Being a rockstar can be as dangerous as it is glamorous, and no one knows that better
than these music icons.
From heartbreaking addiction spirals to terrifying road accidents, these are the rockstars who
have come closest to giving up the ghost.
Sleaze metal champions Mötley Crüe were near the height of their popularity in 1987.
The group had just released their fourth album, Girls, Girls, Girls, to multiplatinum success,
and had embarked on an equally successful and completely debauched world tour in support
of the album's release.
Of course, things behind the scenes were a little less glamorous than those corny '80s
hair metal videos would have you believe.
Nikki Sixx, the Crüe's founder, bassist, and chief songwriter, was battling a vicious
heroin addiction at the time, which he detailed in his 2007 book The Heroin Diaries: A Year
in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star.
But one incident stands out in particular, and has gone on to become one of the most
notable stories in rock history.
In December of that year, while partying with Guns N' Roses' Slash and Steven Adler in Los
Angeles, Sixx overdosed on heroin and briefly died, before being revived in the ambulance.
The experience with twin lifesaving adrenaline needles inspired him to write one of the group's
biggest hits, 1989's "Kickstart My Heart."
As if Blink-182's ongoing "indefinite hiatus" hadn't made 2008 bad enough for Travis Barker,
the legendary drummer nearly died when the Learjet 60 business jet he was traveling on
crashed and burned following a failed aborted takeoff.
After bursting out its tires, the plane ran past the runway, smashed through a boundary
fence, crossed a highway, and then burst into flames on an embankment.
Four of the six people on board, including the pilot, died on the scene, and fellow passenger
DJ AM died of an overdose the following year.
Only Barker himself lives to tell the tale.
Barker discussed the immediate aftermath of the crash on The Joe Rogan Experience in early
2019
"I was in such a hurry to get out of the plane, and exit the plane, I jumped right into the
jet, which is full of fuel.
So my whole body lit up."
To this day, Barker won't go near an airplane, choosing to stay home if Blink-182 are heading
to a place he can't access by boat.
Honestly, it's hard to blame him.
It's hard to be much more self-destructive than the members of Guns N' Roses were at
the height of their popularity in the early '90s.
And top-hatted guitar hero Slash is arguably the most infamous addict in a band consisting
almost entirely of infamous addicts, any one of whom could have easily died during their
heyday.
Just ask bassist Duff McKagan, whose pancreas exploded due to alcohol abuse, or drummer
Steven Adler, whose addictions nearly killed him with a stroke.
While touring in support of the Use Your Illusion double albums, Slash bought every bit of a
dealer's stash of heroin and retired to shoot it all up in his San Francisco hotel room.
Speaking to The Guardian, Slash later recalled:
"I started down the hallway and I ran into a maid, and I asked where the elevator was
and then bam!
I collapsed."
Slash flatlined and, luckily, was able to be revived by paramedics.
What happened next probably isn't all that surprising.
As Slash explains:
"They took me to the hospital but I said, 'I'm fine', signed myself out, went back to
the hotel and we flew to the next gig."
Rock stars encounter plenty of dangers during their lives, but routine knee surgery doesn't
usually make the list.
But Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme put it simply to NME:
"I had surgery on my leg and there were complications and I died on the table.
I was in bed for three months."
Speaking to Rolling Stone, he went into even further detail:
"I was stuck in a room for four months and I had all these tubes in my leg.
And it was painful."
But being cleared by doctors and discharged wasn't the end of the ordeal.
Homme still thinks the greatest challenge was the psychological damage he endured in
the aftermath of his surgery.
In his own words:
"The physical scars heal quick.
It's the mental ones that are tougher."
However, Homme has since cited the ordeal as an experience that "zeroed" him, saying:
"And I'm really thankful for it because I know what's important."
Often, bad overdoses can act as wake-up calls to addicts, and that's exactly what happened
to Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who OD'd on heroin in 2001, and was left in a
two-week coma that nearly ended the band.
Speaking to NME, Hawkins said:
"There was a year where the partying just got a little too heavy.
Thank God on some level this guy gave me the wrong line with the wrong thing one night
and I woke up going, 'What the f--- happened?'
That was a real changing point for me."
After his overdose, frontman Dave Grohl briefly played with Queens of the Stone Age, something
Hawkins mistook as a sign he had ruined the band.
He explained:
"It really looked like the end."
Thankfully, that wasn't the case.
Hawkins and Grohl remain as close as ever, the band continues to play, and Hawkins himself
has been clean for years.
Metallica's Wherever We May Roam tour comfortably overlapped with Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion
tour, so the two titans decided to join forces for a handful of appearances at a number of
American stadiums.
Unfortunately, the tour is now widely seen as a catastrophe, largely due to the excesses
and chronic tardiness of GNR's Axl Rose.
The troubles came to a head on August 8th 1992, when Metallica frontman James Hetfield,
confused about the stage layout, wandered right into a pyrotechnic blast during "Fade
to Black" and was left with severe burns.
"The pyro guy doesn't see me, that I walked back out there.
Big colored flame goes right up under me."
The band cut the set short as James was rushed to the hospital.
But the story gets even crazier.
Tour promoters frantically called Guns' management, who agreed to start their set early to appease
a disappointed crowd.
However, citing a failure to properly switch over the sound settings, Rose cut the set
early, and caused a massive riot.
