24% Of People Wish They Could Meet This Dead Rock Star

Hypothesizing about dead people we wish we could meet never gets old. There are just so many amazing humans who have graced this earth. But sometimes it's nice to have parameters, because after all, there are a lot of dead people. 

That's why when Grunge polled readers, we provided a genre and a limit for our 672 participants when we asked, "Which dead rock star do you wish you could go back in time and meet?"

Even with rock 'n' roll only being around for about 65 years — which isn't very long in the scheme of all of recorded history — there are so many rock stars who have already died. Such a bummer.  

For Grunge's poll, we asked people to choose between Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, and Kurt Cobain. A lot of different personalities there, for sure, and each of these rock stars left a mark with not only their distinctive catalogs of music, but also their now iconic life stories. 

The rock star the least people would time travel to meet is Tom Petty, with a little less than 8% choosing him. He is the most recently departed of all the options, though, and it might not be that exciting to time travel to meet someone who was alive just a few years ago.

One dead rock star ruled the survey

Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin all came in pretty close, with 14.73% of responders saying they want to meet Hendrix, almost 16% choosing Joplin, and 16.82% saying they'd pick the reluctant god of grunge, Cobain. 

Seems like meeting any of that crew would be interesting, as they lived hard and died young after just years of being famous rock stars. Hendrix and Joplin would probably drop all kinds of groovy '60s lingo on you, or maybe just try to drop acid with you. Whereas, Cobain may be more of a drag, man, unless you caught him in a good mood, after all, he embodied Gen-X angst and nihilism in a way that wasn't embraced in the hippie movement. 

That leaves the larger-than-life Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who nearly 21% of people polled said they'd choose to meet. Given his nearly unmatched singing voice and his penchant for fun and mischief — Rolling Stone reported he once helped sneak Princess Diana into a gay bar disguised as an "eccentrically dressed gay male model" — it stands to reason that he was the second most desired person to meet in Grunge's poll. 

You may or may not be surprised to learn that the rock star most people said they wanted to meet was Elvis Presley.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said the King of Rock 'n' Roll would be their choice, but it's not clear if they want to meet young, swoon-worthy "Don't Be Cruel"-era Elvis or the world-wise, rhinestones Las Vegas Elvis. Either way, the country boy with sex appeal for days is still the one most people would like to meet.