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Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon music included with Prime. It's always a shock when a rock star dies, and our first reaction is always what happened? How did this person die? That's completely natural. Whenever we're met with something incomprehensible, we demand an explanation. Sometimes one comes quickly, our other times it takes days, weeks, months or even years for the truth to come out, if at all. And how much are we entitled to know? When do we cross the line from being curious and concerned to gawking and prurient and prying and invading some very private space? Yet there is something to be said for learning about how someone died. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned, or a cautionary tale, steps we or someone else can take to make sure something like this never happens again. Or maybe at least not as often. A celebrity death is news. It's part of the public record, and wanting to know what happened helps us process the news and all the emotions that go along with such a death. Besides, some will say these doomed people are celebrities, and as celebrities they lived with the idea that the public was interested in multiple aspects of their existence, including how they died. It just goes with the territory. And one other thing, could we ourselves ever meet such an end? We think about it. With all that in mind, let's look at some notable rock star deaths, focusing on what happened in the last moments of their time on earth.
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This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross.
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Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and this is the first of a two part episode I call the Last Moments of. We're going to try to reconstruct the immediate events that led up to the deaths of some very famous musicians. Everything you're about to hear is unavoidably tragic, but it is all on the public record via police reports, autopsies from coroners and first hand accounts. Some of the conclusions are complete and the cases are closed, others, not so much. Most of these stories involved personal misadventures. One or two involve accidents and a couple are related to health issues. And there's at least one murder in all cases. We're just looking for a reason for someone's life being cut short. We begin on Thursday, February 1, 1979. 21 year old Sid Vicious, last seen trying to build a career as a solo artist after the Sex Pistols had broken up, had just been released from Rikers Island Prison. He'd Been there for about seven weeks in the detox section after having been arrested and charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Her body was found in the bathroom of Room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel on the morning of October 12, 1978. She'd bled out after being stabbed in the abdomen with a knife owned by Sid. Both had been extremely wasted that night, and Sid claimed not to have remembered a thing. There were theories as to what happened. Sid did it and allegedly confessed it was a drug dealer. After a sale went bad, it was a suicide attempt that turned out to be successful. A chunk of cash was missing from the room, so there was definitely a robbery. Sid was released on bail twice, the first time in November. But then he got into a fight, assaulted someone with a smashed beer bottle, and was sent to Rikers for a period of enforced detoxification. After completing that rehab, he was released on that Thursday, February 1, he somehow made his way to Manhattan, heading to the apartment of his new girlfriend, Michelle Robinson, at 63 Bank street in Greenwich Village. That's just two blocks over from where the fictional Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City would later have her place. Before he got there, he ran into his friend Peter Gravel and asked him to buy some heroin. Gravel showed up a little later at the apartment where Sid and Michelle were having a get out of jail party hosted by Sid's mother, Beverly, and attended by Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls, his girlfriend, model Eska Herskovitz, Jerry only, and Howie Pyro of the Misfits, and punk photographer Eileen Polk. Some were Sid's friends, and others were only meeting him for the first time. Jerry Nolan spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Sid's mom making Bolognese sauce. That was okay with him because he wasn't into drugs and everybody in the living room was busy getting high. Even though he'd left the detox unit at Riker's hours earlier, Sid had already shot up. Jerry said he smacked Sid a couple of times just to keep him awake. Mum wasn't very helpful. Oh, this happens all the time, she said. That was enough for Jerry, so he just left. He had enough. So did Howie Pyro and Eileen Polk. Everyone else stayed on to do more drugs. Peter Gravel was the last to leave at around 3 in the morning of Friday, February 2nd. What happened next is still a bit of a mystery. It appears that sometime after Gravel left, Sid went into his mother's purse and found another quantity of heroin which he injected. This was exceptionally pure heroin, perhaps as much as 80% pure. And because Sid had gone through detox, his body wasn't accustomed to that kind of hit. He went back to bed. His breathing slowed, his heart rate fell, and he died. Mom found him when the sun came up. He was found on the floor next to a needle and a charred spoon with some heroin residue still in it. A suicide note was allegedly found on a scrap of paper in the pocket of his leather jacket. It read, we had a death pact, referring to Nancy. I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye. The news reached Jerry only the next morning. He was the only person in New York who had a car, his mom's old brown station wagon. So he drove Sid's mom to the coroner and later helped her visit the cemetery where Nancy was buried. That's where she spread some of Sid's ashes. Our next story involves Ian Curtis, singer