Not Fade Away: Rockers Lost Before Their Time

1983-2011
Amy Winehouse, the Grammy-winning British retro-soul singer whose remarkable musical achievements were often overshadowed by her tumultuous personal life, was found dead at her home in the Camden section of London on July 23rd. Though police were calling the cause of death "unexplained" while they awaited a medical examiner's report, many have speculated that Winehouse finally succumbed to addiction following years of well-documented drug and alcohol problems. The singer was 27 years old.
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Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images July 3rd 1969. Sussex England. He drowned in his own swimming pool, described as "death by misadventure" by the coroner.
If Keith Richard and Mick Jagger were the mind and body of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, standing most of the time in the shadows, was clearly the soul.
Brian, in with Keith and Mick from the earliest — when the Stones were still largely an R&B discussion group meeting in a Soho pub — was labeled the quietest, the moodiest of the group. But he was in fact the most vocal to the press, angrily and sharply defending the Stones' then-radical style of music, their appearance, their politics, and their whole style of life.
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Janis Joplin
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images October 4th 1970. Los Angeles, California. Heroin overdose.
Bill Graham: "I don't think Janis tried to be black. I think Janis sang as a young person coming out of Texas and having kicked around San Francisco, and her voice was her voice and that was her interpretation of the songs. She sang blues. And in here own way… you know, when someone is a stylist or the originator of a style and… a particular style of blues, I don't think you can compare here. And I keep coming back to Hendrix. Hendrix was an innovator on the guitar, Janis was an innovator in a certain style… very few tried to play like Hendrix–you couldn't. Well, Janis was that. The mark of great talent, creative talent and original talent is also in its difficulty to copy that talent. And I think that's what Janis has."
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Jimi Hendrix
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images September 18th 1970. Kensington, London England. Asphyxiated on his own vomit after mixing wine with sleeping pill
But if Hendrix was a brash dresser, if his stage act was pure mayhem, he also had a distinct ambivalence toward being a rock and roll star. Onstage, he was what every mother feared when she expressed doubts about rock and roll's effect on her daughter. Offstage, he remained the same quiet, boyish, seemingly vulnerable Jimi Hendrix as always.
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Jim Morrison of the Doors
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images July 3rd 1971 Paris France. Morrison's body was cremated before an autopsy could be performed, but many believe he died of a heroin overdose.
Morrison's death followed, by two years to the day, the death of the Rolling Stones' guitarist, Brian Jones. And it was nine months ago that Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. All three died at 27–as did Morrison. But where Jones', Hendrix' and Joplin's deaths were from accidental overdoses of drugs, Morrison died of "natural causes." No drugs, his associates and friends have emphasized, were connected to the death, and, in fact, Morrison was admittedly heavy on alcohol, but light, since the early days of the Doors on the Strip, on hard drugs.
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Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
Image Credit: Photo by Frank Micelotta 1967 – 1994
People looked to Kurt Cobain because his songs captured what they felt before they knew they felt it. Even his struggles — with fame, with drugs, with his identity — caught the generational drama of our time. Seeing himself since his boyhood as an outcast, he was stunned — and confused, and frightened, and repulsed, and, truth be told, not entirely disappointed (no one forms a band to remain anonymous) — to find himself a star. If Cobain staggered across the stage of rock stardom, seemed more willing to play the fool than the hero and took drugs more for relief than pleasure, that was fine with his contemporaries. For people who came of age amid the greed, the designer-drug indulgence and the image-driven celebrity of the '80s, anyone who could make an easy peace with success was fatally suspect.
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Buddy Holly
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1936 – 1959
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John Lennon
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1940 – 1980
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Aaliyah
Image Credit: Photo by Barry King/WireImage 1979 – 2001
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Bob Marley
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1945 – 1981
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Ian Curtis of Joy Division
Image Credit: Photo: O'Neill / Retna Pictures 1956 – 1980
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Bradley Nowell of Sublime
Image Credit: Photo by Steve Eichner/WireImage 1968-1996
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Cliff Burton of Metallica
Image Credit: Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage 1962 – 1986
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Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1944 – 1983
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Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1946 – 1971
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Elliott Smith
Image Credit: Photo by Frank Mullen/WireImage 1969 – 2003
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Sam Cooke
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1931 – 1964
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John Bonham of Led Zeppelin
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1948 – 1980
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Keith Moon of the Who
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1946 – 1978
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Layne Staley of Alice in Chains
Image Credit: Photo by Eddie Malluk/WireImage 1967 – 2002
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Lisa Left-Eye Lopes of TLC
Image Credit: hoto by Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1971 – 2002
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Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1941 – 1974
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Marc Bolan of T. Rex
Image Credit: Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage 1947 – 1977
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Michael Hutchence of INXS
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1960 – 1997
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Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan
Image Credit: Photo: Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1968 – 2004
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Jeff Buckley
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1966 – 1997
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The Big Bopper
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1930 – 1959
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Ritchie Valens
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1941 – 1959
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Otis Redding
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1941 – 1967
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Darby Crash
Image Credit: Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty 1958 – 1980
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Bon Scott of AC/DC
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1946 – 1980
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Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon
Image Credit: (Photo by Steve Eichner/WireImage) 1967 – 1995
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Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols
Image Credit: Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1957 – 1979
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The Notorious B.I.G.
Image Credit: Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage 1972 – 1997
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Tupac Shakur
Image Credit: Photo by Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images 1971 – 1996
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Nick Drake
1948 – 1974
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