The phrase "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" became reality for
many rock stars.
From overdoses to suicide to horrible accidents, the following rock stars died tragic deaths.
On the morning of February 3, 1959, early rock 'n' roll icons Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens,
and J.P. Richardson, known as "The Big Bopper," died in a plane crash while touring together
through the Midwest.
The event became known as "The Day the Music Died" and saw the first premature deaths of
young and popular musicians in the early history of the genre.
The crash also had a large impact on one of their contemporaries, according to Magic.
Eddie Cochran was a part of the first wave of rock 'n' roll stars, along with the three
musicians who passed.
His songs "Summertime Blues" and "Twenty Flight Rock" became early classics in the genre and
very popular among his teenage fan base.
His appearance in films such as The Girl Can't Help It and Go Johnny Go helped his popularity
grow.
But according to John Collis' biography, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, after the deaths
of Holly, Valens, and Richardson, Cochran became obsessed with his own death, believing
it was around the corner.
While touring in the United Kingdom in 1960 with fellow musician Gene Vincent, Cochran's
premonition came true.
Following a performance on Saturday, April 16, Vincent, Cochran, and others were involved
in a single-car accident.
Cochran died the next day, Easter Sunday, at the age of 21.
He was the only one killed in the crash.
Third time's the charm, they say.
Released in 1971, the Allman Brothers Band's third album At Fillmore East launched them
to superstardom after their first two albums failed commercially.
The live album is hailed as a masterpiece today, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 49 on their
"500 Greatest Albums of All Time."
The band's strength and leader was their guitarist, Duane Allman.
Allman had spent the mid- to late 1960s as a must-have studio guitarist, working with
artists such as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and fellow guitar god Eric Clapton.
Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top said this of Allman's guitar playing to Rolling Stone:
"Duane began doing things no one had ever done before...He was just a stunning and singular
musician who was gone way too soon."
On October 29, 1971, Allman was driving his motorcycle through Macon, Georgia, when he
hit a stopped truck.
His bike jumped in the air and landed on him, causing internal injuries.
Though still conscious when he was taken to the hospital, the guitarist died hours later.
The band continued without their leader, but tragedy struck again just a year later.
On November 11, 1972, bassist Berry Oakley hit a bus while driving his own motorcycle
and died from cerebral swelling.
The accident took place a few blocks from Allman's fatal crash.
Both men were 24 and are buried next to each other at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, WGXA
reports.
"Mama" Cass Elliot's weight has followed her throughout her life and death.
As a part of the folk-pop group the Mamas and the Papas, Elliot became a household name.
However, John Phillips initially didn't want to put her in the band because of her weight,
a fact that came to light in Elliot's biography, Dream a Little Dream of Me.
After the Mamas and the Papas ended, Elliot still maintained a steady career in music
and television.
On July 29, 1974, she passed away from a heart attack in London, England, at 32 years old.
Even in death, Elliot's weight was still the story, a vicious, completely fabricated rumor
spread that she died choking on a ham sandwich.
Many publications, such as Time, ran with the now-debunked ham sandwich story.
According to The Guardian, Elliot's daughter, Owen, who was seven at the time of her mother's
death, angrily called the rumor, quote, "one last slap at the fat lady."
At the time of her death, Cass was staying in a flat owned by singer Harry Nilsson that
he loaned to her for her shows in England.
The flat would become infamous for another death four years later.
No rock musician lived life to the fullest more so than Keith Moon.
His chaotic drumming made him a legend, placing him second on Rolling Stone's list of the
100 Greatest Drummers, and was the driving force behind one of the greatest bands of
the era, The Who.
Bandmate Roger Daltrey told GQ that Moon, quote, "lived his entire life as a fantasy."
Moon helped create many of the stereotypes that still exist today in rock 'n' roll, like
smashing hotel rooms and his own instrument, outrageous spending, and frequent alcohol
and drug use that usually landed him in trouble.
"So when people say Keith, have you ever smashed up a hotel room, yes, well, three, in on fell
swoop!"
On January 4, 1970, Moon and his entourage left a pub mobbed with skinheads that were
harassing him.
While trying to escape, Moon took the wheel of the car and accidentally ran over his friend,
killing him.
