The Music That Saved Us – or Killed Us at 27

This is a deeply personal story. For my generation, music was more than sound – it was survival. We grew up without fathers, and the stage became our school, the rock stars our role models. Music saved us from despair, but it also carried a darker lesson: many of our heroes never made it past 27.

Growing Up Fatherless

We were a generation without fathers. Homes were often poor, mothers carried all the responsibility, and male role models were absent. At best, there was a teacher, a youth leader, or a neighbor who cared. But in everyday life, there was only emptiness.

In the middle of that emptiness came music.

When Rock Hit Us

For me, and for many who grew up in the 60s and 70s, music became something far greater than sound. It became an anchor, a compass, a way out. Rock music, with its wild expression and raw power, hit us like a bomb.

I still remember when Van Halen appeared. It was as if the world exploded into something entirely new. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar sounded like nothing we had ever heard before. He stretched boundaries, created sounds no one thought possible. And we – kids from the suburbs without fathers – suddenly saw a new type of manhood. Not the absent, not the broken, but the one who dared, who created, who burned with passion.

For me, the drums became my refuge. Ludwig drums, just like my idols played – Alex Van Halen, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Neil Peart of Rush. They weren’t just musicians, they were heroes. Behind my drum kit, I was no longer that kid from the suburbs. I was part of something bigger.

Gothenburg as a Stage

In the 70s, Gothenburg was a city where rock had a natural home. All the great bands came there. I saw Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Mott the Hoople. The concerts weren’t just events – they were life-changing experiences.

We saved money for months to buy tickets. We queued outside Scandinavium, trembling with expectation. When the lights went down and the first chord tore through the arena, it was like electricity filling the body. It wasn’t just music – it was life, power, community.

For a few hours, we were free from the chaos of everyday life. We belonged to a bigger family, a unity that no divorce, no absent father, no poverty could take away.

The Role Models We Found on Stage

When fathers disappeared from the home, we found other role models. Rock musicians became our substitute fathers. They taught us to stand on stage, to take space, to dare to express emotions.

John Bonham showed me raw power. He played drums as if every strike mattered. Neil Peart showed intelligence and precision – that music could be both technically brilliant and emotionally deep. Ringo Starr showed that you didn’t need to be the fastest or loudest, but that it was about feel, about playing for the whole.

We looked up to them, not only for their music, but for their presence. They were there every time we put on a record. They didn’t disappear. They didn’t leave us.

If Ozzy Was Our Role Model – Who Did We Become?

But there was a darker side. When we made rock musicians into our father figures, what values did we inherit? If Ozzy Osbourne is your role model – who do you become?

We saw him bite the head off a bat, stumble through interviews, live a life of chaos, drugs, and excess. He was rock’s wild clown, but also a survivor. Maybe that’s what we learned from him – that you can be broken, flawed, even self-destructive, and still carry on.

But we also absorbed the risks. If our role models lived on the edge, how were we supposed to understand boundaries? If they lived in excess – drugs, alcohol, indulgence – it shaped our own picture of manhood.

We grew up idolizing those who died young – like Bonham and Hendrix – or those who survived but were forever scarred, like Keith Richards or Lemmy. And yet we loved them. Because they never betrayed us. They stood on stage, they gave everything, they were there when no one else was.

We took in their strength, but also their destructiveness. We were formed by both their genius and their darkness.

The Music That Saved Us – or That Could Kill Us

It’s easy to romanticize. But the truth is that music both saved us and carried the potential to destroy us.

The “27 Club” became the symbol of that. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison – later Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. All died at 27. All burned so brightly that their flame went out too soon.

As young fans, we didn’t just absorb the music – we absorbed the lifestyle. The drugs, the excess, the destructiveness. For us, there was almost a romance in living hard and dying young. “Better to burn out than to fade away,” as Cobain quoted in his farewell letter.

And that’s what makes the story so complex: music saved us from loneliness, but it also planted seeds of self-destruction. If our heroes broke down, how were we supposed to learn how to stay whole?

We wanted to live like our idols, but we also saw their downfall. It created a tension within us – a tug-of-war between vitality and destruction, between survival and collapse.

Music as Identity

Despite all this, music became our identity. What band you listened to defined who you were. Hard rock, prog rock, punk – it was about finding your tribe, your belonging.

For us, who had no father to lean on, music became a father figure. It shaped us, showed us paths. When someone asked who you were, the answer could just as easily be: “I’m a Zeppelin guy” or “I’m into Van Halen.” It was more than taste. It was a way of saying: this is my strength, my blood, my backbone.

The Drum Kit That Saved Me

My own drum kit became my temple. That’s where I could release all frustration, anger, sorrow. Every strike was therapy. When life around me was chaos, rhythm was a steady pulse.

It also taught me something vital: how to keep many threads going at once. Drumming is coordination – right hand, left hand, feet, all in different rhythms but still in harmony. It was training for my later life as a project manager. Keeping order in chaos, keeping time when everything around me shook.

The drums taught me more about responsibility and discipline than any man in my childhood ever did.

When Music Became a Language

There’s something about music that can’t be fully explained. It speaks beyond words. When you lack real conversations at home, when you never hear “I’m proud of you” from your father – then a guitar riff or a drum solo can speak that language instead.

When Robert Plant screamed his feelings in Zeppelin, we felt he was screaming at us, for us. When David Bowie transformed into Ziggy Stardust, he showed us you could be something entirely different than what society forced you to be. When Van Halen played “Jump,” it gave us hope that life could be bigger than our little world.

Music became a mirror and a release. It said: “You are not alone. You are part of something larger.”

Chaos and the Order of the Stage

It may sound contradictory: music, often chaos and wildness, gave us order. But that’s how it was. It gave structure to our feelings. It gave us goals: we would play, we would listen, we would be there when the bands came to town.

I remember standing in rehearsal rooms, young and lost, but the moment someone counted in a beat, everything made sense. Music gathered us, held us together. It replaced what was missing in our homes: security, community, meaning.

The Voice of a Generation

We weren’t alone. The whole world saw the same patterns. Children growing up with divorces, absent fathers, single mothers. Music became our generation’s voice. It said what we couldn’t say ourselves.

And maybe that’s why rock still feels so alive for those of us who were there. It wasn’t just culture – it was survival.

My Own Lesson

Today, I look back and see music as one of the most important forces in my life. It saved me. Without it, I don’t know where I would have ended up.

It gave me strength to carry on, it gave me role models when I lacked them, it gave me a language for emotions I couldn’t express. And above all, it gave me the feeling that I was not alone.

Music was my father, my friend, my teacher.

Passing It On

When I look at my children and grandchildren, I want to give them something of what music gave me. Not necessarily the same bands, the same sound, but the same sense that there is something bigger to hold on to.

We can’t always give our children perfect homes, perfect lives. But we can give them culture, community, a sense of belonging to something greater. For us it was rock. For them, it may be something else. But the need is the same.

Closing Words

We were a generation without fathers. But we found something that carried us anyway. We found music.

And maybe that’s the greatest lesson: that even in absence, something can be born. That even when what we need most is missing, we can still find something to fill the void. For me, it was rock. For others, it was sports, art, literature.

But the truth we share is this: we survived because we found voices that spoke to us. Voices that didn’t betray us.

And even today, when I put on an old record and let the drums thunder, I feel the same thing: I am not alone. I am part of something larger.