Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young was Faron Young

Faron Young

Faron Young was an American country music singer and songwriter from the early 1950s into the mid-1980s and one of its most successful and colorful stars...

's first number one song and his fifth consecutive top ten hit. It spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard country music charts in 1955. "This was a tune I detested," Faron said. "Ken Nelson

Ken Nelson (United States record producer)

Kenneth F. Nelson was a American record producer and A & R man for Capitol Records.-Early life:Born in Caledonia, Minnesota, at the age of 14, Nelson made his radio single debut as a singer in 1925...

 made me record this song. I put it out and it was a big, big hit. Then I got to liking it."

The song idea came to Joe Allison

Joe Allison

Joe Marion Allison was an American Hall of Fame songwriter, a radio and television personality, a record producer, and a country music business executive....

 while watching a gangster movie starring a young John Derek

John Derek

John Derek was an American actor, director and photographer.-Career:His matinee-idol good looks quickly got him supporting roles, most notably as Broderick Crawford's son in All the King's Men , but he also enjoyed leads such as "Nick Romano" in Knock on Any Door opposite Humphrey Bogart John...

. Allison explained, "All through this picture he said, 'I want to die young and leave a good-looking corpse.' It struck me as a good idea for a song, so I wrote 'Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young.' I didn't write it for anybody, but when Ken Nelson heard it, he said, 'We'll do that with Faron Young.'"

"Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story" is the 2007 biography written by Diane Diekman and published by the University of Illinois Press. http://dianediekman.com/?page_id=27