The judge cleared Moon of the three charges he pleaded guilty to, drunk driving, driving
without a license, and driving without insurance, because of the circumstances at the pub.
However, his friend Larry Smith recounted to VH1's Behind the Music that the moment
had an effect on the drummer that he never fully recovered from.
Smith said that Moon was "shell-shocked."
Moon's demise came eight years later on September 7th, 1978.
He was pronounced dead at the age of 32 from an overdose of Heminevrin.
He died at the same age and in the same room where Mama Cass died four years prior.
It is understandable to forget about a band's frontman when the lineup also features the
likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.
That's what has happened to Keith Relf of the Yardbirds.
When American blues music hit England in the late 1950s and early 1960s, bands like the
Rolling Stones, who were named after a popular Muddy Waters song, according to Biography,
and the Yardbirds formed with the desire to put their own touch on the music they loved.
For Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists, frontman Steven Tyler of
Aerosmith described the difference between Relf and the more popular frontman for the
Stones, Mick Jagger:
"He was a white boy who pushed it to the max.
And he was a great harmonica player.
You never heard Jagger hanging out on a single note the way Keith Relf could."
After the Yardbirds fell apart in 1968, Relf continued his music career with various bands
while his more well-known bandmates achieved greater commercial and critical success throughout
the 1970s.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, on May 14, 1976, while playing an electric guitar
in his basement, Relf accidentally electrocuted himself, ending his life.
He was 33 years old.
When Paul Butterfield was only a teenager, he was already being tutored and performing
with blues legend Muddy Waters in Chicago.
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band helped popularize blues music, a predominately African-American
genre, to a white audience.
Living in Chicago, Butterfield was at the epicenter for the blues, as artists such as
Waters, Willie Dixon, and Little Walter lived and performed on Chicago's South Side.
The rhythm section for his band, Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold, were hired from blues legend
Howlin' Wolf.
Butterfield's aggressive blues harmonica playing led his bandmate and friend Michael Bloomfield
to call him, quote, "the finest blues harmonica player in the world" at the Newport Folk Festival.
"If he was green, it wouldn't make any difference.
If he was a planaria, a tuna fish sandwich, Butterfield would be into the Blues."
Amid the backdrop of the early and mid-1960s, Butterfield would defend his racially integrated
band and often get into confrontations with racist concertgoers, according to guitarist
Paul Feiten in the Horn From the Heart documentary.
Butterfield was a living legend during his time.
Author and journalist Greil Marcus said that during Woodstock, he saw other musicians from
The Band and Blood, Sweat, and Tears act, quote, "deferential" toward Butterfield.
By the mid-1980s, Butterfield had reportedly developed a heroin addiction which had put
a financial strain on him, and he'd been hurt by the recent loss of many of his close friends
like Bloomfield, Waters, and his manager Albert Grossman.
On May 4, 1987, Butterfield died of a drug overdose at the age of 44.
From Oasis' Liam and Noel Gallagher to the Kinks' Ray and Dave Davies to the Jackson
5's Michael and Jermaine Jackson, sibling rivalries are not uncommon in music.
"Yes, there's always rivalry, especially between people who are related, but that sometimes
helps music."
However, few were as tumultuous and tragic as Creedence Clearwater Revival's feud between
their two guitarists, John and Tom Fogerty.
Despite being the younger sibling, John became the band's driving force, taking over all
the singing and songwriting duties previously held by his brother.
Tom did not enjoy losing control of his band to John, but John's control of the band drove
it to superstardom in the late 1960s.
After the 1970 album Pendulum, Tom left the band.
Two years later, CCR dissolved from more internal conflict between John and the two remaining
members.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, court documents show that John became entangled in a series
of contemptuous legal fights with the head of Fantasy Records, Saul Zaentz.
In these fights, Tom was firmly in Zaentz's camp.
John described Tom as having, quote, "some sort of weird Patty Hearst syndrome."
During the 1980s, Tom was sadly infected with HIV from a blood transfusion.
Even with death coming around, the brothers stayed at odds.
Tom died of tuberculosis on September 6, 1990, at the age of 48.
Most people first heard Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar on the hit David Bowie song "Let's
Dance."
