Everyone knows that rock stars tend to have reputations for living life on the edge and
sadly, over the years, many famous musicians died tragically young.
Some, however, have died…and come back.
These are the musicians who died and were brought back to life.
Queens of the Stone Age are one of the world's most successful post-grunge rock bands, having
sold millions of albums and earned several Grammy nominations.
Their breakthrough came with their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf and the global hit song
"No One Knows," which remains their only chart-topping single.
Josh Homme founded the band in 1996, and has been the only consistent member ever since.
And with that sort of classic rock star story, you might assume Homme's downfall came as
part of the rock and roll lifestyle but the truth is far more mundane.
In fact, Homme suffered a surprisingly common affliction for musicians: Knee problems.
In 2010, the singer went into the hospital to have what should have been routine surgery
on his knee.
During the operation, however, Homme experienced complications with the anesthesia and choked
on the oxygen tubes that had been placed down his throat.
He flatlined on the table and was officially dead for a few minutes before his doctors
revived him.
Homme then had to deal with a MRSA infection, which is often so difficult to treat because
MRSA is resistant to antibiotics.
Understandably, the experience made Homme reflect on his life.
As he told the BBC:
"It gave me great perspective, and it's amazing to be alive."
Yeah, you probably saw this one coming.
Few musicians have embodied the rock star lifestyle quite like Ozzy Osbourne, from his
superhuman consumption of illicit substances to his downright insane onstage antics.
"I think I'm invincible when I get loaded.
Whatever I do is okay, because I'm me."
But Ozzy's brush with death didn't actually have anything to do with the rock star life.
In 2003, Ozzy was riding his all-terrain quad bike around his estate in Buckinghamshire,
England, when he hit a pothole and lost control.
He was thrown from the bike and the bike landed on top of him.
He fractured eight ribs and a vertebra in his neck, and even stopped breathing, losing
his pulse for a minute and a half meaning he was technically dead.
His wife, Sharon, told reporters that a quick-acting security guard leapt into action and resuscitated
Osbourne, bringing him back to life so he could be taken to the hospital for emergency
surgery.
For more than a decade, Osbourne lived with metal rods in his back as a result of the
accident...until a fall in his home dislodged some of them, requiring yet another round
of surgery.
Slash embodies the classic rock 'n' roll image.
With his trademark top hat, dark glasses, and low-slung Gibson Les Paul guitar, he's
instantly recognizable as the lead guitarist for Guns N' Roses, a band with quite the reputation
for their own uniquely rock 'n' roll lifestyle choices.
So it's probably not too surprising that Slash is one of the musicians who has died and come
back to life or that his near-death experience involved a drug overdose.
Usually, Slash is pretty nonchalant about his experience.
According to his own account, he called up some drug dealers in San Francisco, while
on tour with Guns N' Roses.
Slash told The Guardian:
"They had everything and I took all of it."
He then started walking to the elevators and collapsed, luckily in the presence of a cleaner.
Slash's heart stopped for eight long minutes as he lay on the floor of the hotel hallway.
Paramedics arrived and injected adrenaline into his chest, and he was eventually revived.
It took a few more years, but Slash finally got the message after he was diagnosed with
heart disease at the age of 35 in 2001.
He's been sober since 2005.
The fact that Nikki Sixx is still going these days is something of a miracle.
Now sober for nearly two decades, the Mötley Crüe bassist once said:
"Alcohol, acid, cocaine...they were just affairs.
When I met heroin, it was true love."
And these addictions very nearly killed him.
In 1987, Mötley Crüe were riding high.
They'd just released their second multi-platinum album in a row, Girls, Girls, Girls, solidifying
their status as one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
So Sixx celebrated this success by overdosing on heroin so badly that his heart stopped
for two whole minutes.
An ambulance came, and not one but two adrenaline shots were required to literally kick-start
his heart and bring him back to life.
"Was that the end of your drug use?"
"I mean, that was the beginning of the end.
It takes a while, and addiction's a really hard thing to kick."
The incident inspired his song "Kickstart My Heart" on the band's 1989 album Dr. Feelgood.
Interestingly, Steven Adler, the drummer for Guns N' Roses, was with Sixx that day and
disputes the story.
Adler claims that he revived Sixx after his overdose by dragging him into a cold shower
and that no adrenaline was necessary.
Whichever version of the story is true, one thing is certain: Sixx is lucky to be alive.
Most people who briefly died and came back were adults but not all.
For example, James Brown came back from the dead before he was even ten minutes old.
Brown was born into an extremely poor family.
When the time came for the delivery, there was no hospital or doctor.
Instead, Brown was born in a small shack in Barnwell, South Carolina, attended to by two
aunts acting as midwives.
At first, everyone thought Brown had emerged stillborn his heart wasn't beating, and he
wasn't breathing.
Brown's mother Susie began to weep, convinced that her son had lost his life in the womb.
But his quick-acting Aunt Minnie revived the baby with some CPR, and he soon took his first
breath.
Considering how hard he had to work just to exist, it's little surprise that Brown became
known as the hardest-working man in show business.
