Tragic Things Found In Rock Star Autopsies

Rock stars generally don't live their lives the way other people do. They don't stay in one place for long, forever chasing the creative muse by heading into the studio to jam with other musicians or record albums, or touring the world to perform for throngs of adoring fans, or soaking up the spotlight with TV performances. Singers, guitarists, drummers, bassists, and other musicians live an itinerant, unpredictable lifestyle, especially in the mid-20th century when rock 'n' roll was at its peak. 

The rock star existence tends to be one of temptation, excess, and other health challenges. There are many rock stars who have died tragically, and even rock stars who have died under suspicious circumstances. What's the connection? They mostly died young, or before their time, or suddenly — so much so that the reasons they perished often aren't clear without a little scientific investigation. Here are the varied legends of rock music of all kinds whose deaths weren't only sad, but mysterious — and how autopsies cleared up any outstanding questions.

Led Zeppelin dominated 1970s hard rock, releasing one album after another loaded with arena rock and classic rock radio standards, like "Stairway to Heaven," "Immigrant Song," and "Black Dog." It looked to do the same in the next decade, planning to kick off its "The 1980s: Part One" tour in October 1980.

On September 24, 1980, the members of Led Zeppelin descended upon the Windsor, England, home of guitarist Jimmy Page, to rehearse for the first leg of the tour. As the band played throughout the day, drummer John "Bonzo"  Bonham drank vodka, the equivalent of about four shots at a time. Then he passed out, and the next morning, Bonham was found dead. Nearly two weeks later, the local coroner released the results of its investigation into the death of the drummer. Over a span of 12 hours, Bonham had consumed what amounted to 40 shots of vodka. He'd become so intoxicated that when his body tried to expel all the alcohol, he didn't wake up, causing him to choke to death. Bonham was 32 years old.

John Lennon wasn't just a rock star, he was a Beatle. Along with co-frontman Paul McCartney, Lennon wrote many of the songs that triggered Beatlemania in the 1960s. After the band's acrimonious split in 1970, Lennon embarked on a successful solo career but retired in 1975 to focus on his family, only to emerge from retirement in November 1980 with "Double Fantasy," recorded with his wife, Yoko Ono.  

On December 8, 1980, Lennon left his home in New York City's Dakota and signed a copy of "Double Fantasy" for a waiting fan, Mark David Chapman. When Lennon returned home that night, Chapman used a pistol to fire four shots at close range into the ex-Beatle. Lennon was rushed to a hospital, where his death was quickly declared. The musician was 40 years old. While the manner of Lennon's murder was horrifyingly obvious, New York City medical examiner Dr. Elliot Gross performed an autopsy within 24 hours to determine exactly how the death occurred. Per the report, two bullets penetrated the left side of Lennon's back and traveled through his chest and through a lung before leaving his body. The other two hit Lennon's left shoulder, with one puncturing the left lung and becoming lodged in his neck and the remaining projectile contacting an arm bone. Significant hemorrhaging and shock, leading to a loss of blood and an absence of a pulse, killed Lennon very quickly.

As one of the earliest rock 'n' roll stars, Buddy Holly helped define the language and structure of the newly emergent musical form. Across a recording career that lasted just a year and a half, he released smash hits and rock foundational standards like "That'll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Maybe Baby," and "Rave On."

In the early, wintry months of 1959, Holly embarked on the Winter Dance Party Tour, where he played small venues around the Midwest. Also on the bill: 17-year-old rising star Ritchie Valens and 28-year-old J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper. After playing Clear Lake, Iowa, on the night of February 2, Holly opted to skip the cold, always-breaking-down tour bus and chartered a small plane to take him to the next gig in Minnesota. Of the handful of seats leftover, Valens landed one in a coin toss and Holly's bassist, future country star Waylon Jennings, ceded his to Richardson, sick with the flu. Moments after takeoff, the plane crashed into a field, killing all three stars on board as well as the pilot. Holly's death was particularly grisly, with the impact of the crash tossing his body from the wreckage. The musician's skull had been split from the forehead back. Holly also suffered extensive bleeding out of both ears, deep and numerous cuts all over his body, and a chest left soft due to thoroughly crushed bones. He was 22 years old.

Probably one of the greatest all-around musicians of all time, Prince was a prolific songwriter, skilled rock guitarist, singular vocalist, and excellent dancer, too. He thrilled audiences and stormed the pop charts with regularity from the late 1970s on. In 2016, he set out on the "Piano and a Microphone Tour," a retrospective concert that featured Prince alone on stage with just a piano, playing dozens of his beloved songs each night.