Bowie described his reaction to first hearing Vaughan in an interview with MTV in 1983:
"This little kid from Austin, Texas, just played some of the most devastating city rhythm
and blues I've heard in years."
BB King described Vaughan's guitar playing to the Media America Radio Network as "fluent"
and said:
"He could get something going...and it would go on and on and ideas continuously flowed."
Vaughan was a music legend to other legends.
Throughout the 1980s, he released four studio albums with his band Double Trouble.
His guitar abilities placed him No. 12 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists,
and Vaughan is credited for helping to re-popularize blues music during the decade.
Unfortunately, during the early morning of August 27, 1990, his career came to an abrupt
end.
According to Guitar World, Double Trouble had played two shows with Eric Clapton, Buddy
Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie's older brother Jimmie Vaughan in East Troy, Wisconsin.
Stevie Ray then boarded a helicopter to fly back to Chicago, but it crashed, killing all
four passengers as well as the pilot.
He was 35 years old.
One month later, Vaughan's last album of original material, Family Style, was released, as a
duet album with his brother.
Though mostly known in the United States for a single song, Kirsty MacColl was regarded
as one of the finest artists of her generation in the United Kingdom.
The BBC reported that U2 frontman Bono called MacColl, quote, "the Noel Coward of her generation."
Johnny Marr of the Smiths said she had, quote, "the wit of Ray Davies and the harmonic invention
of the Beach Boys."
Her duet with the Pogues, "Fairytale of New York" has become a modern-day holiday season
classic.
Jem Finer, songwriter and banjoist of the Pogues, told The Guardian that he questioned
whether MacColl could handle her side of the duet, but lead singer Shane McGowan had been
a fan of her of music and said:
"She could make a song her own and she made 'Fairytale' her own."
On December 18, 2000, the 41-year-old singer and her two sons were swimming in Cozumel,
Mexico, when a speedboat illegally entered the area they were in.
She moved one of her sons out of the way of the boat but was struck and killed instantly.
Kirsty's mother Jean MacColl launched a one woman crusade for justice, believing that
the Mexican government hadn't been forthcoming throughout the investigation.
The boat was owned by businessman Carlos Gonzalez Nova, who was on the boat.
Deckhand José Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide, although according to Kirsty's
biography, written by her mother, Yam's wife and father-in-law both said he was not actually
the driver.
December 8 is a somber day in music history.
The night of December 8, 1980, former Beatles guitarist and songwriter John Lennon was shot
in the back by a crazed former fan, Mark David Chapman, while walking into his New York City
apartment building.
Twenty-four years later, another legendary guitar player would be murdered on the same
day.
While performing with his new band Damageplan, Darrell Abbott, known as "Dimebag" Darrell,
was shot during his band's set.
He was 38.
In 1981, Darrell helped form the heavy metal band Pantera, and his guitar riffs helped
drive the band to success until they split in 2003.
Pantera reshaped the metal genre over their two-decade run.
Pantera's drummer, Darrell's older brother Vinnie Paul Abbott, said of the band in an
interview with Rolling Stone in 1992:
"We pulled the very best out of each one of ourselves, and with each record that we made,
that mountain got taller and taller to climb."
The gunman, Nathan Gale, also took the lives of three other people: club employee Erin
A. Halk, fan Nathan Bray, and Damageplan crew member Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson.
Gale was killed by Columbus police officers minutes after the shooting.
Rolling Stone reports that another fan saw Gale waiting in the parking lot prior to the
show and asked him if he wanted to come inside to stay warm.
He responded that he was, quote, "gonna wait for Damageplan."
In the documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, musician Taj Mahal
said of The Band,
"If there were any American musicians that were comparable to what the Beatles were,
it would have been them."
The Band featured (among others) drummer Levon Helm, bassist Rick Danko, and de-facto lead
vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Richard Manuel, known for having a very soulful voice
and the ability to sing in falsetto.
Despite his immense talent, though, Manuel struggled throughout his life with alcohol
and drug addiction.
In 1977, the group split up but reformed six years later without guitarist and lead songwriter
Robbie Robertson.
On the early morning of March 4, 1986, following a show in Winter Park, Florida, Manuel took
his own life; he was 42 years old.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.