6557 Miles To Nowhere: SPIN's 2003 Chuck Klosterman Essay - SPIN
This is the piece that (eventually) became the skeletal structure for Killing Yourself to Live , a book some people love and many people hate. The principal reason certain readers dislike that book is that they feel betrayed — they go into the process assuming it’s going to be about the locations where rock musicians died, and that’s not the point. Thematically, it’s totally different from this original story, which is only about the places I visited (as opposed to how I got there). However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars. sometimes rock stars don’t start living until they die. I want to understand why that is. I want to find out why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. I want to find out why plane crashes and drug overdoses and shotgun suicides turn long-haired guitar players into messianic prophets. I want to walk the blood-soaked streets of rock ‘n’ roll and chat with the survivors as they writhe in the gutter. Death rides a pale horse, but I shall merely ride a silver Ford Taurus. This voice tells me when I need to exit the freeway, how far I am from places like Missoula, and how to locate the nearest Cracker Barrel. Source: www.spin.com
