Saddest deaths in music

[NurseNugent]

She's not fashionable so I doubt anyone else will say but I'm going to say Karen Carpenter.   She'd been suffering anorexia for nearly a decade which is awful in itself but she seemed to be getting better and gaining a bit of autonomy in her life when her heart gave out.

Notable mentions for Judee Sill and Minnie Riperton as well.

[Twed]

She's not fashionable so I doubt anyone else will say but I'm going to say Karen Carpenter.   She'd been suffering anorexia for nearly a decade which is awful in itself but she seemed to be getting better and gaining a bit of autonomy in her life when her heart gave out.

She had also begun to write songs after returning to California and told Warwick she had "a lot of living left to do"

Dead four months later. Jesus.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

She's not fashionable so I doubt anyone else will say but I'm going to say Karen Carpenter.   She'd been suffering anorexia for nearly a decade which is awful in itself but she seemed to be getting better and gaining a bit of autonomy in her life when her heart gave out.

Notable mentions for Judee Sill and Minnie Riperton as well.

All terribly sad, yes. Sill, Riperton and Carpenter were exceptional talents. I would argue, however, that Carpenter's critical standing has blossomed in the years following her tragic death. She was embraced, semi-ironically I guess, by the likes of Sonic Youth in the '90s, but since then she's been reassessed as a great, soulful singer. Rainy Days and Mondays, for example, is so deep, blue and beautiful, it isn't naff in the slightest (some of their material was, admittedly).

[Key]

There have been sudden deaths which have shocked me over the unfairness of it all, but the one that still drives me crazy over the lack of closure is Sparklehorse. He received a message on his phone which seemed to agitate him, then went out onto the street and shot himself in the heart. 10 years ago and nobody is any wiser.

[wosl]

Agree with everything people have chimed in with about Karen Carpenter (the thought that that voice was switched off at the age of thirty-two!  You go through the back catalogue and thankfully she got plenty done - there's lots of gold to discover beyond all the great well-known tracks - but we've been wretchedly robbed of what was to come, nevertheless).  And yes, Judee Sill's demise is terribly desolate. Other early deaths after troubled lives to note here: Sandy Denny's and Chris Bell's.

[sardines]

Jack Rose was a rough one.
Also Charles Gocher mainly because I was due to see SCGs a couple of weeks later-the inconsiderate bastard

[LORD BAD VIBE]

Layne Staley - not unexpected but accounts of his final years and death are pretty harrowing. His body (6 foot tall guy weighing only 86 pounds) was in his apartment for two weeks before they found him.

[pupshaw]

I saw one of the Karen Carpenter bio shows, and Richard says something like it was "too late" for her, meaning that
her physical health was so wrecked she would never have been able to come back. Her death was sad, but what kind of
life would have been left for her if she'd lived?

[pupshaw]

I must admit I have felt a little bit sad over the last 39 years that John Lennon died

[wosl]

^^ Some will contend that Richard played a part in her problems, being their mother's favourite, and being used to getting his own way, and seeming naturally to be quite finicky and controlling.  Didn't he put pressure on Karen to pull her solo album on the grounds that its relatively raunchy content would alienate a big chunk of the Carpenters' fan base?

[Gregory Torso]

Jason DiEmilio, who released drone noise records under the name The Azusa Plane in the 90s. Developed some kind of incurable, chronic tinntius that built to the point of not even being able to stand listening to people talking. Killed himself because of it. Here's an article about him, it's utterly heartbreaking.

[holyzombiejesus]

Carey Lander from Camera Obscura was a sad one. We're just listing dead musicians now, aren't we?

[Sin Agog]

I just assumed Judee Sill released two or three albums during the folkie/songwriter boom, stopped making music when her few fans stopped listening and spent the rest of her long life as a librarian with a knowing twinkle in her eye. How did she die?  I could easily google this information, but google could make this whole forum redundant if everyone did that.

[Phil_A]

The young singer-songwriter Matthew Jay. He was at University in 2003 and "fell" from a seventh floor window in slightly suspicious circumstances - there was no note left, and although it was initially claimed he was alone at the time, their may've been other people with him who weren't interviewed, and eventually it was ruled "open verdict" after an inquest. As of a decade ago, his parents were still desperately hoping for a witness to come forward.

I wasn't a huge fan but the random cruelty of his strange death still nags away at me from time to time, even if it did turn out to be purely an accident.

[sardines]

I just assumed Judee Sill released two or three albums during the folkie/songwriter boom, stopped making music when her few fans stopped listening and spent the rest of her long life as a librarian with a knowing twinkle in her eye. How did she die?  I could easily google this information, but google could make this whole forum redundant if everyone did that.

