12 Rock Stars Who Shockingly Died At The Top Of Their Game
On October 21, 1995, Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon consumed too much cocaine on his tour bus in New Orleans and died. Shannon Hoon was 28 when he OD’d, just missing the infamous 27 Club.
As one of mainstream rock’s most omnipresent faces and voices at the exact moment of his demise, Shannon Hoon was not just another fatal casualty of show biz excess.The “No Rain” singer also joined another horrible club that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain had even more notoriously stormed the previous year: rock stars who die at the very top of their game, creatively and/or commercially.
What follows are a dozen rockers who were done too soon—just as we among the living had come to fully embrace them.
Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon
Died: October 21, 1995
Age: 28
Blind Melon frontman first caught big-time attention by way of his 1991 duet with his pal and fellow Indiana Hoosier Axl Rose on “Don’t Cry,” the lead single from Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion double-dip album extravaganza.
Blind Melon’s self-titled debut hit huge two years later due to the smash success of the single “No Rain” and its music video that featured a chubby kid tap dancer dressed as a bug who would forever after be known as “Bee Girl.”
Just two months after the release of Soup, Blind Melon’s follow-up LP, Hoon fatally succumbed to an overdose of cocaine, forever damning himself and the band to one-hit-wonder status.
Bobby Fuller
Died: July 18, 1966
Age: 23
Rocking in the face of pop music’s British Invasion and folk singer onslaught, the Texas-spawned Bobby Fuller Four hit huge in early 1966 with the authority-defying “I Fought the Law.” Midway through that very summer, authorities pulled Bobby Fuller’s dead body from the trunk of his car in Hollywood.
To describe the 23-year-old rising star’s demise as “mysterious” is an understatement almost as grotesque as the details. Fuller reportedly died from a lack of oxygen and severe exposure to gasoline vapors. Somehow, the police ruled it a “suicide.”
Rock-and-roll conspiracy theorists have been hard at work, albeit unsuccessfully, attempting to crack the case ever since.
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols
Died: February 2, 1979
Age: 21
The Sex Pistols’ touring bass player and one-man sh-t-show John Simon Ritchie—nee Sid Vicious—died from a drug overdose in New York City just a few months after being arrested for the stabbing murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
In the interim, Vicious had attempted suicide twice and got busted separately for assault. This rendered Sid not just the most famous punk rocker on the planet, it also made him a notorious household name.
Alas, Sid Vicious’s demise, while “shocking” given all the tawdry surrounding details, could hardly be labeled a legitimate shock.
Amy Winehouse
Died: July 23, 2011
Age: 27
From the very moment she captivated the world with her voice, damaged songbird Amy Winehouse seemed to be dying in the public spotlight.
The slow-motion tragedy played out over several years in which Amy became as well known for her drug-drenched existence on the brink of death as she was for her extraordinary talent.
When the end came, its prolonged likelihood actually made Amy’s entire story that much more of a tragedy.
Ian Curtis of Joy Division
Died: March 18, 1980
Age: 23
British goth-gloomster supreme Ian Curtis committed suicide by hanging the very night before his groundbreaking post-punk band Joy Division was to depart on their first North American tour.
Rather then simply break up, the other members of Joy Division regrouped as New Order, and continued forward from there. Black lipsticked club-goers of any number of genders have been grateful to them ever since.
Janis Joplin
Died: October 4, 1970
Age: 27
The premiere power-belter of late-’60s electric blues-rock, Janis Joplin lethally OD’d on heroin just sixteen days after Jimi Hendrix had similarly put down his instrument in a permanent sense.
Janis had been on remarkable roll just prior to her passing. She accompanied the Grateful Dead, the Band, Buddy Guy, Ten Years After, and array of other stellar artists on the cross-country Festival Express train tour. During the summer of 1970, Joplin also stunned audiences at both Shea Stadium in New York and Harvard Stadium in Boston.
Friends and family gathered in San Anselmo, California to celebrate Janis’s life at a party that she herself financed with $2,500 as specified in her will. Her music, of course, lives on.
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones
Died: July 3, 1969
Age: 27
Given the overwhelming star power of singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards along with the amount of time that has passed since the drowning death of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, it’s occasionally easy to forget that—oh, yeah, Brian Jones founded the Rolling Stones.
Glamorous and poetic, Jones also functioned as the band’s heartthrob in its initial stage. The more the Stones became the full-blown Stones, however, Jones succumbed to fading into drugs, alcohol, and sloppiness. The spiral hit bottom, literally, when Jones died in his own backyard pool.
Bon Scott of AC/DC
Died: February 19, 1980
Age: 33
AC/DC’s breakthrough front-beast Bon Scott partied like he performed: hard, heavy, relentlessly, and to the point of no return.
After a night of nonstop boozy in London, Bon passed out in a friend’s parked car, and never woke up. The coroner cited “acute alcohol poisoning” and officially deemed Scott’s demise “death by misadventure.”
Of course, in Bon Scott’s case, he’d probably say he also lived “life by misadventure” as well.
Jim Morrison
Died: July 3, 1971
Age: 27
The Doors’ Jim Morrison ended the group’s spectacular run of revolutionary albums and incendiary live shows not with a bang, but with a gurgle: he suffered fatal heart failure while taking a bath in Paris.
Buddy Holly
Died: February 3, 1959
Age: 22
The airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper tore such a hole in the very heart of rock-and-roll that it has been forever referred to as “The Day the Music Died.”
Holly is listed first whenever the trio is mentioned because he truly gleamed one of of early rock’s most dynamic talents who seemed to promise a career of artistry and innovation that would, could, and should have run for decades.
Buddy Holly also invented hipster eyewear, but he probably didn’t realize it at the time.
Jimi Hendrix
Died: September 18, 1970
Age: 27
As the guitar deity that continues to rule over the entirety of rock, the impact, influence, and sheer joy of discovery provided by Jimi Hendrix will, of course, jam on forever.
As with many other impossibly gifted and hard-working conduits to higher consciousness, though, Jimi Hendrix burned too bright, too fast, and he flamed out by choking on his own vomit after overdoing it with barbiturates.
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
Died: April 5, 1994
Age: 27
Kurt Cobain tops the list because A) he truly had achieved peak fame just before he died; B) it had been a long time since a rock star of such moment-defining caliber had died in any context; and C) Kurt Cobain died by blowing his brains out with a shotgun.
Any one of those components would have made the Nirvana leader and alt-rock game-changer a contender. Put them all together, as Kurt tragically did, and it’s one for the history books that we hope will never be repeated.