As Hetfield later said:
"I go and light myself on fire, and he upstages me."
Texas groove titans Pantera may have almost single-handedly kept metal alive in the 90's,
but it came at the cost of some members' own well-being.
To this day, fans remain heartbroken over "Dimebag" Daryl Abbot's onstage killing in
2004, and his brother Vinnie Paul's death from heart disease in 2018.
But although many are aware that frontman Phil Anselmo battled heroin addiction in the
latter half of the band's heyday, not everyone knows that he briefly died of an overdose.
After a show in Dallas in 1996, Anselmo shot up, as was his routine, and promptly slipped
into cardiac arrest for four to five minutes.
He summarized the events in a press conference a few days after being discharged.
The star said:
"I, Philip H. Anselmo...injected a lethal dose of heroin into my arm, and died for four
to five minutes."
Anselmo later told Andivero:
"Make no mistake.
I have died before, there's no faking death."
Interestingly, Anselmo's back problems were the cause of both his addiction and his recovery.
When he finally found time to undergo surgery in 2005, he had to kick the habit before going
under.
It wasn't easy, but it was worth it: He's been sober ever since.
Of all the narcotic, hedonistic ways the Prince of Darkness has flirted with death over the
years, it's hard to believe a simple ATV accident came just about as close as anything else
to doing him in.
Ozzy Osbourne, who was 55 at the time of the December 2003 incident, decided to head out
on a joyride across his estate outside London.
It didn't go so well.
Osbourne crashed the vehicle, was rushed to the emergency room, and underwent extensive
surgery to treat a myriad of injuries.
His son, Jack, summarized them to reporters:
"A broken collarbone, eight fractured ribs that were pinching crucial blood vessels,
and a damaged vertebrae in his neck."
British pop metal pioneers Def Leppard are known as much for their one-armed drummer
as they are for their decade-defining hit songs.
But just how did Rick Allen lose his arm?
On New Year's Eve 1984, Allen was driving his girlfriend around the outskirts of his
native Sheffield when he lost control of his Corvette.
The car then smashed into a field and launched Allen from the driver's seat, severing his
left arm and leaving his girlfriend with severe whiplash and a handful of broken bones.
Doctors did manage to reattach the arm, but an infection forced them to amputate it for
good.
But the story of how Allen overcame his condition is even more remarkable than the incident
itself.
"When I finally came round after my accident, I was saying to everybody, 'It's okay, you
know, things will be fine, don't worry about it.'"
Unwilling to consider retiring from one of music's then-biggest acts, Allen built a drum
set in which parts normally played by the left arm would be played by the left foot.
"He'd been practicing on the edge of the bed, with a pillow, and he said, 'Right, well,
I've lost me left arm, so I'm gonna use me left foot.'"
Allen went on to master the custom-built kit in time for the band's 1987 titanic, hit single-packed
album, Hysteria, and the rest is history.
Rock fans might remember Creed vocalist Scott Stapp's bizarre 2014 mental breakdown, in
which he filmed himself in his truck hiding out from unspecified predators.
It later came out that Stapp was enduring frightening hallucinations brought on by methamphetamine
psychosis.
Luckily, he got help and has been clean and sober ever since.
But that was far from the first time he had experienced a near brush with death.
In a 2012 GQ interview, rapper T.I. recalled hearing pained moaning coming from a hotel
balcony above him.
He saw a wounded man attempting to continue his jump after the sixth floor broke his attempted
14-story drop.
The man, who T.I. later realized was Creed's Scott Stapp, was spinning an intoxicated tale
about how his girlfriend was cheating on him with his best friend.
The rapper ultimately coaxed him down by offering him a joint, in exchange for letting him call
the authorities.
Longtime Poison frontman Bret Michaels apparently never noticed when his band's heyday faded
away, because his hard partying continued well into the '90s.
Sadly, it all came to a head in 1994, when he wrapped his Ferrari around a telephone
pole and nearly died as a result.
He wound up with several broken bones, including his jaw, his nose, several fingers, and a
few ribs.
In an interview with Houston Press, the "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" singer claimed he was
heading to an after-party after a rager with actor Chris Penn when the accident occurred.
He said:
"I was just hauling ass and lost control of the car.
That's pretty much it.
And, just, thank God that I didn't hurt anyone but myself."
Korn frontman Jonathan Davis has endured several health scares over the course of his life,
and they started at a young age, too.
As a kid, Davis suffered from severe asthma that landed him in the emergency room on a
number of occasions.
In a 2004 interview with Livewire, after stating that his upbringing had been pretty terrible,
he was asked if there had been any good parts.
Davis responded:
"Um, just staying alive.
I was really sick as a kid.
I almost died, I don't know how many times!
I was in and out of the hospital so many times with really bad asthma."
Years later, Davis found himself back in the hospital.
He later explained:
"I started getting these weird bruises all over my body about two weeks ago.
I was getting very weak after the shows so I saw a doctor in London Friday.
He took some blood tests and when the results came in, they rushed me to the hospital."
Davis, it turned out, was suffering from immune thrombocytopenic purpura.
In his own words, ITP is:
"A blood infection where, because of an allergic reaction I had to some medication, my blood
platelets were really low...If I continued to headbang onstage, I could have had a brain
hemorrhage and dropped dead on the spot."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).