and lyricist for Joy Division. So much myth and legend surround him, which is what can happen when an artist with still so much untapped potential suddenly disappears from this world. At first, everyone in Joy Division was having fun in a working class band that, while not making much financial headway, was still gathering fans and great reviews. But eventually, Ian ran into health issues. It turns out that he was somewhat allergic to sunlight, which caused his hands to swell. Even more serious was his epilepsy. The seizures started in late 1978 while the band was traveling home from a gig. The official diagnosis came on January 23, 1979. Doctors classified his case as severe and a heavy regime of medication was prescribed. Many of the drugs did not work or only worked for a short period of time. Some of the meds had bad side effects, like extreme mood swings. His condition got worse through 1979 and into 1980. The late nights, the pressures of touring, heavy smoking and large amounts of alcohol didn't help. It got so bad that after his daughter was born in April 1979, he wasn't allowed to hold her because it was feared he could have a seizure at any second and drop her. Yet the band continued to play. There were at least two occasions when he had a grand mal seizure in the middle of a performance. One triggered by strobe lights and another that was so violent, people were genuinely afraid that he was going to die. It got to the point where even percussion effects could ignite an epileptic episode. A minder was assigned to him to make sure that he took his meds, didn't drink and got enough sleep. There were personal problems too. He was going through a rough patch with his wife Deborah, who had initiated a divorce. Ian was simultaneously having an affair with a Belgian fan. There was a suicide attempt on Sunday, April 6, 1980, when Ian Down a bunch of pills. An ambulance was called. He was taken to the hospital and had his stomach pumped. Strangely, the doctor who examined Ian said he wasn't suicidal, so he just sent everybody home. Actually, Ian went directly to a gig where he was so shaky he only made it through two songs. Ian began to spend more and more time alone, but because of his mental and physical state, he really wasn't equipped to live like that. He told his mates that he had a terrible claustrophobic feeling, like he was caught in a whirlpool, being sucked down and drowning. Ian's final days went like this. Thursday, May 15, 1980. Ian hung out with Joy Division bass player Peter Hook playing pool in a local pub. Everything seemed fine. Nothing unusual. That day someone from the label came around to see Ian to collect his passport and two photos he had taken so all the visa documents for the American tour, which was to start on Monday, could be processed. Friday, May 16 Hooky dropped off Ian at his parents house with instructions to start packing. At some point Ian spoke to his sister Carol, who was working at a hotel on the south coast of England. She wished him good luck with the tour, but she noticed that he didn't sound particularly excited about it. Saturday, May 17, 1980. Ian was supposed to go over to Barney's place so they could go water skiing. But Ian bailed saying that he wanted to rest up for the tour and besides, it was a really cool movie on TV Saturday night that he wanted to see. There were three calls with Annie Honore, the Belgian woman with whom he was having that affair. One of them lasted for about an hour. Ian spent much of it talking about getting a divorce from Debbie. A letter outlining the divorce proceedings had just arrived. Earlier that day. Ian spoke of how he was going to turn all his wages over to her so that his daughter would be well cared for. Annique doesn't remember much more of the conversation other than she thinks Ian sounded more defeated than usual. At some point he called his mother. And that evening Ian spoke to annika and array one more time. It was 9pm that call lasted for about 10 minutes, mainly because she was in a really noisy place and couldn't hear what he was saying. There may have been another phone call that night. Ian was a big fan of the proto industrial group Throbbing Gristle and had made Friends with leader Genesis P orridge, he thought Ian sounded like he was in a very bad place. Especially after Ian allegedly said he would rather die than go on that tour. Genesis made efforts to contact other members of the Joy Division entourage, but because few people had phones in those days, and because everybody was out celebrating with mates one more time before the big tour, he couldn't find anyone. Ian called Deborah, his estranged wife, asking her to drop the divorce proceedings. Like I said, a letter outlining everything had arrived earlier in the day. He said he really, really wanted to reconcile. Deborah wasn't home because she had made arrangements to sleep at her parents house until Ian had left for the tour. That Saturday night. She was working behind the bar of a place called Silklands where there was a wedding reception. She dropped by the house after work, this would be sometime between midnight and one on the morning of Sunday the 18th. But ended up going back to her parents house after a 40 minute visit. And that was the last time anyone saw Ian Curtis alive. Once Deborah was gone, Ian sat down to watch a movie on The Telly. A 1977 Werner Herzog film entitled Strozek. It's all about a musician and former mental patient who travels to the US and runs into serious money and relationship problems. Interesting. In the end, the main character may or may not have killed himself. That's never really made clear. During the movie, Ian apparently drank several cups of very strong coffee and chased it all down with a shot of whiskey. Then with pictures of his wife and baby daughter sitting on the table in front of him, Ian began to write a long note to Deborah. He wrote all night and then he was finished. At about 11 in the morning of Sunday May 18, Deborah Curtis returned to the house after spending the night at her parents and within seconds