“I hate myself and want to die”
-Kurt Cobain
“Live fast, die young”- the old principle of rock ‘n’ roll have already taken many because it was taken too literally. To know that too much alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and unprotected sex are bad for health, you do not really need too much studies.
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According to the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, stars are more than twice as likely to die at an early age compared to other people. North American prominent musicians who considered the study were on average 42 years old, European Stars died on average even earlier, with 35 years already. Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty, 28, it would therefore have to live another seven years.
Drugs, alcohol and a life with much stress and few limits: the life of a rock and pop star is often viewed as a glamorous life, but it also has many downsides for many artists. According to an Australian study, popstars live average 25 years less than the average US population. They divided the cause of death in three categories – suicide, murder and accident – and compared the frequency with those of the corresponding general population with the same age and decade.
A study found that the life expectancy of stars is up to 25 years shorter than that of the comparison group. The risk of accidents is therefore five to ten times, the suicide rate two to seven times as high. But the risk of becoming a victim of a violent crime, is significantly greater for prominent musicians – namely up to eight times. Really disturbing.
Other scientists studied the fate of nearly 1,500 rock and pop stars who became famous in 1956-2006. In North America about nine percent of them died prematurely with an average age of 45 years and in Europe with an average age of almost 40 years. In almost 40 percent of cases, drug use and car accidents were the cause of death.
While in the United States but 23 percent of the deceased solo musician the average life expectancy is not reached, there were among musicians in bands only ten percent. In Europe, the figure was just under ten percent five percent.
Other researchers have found two years ago that it makes a tremendous difference whether the musicians came as a soloist or as part of a band to fame. According to a study published in the medical journal “BMJ Open” study, the proportion of premature death among soloists is twice as high as that of those rock stars who belonged to a famous group.
Interestingly, there were far fewer early deaths in the late 1980s. Scientists call for two reasons: It could be due to better treatments for the consequences of heroin abuse – or to the fact that the music scene changed from hard rock of the 1970s to the pop of the 1980s.
Anyway, being a musician is a rough road, we can be sure about that. Let’s investigate the tragic story of six stars, who died prematurely:
6. Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was born on February 20, 1967 in Aberdeen, his mother was a waitress and his father was a mechanic. Cobain was a fairly antisocial child, who was hard to handle. Smells like teen spirit from the Nevermind album became such a hugh success, which was hard to work up for Kurt Cobain.
Then in the interview room he just kept saying that neither he nor other members of the band did not expect such a success. We can conclude from the latter statement that the then 24 year old boy did not know how to deal with the new situation and the sudden hysteria created around them, so he started to take hard drugs, particularly heroin.
“ Did not expect such a success ”
Nirvana toured Europe in early 1994. On March 4 Courtney Love found him unconscious in his hotel room in Rome. Kurt Cobain has taken some medication with alcohol, which could seem as a suicide attempt at first sight, but later he said it was just an accident.
The tour stopped, Cobain flew back to Seattle, where his wife and his friends persuaded him to go to rehab for heroin addiction, but he escaped after one week from there. Afterwards they found his corpse in his house in Seattle on April 8. Kurt Cobain shot himself with a rifle three days earlier, on April 5, at the age of 27. Really sad story.
5. Jim Morrison
The 27 years old singer of the Doors was found dead in the bathtub of a Paris apartement on July 3, 1971. According to the quickly recorded protocol the cause of death was a heart attack, but few people believe this version.
Various theories are nourished by wannabe biographers, contradictory statements and the fact that Morrison was never autopsied. Allegedly he is still alive.
Jim Morrison, that is to say the Lizard king, was born in 1943 in Florida. According to the legend, he sees an Indian family bled to death in the desert highway after a truck ran over them The juvenile trauma will be a recurring motif in Morrison’s poetry, which according to the family embellishes the incident a little bit.
