jane Dornacher

Graham Strachan

Bill Chase

Walter Clarke

John Emma

Wallace Yohn

Joe Dan Petty

Stephen Canaday

Paul Jeffrey

John Denver

David Box

Melanie Thornton… That’s some list and my guess it’s incomplete. 

Now for the maths; concentrate as I lay the figures out:

General Public Air Crashes: 

2179 crashes in 13 years (that’s one crash every 103 days) resulting in 17928 deaths, so that’s an average of 390 people killed per crash. With commercial flights running at around 18,000,000 per year that’s an 8% chance of an ordinary citizen being killed in crashing plane…providing they’ve travelled in a plane over the past 13 years that is.

Rock Musician Air Crashes: (Now this is where it gets scary). 

Every rock musician in that list above who was killed in a plane crash was on a plane when it happened; right? So, that’s 33 killed on 33 flights over fifty years. So, as a touring rock musician and projecting those figures forward, it seems you stand a 100% chance of being killed in a plane crash if you are travelling by plane at any point in the next fifty years; no good shaking your head, you can't argue with the statistics. My advice? Check the flight passenger lists; any musicians on board, get th’ hell off, either that or walk…walk or travel in a Ford Transit with the other band members and you might just make it to the next gig…Trust me, I’m a scientist.