she ran into the street screaming. Ian had hung himself in the kitchen using an old fashioned clothes rack that could be raised and lowered from the ceiling using a rope and pulley. By the time Deborah found him, the rope had stretched so it looked like Ian was kneeling on the floor, praying. Kevin Wood, a neighbor, is the person who cut him down. Ian had been dead for some time because rigor mortis had already set in. An inquest was held into Ian's death and the official verdict was asphyxia with ligature around the neck. Age 23 years. His body was cremated after the funeral. On May 23, there was a headstone in the Macclesfield cemetery. It read, Ian Curtis, 18 five eight zero love will tear us apart. That headstone was stolen in 2008. But he was eventually replaced. Bob Marley should not have lived as long as he did. That he made it to the age of 36 is something of a miracle, since a lot of people wanted him dead. Around 8:30 on the evening of December 3, 1976, seven or eight armed men burst into his house at 56 Hope Road outside of Kingston, Jamaica. Marley was shot twice. His wife, his manager and a band employee were also shot. Fortunately, nobody died. But a lead bullet remained lodged in Marley's upper left arm. He could have had it removed, but he chose not to. Why? Well, because of its location. Removing it might have caused damage that would have made it hard, if not impossible, to play the guitar. So it stayed. The assassination attempt was apparently orchestrated by elements within the Jamaican Labor Party, the jlp, who were concerned that Marley had too much political sway over the population. He was too politically progressive. Some even suggest that the CIA was behind the assassination attempt. On May 9, 1977, in Paris, Bob was kicking around a soccer ball with his bandmates between gigs. One of the people he was playing with was a French journalist and he was wearing spikes. And that guy stepped on Bob's foot. He injured his big right toe and it didn't really seem to want to heal. Now, he'd injured that toe in the past. Some broken glass cutting it on a rock, almost cutting it off with a hoe. It seemed to be always bandaged because, like I said, it would not heal. That toe had taken a real beating over the years, but it always sort of got better until now. In July, he visited a doctor in London and they discovered he had something called acralitiginous melanoma, a pre existing form of skin cancer under the nail that at the time wasn't well covered in the medical textbooks. It took a couple of doctors before a diagnosis was confirmed. It was that rare. And the advice they gave him was to have the toe amputated. But Bob refused, saying that as a Rastafarian, it would be a sin to have any body part removed. He opted instead for a skin graft taken from his thigh by a specialist in Miami. And that seemed to work for a while. Bob continued to record and tour. That included two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City on September 19th and 20th, 1980. But before the second show, Bob went running with his friend Alan Cole in Central Park. His vision began to alter. He had trouble speaking. Suddenly his legs tightened and he felt a searing pain in his neck. He collapsed and went into a seizure that lasted for several minutes. Yet he insisted on signing out of the hospital that day so he could play the gardens that night. He reported back to the hospital on September 26th. And that's when doctors reported that the cancer had spread from his toe to his brain, where there was a massive tumor. They also found cancer in his liver and his lungs. Chemo and radiation treatments began at Sloan Kettering Hospital. His dreads began to fall out. He let his wife give him his first haircut in years. But the chemo and radiation did not work. There was nothing more they could do. Bob was discharged. Doctor said he had three weeks max. But Bob eventually made his way to a clinic in Europe for some alternative treatments. Through one of his Rastafarian contacts in Jamaica, he'd heard of a doctor named Joseph Eisels, A former Nazi, apparently a guy who used to work for Josef Mengele. But he resigned from that post after he was ordered to stop treating Jewish patients. Eisels was offering some experimental cancer treatments. It was a long shot, but traditional cancer medicine did not work and would not work. So why not try it? Besides, Dr. Eisel seemed to have a certain percentage of success for all the hopeless cases he took on. By November 1980, Bob was in Bavaria. He was weak, but optimistic. The treatment involved a special macrobiotic diet and drug induced fevers created by careful introduction of toxins. Very homeopathic. The goal was to stimulate the immune system so that the body would fight the cancer. Some decaying teeth in Bob's tonsils were also removed. Things got more desperate. In February 1981, after Bob's 36th birthday, Dr. Eisels tried some painful ozone injections into his navel. The result was something resembling epileptic seizures. So it didn't work. Nothing did. On May 8, 1981, Bob decided it was time to go home to Jamaica. He asked his friend and head of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, to fly him home. He never made it on the flight. His vital signs worsened. The plane landed in Miami and he was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. He was critically ill and in a tremendous amount of pain. But there was nothing the doctors could do except offer large amounts of powerful painkillers. And then, surrounded by his family and weighing just 82 pounds, Bob Marley died. It was May 11, 1981. He was surrounded by his family. And his last words were to his son Ziggy. He said, on your way up, take me up on your way down don't let me down. Continue our look at the last moments of famous musicians with the story of Kurt Cobain. Next, when Kurt Cobain died. It was shocking, but not entirely unexpected. Still, if you were around back then, you may remember when the news hit on the afternoon of Friday, April 8, 1994. I just happened to be on the air that day.