Decades of performing left Prince with such significant hip pain by 2010 that he underwent joint replacement surgery. Both before and after the procedure, Prince self-medicated with prescription-grade painkillers, and he grew addicted. He remained dependent on the drugs for years, and during an April 2016 flight in the middle of a tour, Prince experienced a close brush with death days before his tragic demise. During a flight, his plane made an emergency landing in Illinois because the musician overdosed on prescription medication. Less than a week later, Prince was found deceased in an elevator at his Paisley Park complex in Minneapolis. The toxicology portion of the autopsy indicated that the 57-year-old died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, an intensely powerful medicine said to be 50 times as potent as heroin. Prince's body shut down due to the high amount in his system. There were 450 micrograms per kilogram of fentanyl present, and 69 micrograms is considered a deadly level.

Amidst the takeover of gloomy grunge on the early 1990s alternative rock scene, Blind Melon emerged with a jangly, sunny sound and a feel-good, hippie-rock vibe straight out of the early 1970s. Driven by the plaintive but powerful vocals of lead singer Shannon Hoon, Blind Melon landed a major radio hit in 1993 with "No Rain," a song probably best known for its video, which starred a child in a bee costume.

Blind Melon experienced a tragic accident while touring. Two months after releasing its second album, "Soup," the band was scheduled to play a show at the New Orleans venue Tipitina's in October 1995. In the lead-up to the concert, Hoon boarded the Blind Melon tour bus parked in the city's Warehouse District and went to bed. When other members of the band unsuccessfully attempted to wake Hoon, they called for help. Police pronounced Hoon, 28 years old, dead at the scene. With no outward signs of trauma or a clear indication of the cause of death, an autopsy was ordered. The first report proved inconclusive, though the band's manager suspected drugs may have played a part in the singer's death. It was later determined that Hoon died of a fatal cardiac event caused by an overdose of cocaine.

Scott Weiland served as the gravelly voiced lead singer of the hit-making 1990s alternative band Stone Temple Pilots as well as the hard rock supergroup Velvet Revolver in the 2000s. Weiland addressed his substance use issues throughout his adult life, enrolling in rehabilitation programs at least 12 times. During a 2010 Stone Temple Pilots reunion show in Houston, Weiland told fans that he'd achieved a kind of sobriety. "On the 8th of December will be the time when I stopped doing dope," Weiland declared while slurring. "I started drinking again." 

While on tour in 2015 with his other group the Wildabouts, that band's tour manager was unable to rouse Weiland, and after the drummer investigated, they called 911 when they realized the singer was likely deceased. He'd died on the tour bus, parked by a motel in Bloomington, Minnesota. About two weeks later, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office released the results of an autopsy that had uncovered cocaine, alcohol, and an amphetamine in the musician's system. Weiland specifically had died from a fatal combination of multiple drugs, his system weakened by asthma, drug addiction, and heart disease. He was 48.

A rocker who partied too hard on occasion, The Who drummer Keith Moon became as known for his debauchery as he was for his frenetic, propulsive musicianship. After knocking out a tooth while he was so drunk that he couldn't safely take anesthetic for the emergency surgery and, on another occasion, passing out during a concert, Moon sought help for his addiction. Moon's doctor prescribed clomethiazole, a sedative found to be successful in helping people quit drinking by alleviating the powerful symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. 

On the night of September 7, 1978, Moon went to a party in London then returned home and went to bed. Sometime in the night, he died. Per the results of an autopsy, the death certificate cited an accidental overdose of clomethiazole. Moon had taken as many as 30 tablets of the medication, far more than a clinically reasonable dose, of which 26 remained intact in his stomach at the time of death. Moon didn't wake up when he vomited the contents of his stomach, causing him to choke. Moon was 32.

Throughout Alice in Chains' run as the darkest of the Seattle-based 1990s grunge bands, frontman Layne Staley coped with a heroin addiction. He joined rehab treatment programs 10 times and overdosed five times. By 1998, he had developed abscesses on his arms from injecting drugs and had lost most of his teeth. Alice in Chains went on hiatus at that point.

By the early 2000s, Staley only rarely left his Seattle apartment. In April 2002, Staley's accountants noticed that the musician's banking accounts hadn't been accessed in weeks. Concerned, they contacted Staley's mother, Nancy McCallum, who hadn't spoken with her son for a while. With McCallum present, police performed a wellness check, forced an entry, and found the remains of a man sitting on a couch. Drug paraphernalia sat near and under the body, and a syringe loaded with heroin rested in the hand of the deceased person. The body was so badly decomposed that it could only be conclusively identified as Staley via an autopsy. Other findings from the investigation: The Alice in Chains singer, 34 years old, had died about two weeks before his body was discovered. His weight had fallen to 86 pounds, and he'd died of a drug overdose.