Brown loved to tell the story, too, believing that his miraculous comeback from death marked
him as special and really, who could argue with the Godfather of Soul?
Pantera are a legendary heavy metal band who dominated the music charts in the late 1980s
and early 1990s.
And songs like the all-time classic "Walk" made guitarist Dimebag Darrell and lead singer
Phil Anselmo legends in their own right.
But what fans didn't know as they were rocking out to the band's music is that Anselmo was
suffering from serious pain due to ruptured discs in his spine.
In fact, the first single from their album Far Beyond Driven, "I'm Broken," was about
Anselmo's excruciating pain and his struggles with the feelings of vulnerability and weakness
it inspired.
To help him perform, Anselmo would self-medicate with alcohol, painkillers, and eventually
heroin.
His heroin use led to an overdose while the band was on tour in 1996 Anselmo's heart stopped,
and he was clinically dead for about five minutes.
Amazingly, this wasn't the only time Anselmo has briefly died and come back.
As Anselmo once explained:
"As a guy who's croaked a few times, I'll let you know straight up, there wasn't much
there.
And if there was, it ain't memorable.
It was pretty peaceful from what I remember."
As the lead singer for Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan has achieved worldwide fame and success
and his deep baritone makes for one of the most recognizable voices in modern music.
Like many artists, however, Gahan struggled with fame.
He became addicted to heroin and suffered so many overdoses that reportedly, paramedics
began referring to him as "The Cat" due to his apparent nine lives.
But his true rock bottom came in 1996, when he overdosed yet again and briefly died.
When he regained consciousness, he asked the paramedics if he'd overdosed again and in
response they told him that he had actually been dead for a few minutes.
What probably saved his life was his arrest after the incident Gahan woke up handcuffed
to his bed, with police already there to read him his rights as they arrested him for drug
possession.
He was sent to a rehabilitation center; thanks in part to his fear of being sent to jail,
he stuck to the year-long program.
Gahan is currently clean and sober.
A legendary guitarist, songwriter, producer, and founder of Chic, Nile Rodgers has been
a force in music since the early 1970s.
Aside from his own success on the charts, he's worked with just about every major musician
of the last four decades.
But he also once had a serious substance abuse problem.
The last time Rodgers drank alcohol or took drugs was in the mid-1990s.
He attended a birthday party for Madonna and hung out with actor Robert Downey, Jr.
There, he indulged in cocaine and alcohol and allegedly died eight separate times.
In one night.
Apparently, at one point the doctors were filling out the paperwork to declare him dead
when he started breathing again.
Unsurprisingly, the incident scared Rodgers straight.
That night was the last time he took a drink or abused any sort of drug.
But it wasn't fear of death that did the trick it was listening to himself playing guitar
while under the influence.
Rodgers had thought his performance was incredible at the time, but hearing it back while sober
made him incredibly embarrassed.
He checked into rehab the next day, stayed there for eight months, and never looked back.
The lead singer of industrial band Ministry has never been known for his restraint in…well,
anything.
From his aggressive approach to music and live performances to his epic drug use, Al
Jourgensen has been one of the most unpredictable figures in rock music for decades.
All of this makes it surprising that, when Jourgensen flatlined in an emergency room
in 2010, it had nothing to do with drugs.
In fact, Jourgensen had been vomiting blood for some time but assumed it was nothing to
worry about and simply ignored the problem.
And until then, many fans thought his erratic onstage behavior was due to his alcoholism
and drug use, but in fact, it may have been caused by his gastrointestinal problems.
When Jourgensen collapsed and had a seizure, he was taken to the ICU, where he flatlined
several times and had to be shocked back to life.
Eventually, doctors found his stomach and intestines filled with ulcers 13 in all.
One of the ulcers in his stomach was located over an artery and had ruptured, briefly killing
him.
Understandably, the experience inspired Jourgensen to sober up and live a healthier lifestyle.
He managed to kick his drug habit on his own, but in 2014, he entered an alcohol treatment
program, admitting he needed a little help to dry out.
The Giraffes aren't the most famous rock band out there, but this cult group has been active
since 1996 and has a reputation for putting on electric, unpredictable live shows.
Lead singer Aaron Lazar joined the band in 2001.
Four years later, when he was 27 years old, Lazar was driving with his girlfriend one
night when he suddenly slumped over the wheel, losing consciousness.
When he regained consciousness, doctors told him that he'd died twice, his heart stopping
each time.
They eventually figured out that Lazar suffered from an event known as Sudden Cardiac Death,
which is responsible for half the heart disease deaths in the world.
It's not quite a heart attack the heart simply stops beating, and only five percent of people
survive.
Once they knew what they were dealing with, they implanted a defibrillator into Lazar.
If his heart stops beating, the device will automatically send an electrical charge into
the muscle to get it started again.
Lazar has maintained a good sense of humor about his health, once telling Hear Nebraska
he wasn't worried about dying onstage.
He said:
"If I'm gonna have a heart attack, I'm gonna have a heart attack.
I've had heart attacks watching television."
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