Last week “scientists” at Liverpool John Moores University stunned the world with the not-very-surprising news that rock stars are more likely to die young than ordinary people. Three times more likely, to be precise, in the first five years after initial chart success.
What the study didn’t touch on was the manner of those deaths. After all, rock history is littered with musicians who’ve met shocking and gruesome ends. Here’s our macabre Top 5.
Elliott Smith
With typical directness, Courtney Love called it "the best suicide I ever heard of" – and you can see her point. On 21 October 2003, the grunge era’s own Nick Drake plunged a kitchen knife into his heart after an argument with his girlfriend Jennifer Chiba. At least, that was her version of events. The coroner’s report noted the presence of "possible defensive wounds" on Smith’s hands and concluded, "this death is possibly suspicious."
Dimebag Darrell
What took place on December 8, 2004 in Columbus, Ohio wasn’t just a murder, it was a massacre: in addition to shooting Damageplan guitarist Darrell five times in the head at point blank range, crazed fan Nathan Gale also shot six others, killing three, before being shot dead himself by a police officer.
Chillingly, just weeks before Darrell’s murder, an interview had appeared in Metal Hammer magazine in which former Pantera bandmate Phil Anselmo threatened: “I could kill [Darrell] like a fuckin' piece of vapor. The world should know that. He deserves to be beaten severely.”
Tammi Terrell
Terrell rose to fame on the strength of her powerhouse duets with Marvin Gaye - and it’s often claimed that she died onstage after collapsing in his arms in October 1967. In fact, that collapse was only the first outward sign of Terrell’s brain tumour. She actually died five months later, age 24.
The other popular misconception is that Terrell’s condition was the result of physical abuse by her lover, Temptations singer David Ruffin. Quite apart from there being no proof that he beat her, brain tumours cannot be caused by physical impact.
Mark Evans
As drummer with screeching 90s hard rockers Warrior Soul, Evans struggled to make a mark on the world. Tragically, his grisly death generated rather more headlines than his music ever did. In January 2005 the 48-year-old’s burnt body was discovered in a wheelie bin in an east London car park. He’d been strangled and set alight by two men and one woman, who were later caught and charged with his murder.
Mama Cass
You can blame the first Austin Powers movie for popularizing the urban myth that Mamas & The Papas singer “Mama” Cass Eliot choked to death on a ham sandwich. In reality, although a ham sandwich was found by her side when she died on 29 July 1974, it was untouched. However, over-eating undoubtedly played a part in Eliot’s demise: the official finding of the coroner’s report was “fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity.”
3:07 PM | 13/09/2007
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