Created by some of Los Angeles' most skilled and often-employed session musicians, Toto became a major pop-rock and soft-rock band of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1983 for "IV," an album that included the band's biggest hits, "Africa" and "Rosanna." Taking charge of the band's musical direction: its drummer, Jeff Porcaro.

On August 5, 1992, Porcaro did some yard work at his home in California's San Fernando Valley, and he used some pesticide on his plants. He suddenly felt very sick, and when emergency workers arrived, the drummer wasn't breathing and his heart had stopped. Paramedics briefly revived Porcaro, and shortly after he was helicoptered to a hospital, he died. Doctors and authorities initially blamed a heart attack, potentially caused by an allergic reaction to inhaled pesticide, for the death of the seemingly healthy Porcaro. The Los Angeles County Coroner revealed the official autopsy about a month later, which cited occlusive coronary artery disease, or hardened arteries, as the main factor in Porcaro's death. The cause of that condition: long-term cocaine use, with traces of the drug present in the 38-year-old drummer's body. No pesticides were found in Porcaro's system.

Foo Fighters started out as a solo project for ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. Then it became a real band with the addition of some true rock veterans, including Taylor Hawkins, who previously played drums for Alanis Morissette. 

After being inducted into the historically controversial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, Foo Fighters hit the road, with a tour bringing the band to Latin America early the next year. On March 25, Foo Fighters were scheduled to headline the Festival Estereo Picnic multi-act show in Bogota, Colombia. On the day of the concert, Hawkins was discovered dead in his hotel room. The National State Prosecution Service of Colombia immediately ordered a toxicology report, and an analysis of the drummer's urine uncovered the presence of 10 different drugs, including prescription antidepressants, opioid-based painkillers, benzodiazepine, and marijuana. Authorities ruled that Hawkins died when his heart gave out, triggered by an overdose of heroin exacerbated by combining it with the other drugs. Further, Hawkins' heart had grown dangerously large, weighing about double that of a healthy adult male's.

The Cranberries were one of the most popular and audacious alternative rock bands of the 1990s. Emerging with a low-key folky sound on "Linger," the group switched gears quickly and often, releasing epic pop like "Dreams" and the thunderous "Zombie." Lead singer Dolores O'Riordan could handle seemingly every style turn, fronting the Cranberries for more than 25 years.

On the morning of January 15, 2018, police were summoned to a Hilton in the Westminster neighborhood of London to answer a call about an unresponsive woman in her room. That individual was O'Riordan, and after authorities performed CPR, they declared her dead. The musician was 46. Immediately dismissing any notion of foul play, police turned the matter over to the local coroner's office. On September 6, 2018 — what would've been O'Riordan's 47th birthday — the postmortem inquest disclosed at the inner west London court of the coroner revealed that the musician had drowned in the bath after passing out following a night of drinking. O'Riordan's blood alcohol level registered 330 milligrams per 100 milliliters of blood, more than quadruple the legal intoxication threshold.

The New York Dolls were loud, heavy, and outrageous. Playing in clubs around New York in the early 1970s, the aggressive, makeup-adorned musicians fit in with the glam rock movement but also pioneered a sound that would evolve into punk by decade's end. Primarily responsible for the sound was lead guitarist Johnny Thunders (born John Genzale) who could play in a stripped-down style and melodically shred, too. He'd go on to demonstrate his technique with his next band, the Heartbreakers.

According to Susanne Blomqvist, the mother of Thunders' daughter, the musician had received a leukemia diagnosis in 1987, and he failed to seek treatment for the serious and sometimes fatal condition, a cancer affecting the blood and bone marrow.  After decamping to New Orleans to record an album following a Japanese tour in 1991, Thunders was discovered deceased in his temporary apartment on April 23 of that year, his body reportedly contorted under a table. He'd been partying with friends the previous night, who Thunders' sideman Stevie Klasson claims stole Thunders' stash of methadone (used to treat heroin addiction), administered LSD, and killed him. While Thunders' remains did bear signs of leukemia, it was drugs that caused his death. "He died at his own hands by taking too much drugs," chief investigator John Gagliano of the Orleans Parish coroner's office told The Times of Shreveport, Louisiana, citing a large volume of cocaine and methadone in the musician's body.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).