In 1965, Morrison founded The Doors band with keyboardist Ray Manzarek. The band’s name was taken from Aldous Huxley’s book, “The Doors of Perception”, which describes the author’s visions under the effects of mescaline. The Doors was the first band, which mixed blues, rock and psychedelia in such way, that the results were chart-topping numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZLXffMTqU
4. Janis Joplin
When John Cooke, the manager of Janis Joplin’s last band entered the room 105 of the Los Angeles Landmark Motor Hotel on 4 October 1970, he already suspected that there is a trouble. He found the Queen of Rock and Roll lying between the nightstand and the bed, holding a few dollars, half undressed. Her heroin syringe on the table. Joplin was dead for hours.
She lived 27 years, similar too Jimi Hendrix, who passed away two weeks before. Her death was caused by heroin overdose, but the alcohol consumed during the night also played a role in the tragedy. Her friends organized a huge farewell party from the remaining assets of Joplin -according to the singer’s wishes. Her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
3. Bob Marley
Although he was already warned in 1978 that the persistent wound on his toe may become cancerous, Marley just waves his hand and ignores the growing number of worrying signs, and consistently stays away from doctors as well.
However, in 1980, when he goes out running in the Central Park during a stay in New York (Uprising Tour), he suddenly loses his consciousness and collapses. A more profound investigation cannot be postponed now. Brain tumor is diagnosed, which began to multiply with time and spread to his liver and his lung.
Radiotherapy does not help, so he looks for other solutions instead of traditional western remedy, which he looked down on. He finds Joseph Issels, a strange alternative doctor, who could not help him. He dies on May 11, 1981 in a Miami hospital, according to the autopsy reports his weight was 37 kg. The cause of death: full metastasis, all of his organs were cancerous, which can be cancerous at all.
The funeral was held on May 21, 1981 in Kingston, around 30 thousand mourners appeared at his bier. Bob, of course, was placed with his favorite guitar to eternal rest. Unfortunately the real reggae ideology seems to be increasingly forgotten in today’s popular culture. R.I.P. Bob!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNc_FCKQQqY
2. Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix is claimed to be one of the most influential figures of modern music history, who revolutionized the playing techniques of electric guitar, and someone who built up a body of work during his 27 years, which is able to inspire the musicians and the audience alike even after a half century.
Hendrix was found in the morning by his then-girlfriend, Monika Dannemann woman’s Samarkand Hotel apartment in London. According to the Protocol, Dannemann called the ambulance at 11:18 pm to the musician who was lying unconsciously in his own vomit. Although he was still alive when found, his pulse ceased in the car. The doctors tried to revive him in the St. Mary Abbot hospital without success.
“ He was still alive when found ”
They finally declared the death at 12:45 pm. Hendrix’s death was officially caused by suffocation, after taking barbiturate medicines with drugs and nine full tablets of Vesparax sleeping pills (eighteenth times the permitted dose) with alcohol.
Many are convinced, that Jimi did not die in a natural way. Some claim that his manager killed him, others suspect the CIA behind the scenes. A lot of conspiracy theories flew up in the air about this tragic event. His death is still a mystery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpgkRYeBoKw
1. John Lennon
Those who loved him surely know where he stayed on the evening of December 8, 1980, when the news were about the murder of John Lennon. The obituary recirculating the world struck everyone. No one understood why would someone want to kill any member of one of the most beloved band of all time.
According to the explanations published in the press, the gun man – Mark David Chapman – was a confused, lonely killer obsessed with the idol of the sixties, who was convinced that Lennon has allied with the devil. His 60 day psychiatric evaluation stretched into one year and 60 days of perfect silence, and finally Chapman pleaded guilty just a few hours before the scheduled trial date.
A relatively long time passed before the conspiracy theories have begun to complete the story of the events described by the media and the experts stepped forward with their own ideas regarding what happened on the tragic night that had vanished the world’s cultural giant. For them, the shots were not the actions of a lonely madman but were part of a political action.
After this presentation of the stars with the most tragic destinies in history, we will introduce you the 6 most iconic popstars of all the time. Stay with us for the next article.