Tragedy has struck yet again. On October 16, One Direction member Liam Payne died at the age of 31 reportedly after falling from a hotel balcony.
Tributes have begun to pour out from Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Maggie Rogers, Shawn Mendes, and more for the late singer. Others like Bruce Springsteen have shined a light on the wave of musicians gone too soon.
Yesterday (October 18), during an interview with Telegraph, when asked about Liam Payne’s untimely death he said musicians passing young has sadly become a “normal thing” citing Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain.
“That’s not an unusual thing in my business,” he said. “It’s a normal thing. It’s a business that puts enormous pressures on young people. Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame. So they get lost in a lot of the difficult and often pain inducing whether it’s drugs or alcohol to take some of that pressure off.”
Bruce went onto to talk about how the weight of the industry has impacted him and The E Street Band. “I understand that very well,” he said. “I mean, I’ve had my own wrestling with different things. The band has all wrestled with their own issues. And Danny [Federici] certainly did. Drugs were not uncommon in the E Street Band, you know.”
However, he ended but celebrating how they were able to overcome their battles, saying: “I always say, one of the things I was proudest of is that if one of my fellas passed on, they passed on of natural causes.”