Coming to terms with the loss of our icons at the Grammys

The highlight of this year’s Grammy Awards, which will be broadcast live Monday on CBS, is sure to be the In Memoriam segment, the annual photo montage that honors the performers and notable members of the music industry who died during the past year.

When the mournful music cues up sometime in the middle of the 58th ceremony, we will see the faces of everyone from B.B. King to Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner, to Natalie Cole to Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.

The names above constitute a large, unwieldy cross-section of genres, decades and work, but the sense of loss is the same.

“What it’s says is that we’re getting further and further away from that magical generation of musicians,” says Dennis McNally, rock historian and former Grateful Dead publicist.

“Rock and roll was one of the fundamental, central aspects of our lives,” he says.

Even without chronic alcohol or drug use, the life of a touring musician can be incredibly stressful.

Sleep patterns are off, it’s almost impossible to eat well and performing onstage night after night is physically cruel.

Making it past the 27 Club — artists such as,Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all died at the age of 27 — is a feat in itself.

The bigger concern is that we’re entering an era where the artists who survived the years of overindulgence, abuse and rough nights on the tour bus are now reaching the age when people succumb to everyday ailments.

“Now we’re talking about people dying of natural causes,” says Greil Marcus, the author of “Mystery Train” and lecturer at University of California, Berkeley.

Not because they took too many drugs or didn’t eat right — just because people who did interesting things 30 or 40 years ago have reached a certain age.

“I think the reason it feels difficult is because so many of these people continue to perform and produce music into their golden years,” says Ann Powers, NPR Music’s critic and correspondent.

When Taylor Swift played in Nashville, they performed ‘Satisfaction’ together and I turned to my husband and said, ‘How can that be real? I know people in their 30s who can’t keep up with him.’

Many of these artists have been admired and loved by several generations, with their music staying current even as their bodies age.

“The interesting thing is when I was a teenager in the ’60s listening to the Stones and the Beatles very few people were listening to music from 40 years earlier,” says Randy Lewis, pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times.

Even though many of the acts who will appear in the Grammy’s In Memoriam segment made their greatest artistic contributions decades ago (B.B. King’s “Singin’ The Blues” is still out there to knock your socks off), the world isn’t the same without their physical presence.

There’s a fundamental difference between live music and recorded music.

There is a movement underway on social media where friends are urging each other to honor the elders who are still standing, whether by posting YouTube clips or catching a live show — a backlash, if you will, to people pouring out their sorrow when someone goes.

“I urge people, pick a musician over 60 and go see them live,” says McNally.

“If Bryan Ferry comes out 20 years from now when he’s 90 and really can’t do anything more but sit at the piano and sing in a soft voice, I would bet the songs he sings will sound different in the best way,” he says.

Aidin Vaziri is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic.

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Brad Kent, member of various punk bands including D.O.A. and the Avengers, age unknown, Feb. 3