If 'librarian' was heroin addict, 'long life' was short life and 'knowing twinkle' was bleak emptiness, you'd be bang on.

[Brundle-Fly]

Van McCoy died in 1979 at age 39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj23_nDFSfE

[wosl]

How did she die?

OD.  Her music had gone by the wayside, and she was struggling with chronic, post-car smash back pain towards the end, and scoring and consuming drugs for that, amongst other things, in a sort of sad replay of some of her tough (in both senses) pre-singer/songwriter life.  She was found dead in bed of an overdose or bad mixture of 'medicaments'.  Think it was decided that she'd chosen to end her life, although that's been challenged/debated.  There's a short BBC radio doc here (not great - the presenter gets the pronunciation of Laura Nyro's name wrong for a kick-off - but serviceable).

[Epic Bisto]

Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson.  I still miss them.

[NoSleep]

Randy California (Spirit) drowned in 1997, saving his son from a rip tide. In 1966 Hendrix wanted the then 15-year old California to come over to UK as his second guitarist, but Randy's parents decided he needed to finish his education. The reason he was known as Randy "California" (real surname Wolfe) was because he was in Hendrix's band and there was another Randy in the band (who got renamed Randy Texas, after the state that he came from, too).

[Sin Agog]

If 'librarian' was heroin addict, 'long life' was short life and 'knowing twinkle' was bleak emptiness, you'd be bang on.

But...heroin addicts don't wear glasses!

[Bazooka]

Lil Peep for me, history repeating itself with overdoses to the most talented. I know he will either be slandered or under the radar on here because he isn't Morrissey, but he was a and intelligent talented lad.

He was something special. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wckAAh-V428

[Better Midlands]

Lil Peep for me, history repeating itself with overdoses to the most talented. I know he will either be slandered or under the radar on here because he isn't Morrissey, but he was a and intelligent talented lad.

He was something special. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wckAAh-V428

Mac Miller for me, incredible talent just reaching his full potential. Fight The Feeling is in my top 5 rap tunes ever
https://youtu.be/As_cvwAMYi4

[Better Midlands]

Minnie Riperton

Just found out recently that Maya Rudolph (The Rental/SNL) was her daughter.

[chveik]

Nico

[Technique]

Of recent deaths, one that seemed to go unnoticed was Andy Fraser. Sad because he was only 63, was living with being hiv positive after living with and beating cancer twice, sad because I hoped he would make up with Paul Rodgers and they'd go out as Free with Simon Kirke one last time.A truly special band. With no Kossof and Andy Fraser we are no longer Free and living in Bad Company.


Nick Drake because of how little his music was noticed when he was alive and how revered it is now - from Brad Pitt to my local butcher in love with those albums.

But one death of a musician that still I have to remind myself has happened and can still bum me out like it happened today is that of of Bunnymen drummer Pete DeFretais, which happened back in 1989.

He wasn't an musician wanting to be an actor, but he did act for Julian Cope in this video. Only recently learnt that the bike he rides in this video is the one he was killed riding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srpML5VwagM

[The Culture Bunker]

But one death of a musician that still I have to remind myself has happened and can still bum me out like it happened today is that of of Bunnymen drummer Pete DeFretais, which happened back in 1989.

In "Repossessed", I get the impression his death hits Cope especially hard because he had got his life together after a few years being a rock and roll casualty.

[wosl]

The collision also happened only a few miles away from Cope's childhood home, which likely would've resonated with him. 

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Sam Cooke has to be #1. At the top of his game and starting to more actively push boundaries both musically and politically (including taking on the recording industry), and then murdered in fucked up circumstances. Imagine what he could have gone on to do during the musical explosion of the mid/late 1960s?

Marvin Gaye's death is perhaps the most bleak.

She's not fashionable so I doubt anyone else will say but I'm going to say Karen Carpenter.   She'd been suffering anorexia for nearly a decade which is awful in itself but she seemed to be getting better and gaining a bit of autonomy in her life when her heart gave out.

Have you ever seen the incredibly stressing Todd Haynes debut film about Karen Carpenter?

[The Culture Bunker]

Marvin Gaye's death is perhaps the most bleak.

I watched a documentary years ago, in which Gaye's brother believed he provoked his father into shooting him as it would a) get the old man away from his mother, and b) free himself from his own misery.

[tourism]

Jeffrey Lee Pierce could be a unbearable little bastard by all accounts but 37's no age.