Sorry about that.
And while we’re at it, Ricky Nelson’s “freebasing while flying” death is also believed to be an urban legend.
Watching VH1’s Behind the Music is like a cavalcade of the dead sometimes, every other show features a musician who dies before his time. The band Badfinger alone had TWO suicides.
Randy Rhodes (Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist) - plane crash
Cliff Burton (Metallica bass player) - bus crash
Layne Staley (Alice in Chains) - drugs, possibly suicide
Does cancer count as a rock & roll death? I don’t think it should…
OOF… a one-two punch of ignorance eradication. In my defense, I did know that the Cass Elliot/ ham sandwitch story was false.
Why? Who were you thinking of?
I used to work in a lab at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and I remember talking with an MD there (oncologist) about Bob Marley’s death. I speculated whether heavy marijuana smoking was a possible contributor to his cancer and the Doc didn’t think it necessarily was. At that time (around 1988) there was little evidence that pot smoking was the type of causative that tobacco smoking is, according to him.
Randy’s death should be noted as unique in that he wasn’t actually ON the plane when it crashed, he was inside the tour bus when the plane crashed into it.
Chris W
We are almost at the point where rock stars might die simply of old age. Chuck Berry is already 74 or 75…and Little Richard just turned 70 (I think he still has quite a few years left though).
Two guys on the Diner soundtrack:
Bobby Darin / 37 / multiple causes:
Bobby lived a life wracked with medical problems. Multiple bouts of Rheumatic Fever as a child left him with a damaged heart, which contributed to his death, but was not the ultimate cause. As innocuous as it may sound, a visit to the dentist in 1973 left him with a case of Septicemia that was not diagnosed until far too late. By then, he was comatose and heart valves that had been replaced in 1971 were seriously damaged. Bobby Darin passed away following surgery to repair that valve damage on December 20, 1973.
Tommy Edwards (“all in the game”) / 47 / aneurysm
October 23, 1969, Tommy Edwards died in the town where he was born, Richmond, Va.
D’oh… left out credit for online sources for my post above:
and I’ll add from my memory:
Minnie Ripperton / 32 / breast cancer
Patty Donahue (The Waitresses) / 40 / lung cancer
Dee Dee Ramone died of a drug overdose about 2 weeks ago.
A few others that haven’t been mentioned:
Darby Crash (Germs) drug OD
Will Shatter (Flipper) drug OD
The guitarist who died by being electricuted played for “Stone The Crows” back in the early 1970’s. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones got a jolt once (there is a photo of Keith laying on the stage).
Tim Hardin (sadly missed) Drugs overdose, his last album had no songs written by him, which is a sigh of how far this singer/songwriter had fallen, but his rendition of James Taylors ‘Fire and rain’ was disquietlingly prophetic, it was only a matter of time for him.
Ian Dury - Cancer, he had been injured by polio but never let it get in his way, to my mind he was an example of willpower overcoming personal adversity.
Billy Fury - Started out in a Rockabilly kind of style but it varied rather a lot. As a baby he was hit by rhuematic fever and this weakened his heart. He would have been a massive hit, especially in the US, but his heqalth was not up to the rigours of touring, eventually his heart failed he made it to 43.
Dusty Springfield, this was too sad, she had been making a comeback of sorts as a Grand Dame of music but was taken by breast cancer.
Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention and Fotheringay - also did some work with Led Zeppelin) Fell downstairs and died of a brain haemorrhage. Actually two other members of Fairport Convention died in a car crash and several others in the band were seriously injured, and along with the death of Sandy’s partner Trevor Lucas some years later, it all goes to make the song ‘Meet on the ledge’, one of their numbers, a grimly appropriate piece, it sends a shiver down my spine when I hear it, no other song has ever been more chillingly evocative, except perhaps “Without You” as sung by the writing team of the group Badfinger and made much more famous by Nilsson.
Actually, thinking about Badfinger and Fairport Convention and their tragedies are a bit depressing they were part of the background to my life 
Just another exception: Frank Zappa-prostate cancer
Randy Rhoades DID die in a plane crash, but not a conventional one. Indeed, Rhoades was a prime candidate for a Darwin Award. Ozzy Osbourne was sleeping off a bender in the tour bus, and Randy thought it would be hilarious to take a single engine plane up, fly low and “buzz” the tour bus, giving the groggy Ozzy a huge scare. He DID give Oz a scare, and I hope it was worth it (the plane crashed, killing Rhoades, moments later).
Other musical deaths I haven’t seen previously:
Several rockers have hanged themselves, including Ian Curtis of Joy Division, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger, Richard Manuel of the Band
Nico of the Velvet Underground fractured her skull after falling off a bicycle.
Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys drowned in a boating accident, while his brother Carl died of cancer.
Stiv Bator was hit by a car, then got up, brushed himself off, and went home, thinking he was okay. A few hours later, he died in his sleep of internal hemorrhaging.
Tom Fogerty of CCR died of tuberculosis.
Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident.
Def Leppard’s guitarist Steve Clark died from a combination of booze and drugs.
Jackie Wilson had a heart attack on stage, which put him in a lengthy coma, and killed him several years later.
In the Small Faces, Steve Marriott died in a house fire, and bassist Ronnie Lane died from complications related to Multiple Sclerosis.
Falco- car crash.
David Goettel (Skinny Puppy)- suicide.
Then some guy from Ministry also killed himself a couple years back…
Hmm, Strainger’s link above indicates Tom Fogerty died of AIDS from a blood transfusion, which seems more likely, unless his immune system was so weakened that he got tuberculosis.
BTW, Stiv Bator was mentioned in the OP.
Jim Morrison – Heart Attack
I believe the actual cause of her death was cereberal hemmorhage due to said bicycle accident. Heat exhaustion was almost certainly a factor in the accident, as she was wearing several layers of warm clothing on a hot day. And, as with so many rock deaths, there may have been drugs involved as well.
OK, I’ve done some research on this one. Heart failure was apparently the official cause of death on the death certificate, but no autopsy was done, and the general consensus seems to be that Jim’s heavy drinking and heroin use at least contributed to his demise. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
I was going to say that it was unusual for a person without a history of heart disease to die suddenly of a heart attack at such a young age, but I just read about that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, and it seems that that is exactly what happened to him.
Well, Kile’s father died young of a heart attack, so it was probably genetic in his case. Unless the Lizard King’s father died early of one too, I’d go with the drug use theory.
Peter Tosh was murdered.