Level 42 lost founding members Phil and Boon Gould (to exhaustion, not death) and replaced them with Gary Husband and Alan Murphy, respectively. Alan Murphy sadly died of AIDS in 1989 - you could also count him as a member of Go West and Kate Bush’s band.
The Waitresses’ Patty Donahue died of lung cancer.
Jeff Porcaro, drummer for Toto and session drummer extraordinaire, died from an allergic reaction to a pesticide he used in his garden.
The Cars’ Benjamin Orr died of pancreatic cancer.
Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters died of anorexia (technically heart failure brought on by it).
The Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb died from a twisted intestine (sounds horribly painful, doesn’t it?).
Ricky Wilson of the B-52’s died from AIDS. The band’s drummer, Keith Strickland, became the guitarist after his death.
Bob Marley… of Bob Marley and The Wailers fame, died of cancer that originated in his big toe from a football injury. As a Rastafarian he refused to have the toe amputated, and the cancer metastasized to affect the rest of his body. Some suggest that the amputation of the toe would have likely ended the cancer’s spread.
Do Spinal Tap’s drummers count? Gardening accident, choking on (someone else’s?) vomit, spontaneous combustion, onstage explosion, eaten by pet python. There’s one who sold his dialysis machine for drugs and is presumed dead of one thing or another (you could make a case for failed kidneys or drugs), then a couple of unknown fate, and 14 dead who don’t have cause of death recorded for us.
Extending things a bit, Peter Tosh and Carlton Barrett were both murdered. Given that reggae musicians are mostly known for their weed use I don’t think you’ll find a whole lot of drug overdoses in the genre.
Martin Lamble, the original drummer, died when the group’s van was wrecked. Most, if not all, of the other band members were in the van, and Richard Thompson’s girlfriend was also killed. Lamble is, to the best of my knowledge, the only person who was actually in the band at the time of his death.
Sandy Denny died from a cerebral hemorrage after falling down stairs. She was abusing alcohol heavily at the time, and that may have been a factor, but it’s not what killed her.
Trevor Lucas, who had been married to Denny, died of a heart attack some years later. He was a member of Fairport for a short time.
Dave Swarbrick didn’t die, but came mighty close, after years of smoking like a steel mill. He was saved, for the time being at least, by a double lung transplant.
LeRoi Moore, saxaphonist of Dave Matthews Band, died last summer from complications (blood clot) following an ATV accident in which he suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung.
You weren’t thinking of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash? Two band members died and the others were injured. Allen Collins survived but later died. He was paralyzed in a car accident he caused by driving drunk. Seven years later he died of pneumonia. I think it was complicated by his condition so you could make a case that it was directly related to his alcohol abuse.
Why the hell I remember this, I have no idea, but one of the Loverboy guys fell off a boat in the ocean somewhere and drowned. I could go to Wikipedia to provide his name and the date of his passing, but I’m not.
Goddamn it, I’m never reading the dope again, in the last 2 days I find out MCA has cancer, Futurama is going to have new voice actors and now I find out Ron Asheton died. You guys are just full of wonderful news.
Anyways, I recently re-read Please Kill Me and I’m pretty sure Asheton says he died of pneumonia, I’ll have to double check that part again.
Gardening accident, choking on (someone else’s?) vomit, spontaneous combustion, onstage explosion, eaten by pet python. There’s one who sold his dialysis machine for drugs and is presumed dead of one thing or another (you could make a case for failed kidneys or drugs), then a couple of unknown fate, and 14 dead who don’t have cause of death recorded for us.