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It's 3:38. I really don't want to do this. This is the latest from Seattle. A record company official says Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain shot himself to death at his Seattle home yesterday. Police say Cobain's body was found today with the shotgun wound to the head, a suicide note nearby. He had been recuperating from last month's overdose of painkillers and champagne. His mother says Cobain has been missing for six days, and she says the last time she spoke with her son, she told him not to join the stupid club of other rock stars who had died early. Kurt Cobain was 28.
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So much has been written about Kurt since that day, including movies and documentaries, and we've been able to piece together his final moments, more or less. Nirvana's last ever show was staged in an airport hangar in munich, Germany, on March 1, 1994, in front of about 3,000 people. Kurt was not well. He had a sore throat and was not having a great gig. The rest of the tour was canceled so Curt could recover from what doctors diagnosed as chronic bronchitis and laryngitis. He went to Rome with Courtney on what was supposed to be something of a vacation. But then there was a suicide attempt. He downed about 50 Rohypno pills with some champagne and slipped into a coma. He recovered in hospital, but not before some networks reported that he died. On March 12th. He and Courtney flew back to Seattle. There was an intervention by friends and bandmates at the house on March 25th. That's when Kurt agreed, reluctantly, to go to rehab in Los Angeles. On March 30th. He and his friend Dylan Carlson went together to Stan Baker Sports, where he bought a shotgun for $303.37. Police had confiscated all his other guns because he seemed to be a threat to himself. So it was Dillon who officially bought the gun. That night, Kurt checked into the Exodus Recovery center in Los angeles. He stayed two nights, but then slipped out on the evening of April 1. He took a cab to the airport and bought a business class ticket on Delta Flight 788 to Seattle, seat 2F. His seatmate was Duff McKagan of Guns N Roses. Once they landed, Duff offered Kirk a ride home, but he declined. A Canadian Nirvana fan at Sea Tac Airport recognized Kurt and asked him to sign a copy of a book he had with him, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. This was at about 1am on Saturday, April 2, and for some reason, Kurt dated the autograph April 5. Meanwhile, Courtney had been advised that Kurt had left the rehab center. She contacted a detective named Tom Grant to track him down. His mother filed a missing persons report. Calls were made to friends. The weird thing was that Kurt was back at the house at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard east the entire time. At about 6 in the morning, Kurt talked to Cali, the housekeeper and Cali's girlfriend. And then over the next couple of days, he was seen in various places around Seattle, in a park, another house in nearby Carnation, Washington, with an unidentified friend, at a drug dealer's house, at a couple of hotels, and at a store called Seattle Guns, where he bought a box of 20 gay shotgun shells. Why someone just didn't stake out the house is a mystery. Sometime on Tuesday, April 5, he went to the room above the greenhouse in the backyard. He wrote a suicide note detailing his anguish, apologizing for what he was about to do. The note included some lines from a Neil Young song, it's better to burn out than fade away. Kurt then loaded the shotgun and gave himself a massive injection of heroin. After putting all his drug paraphernalia away, he turned the gun on himself and shot himself in the head. He was found by an electrician who had come to work on something in the greenhouse the following morning. It was Friday, April 8, 1994. The next tragedy on our list is Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon. He'd moved from Indiana to Los Angeles in 1985 when he was just 18, and that's where he teamed up with a guy from Pennsylvania and three originally from Mississippi. Blind Melon was chosen as their name from either a Cheech and Chong skit or from a term guitarist Roger Smith's father used for neighborhood stoners. Shannon ended up in the Guns N Roses orbit because his sister had been friends with Axl Rose back in high school in Indiana. He actually sang backup vocals on a couple of Gunner's songs and can be seen in the video for don't cry. In 1992, things blew up with Blind Melon's debut album, thanks largely to the single no Rain and the famous B Girl video. Over the next two years, there were tours with Guns N Roses and Ozzy and Big Audio, Dynamite and Public Image Limited. By this time, drugs had become a real problem for Shannon. He'd just had a daughter with his girlfriend and everybody was concerned for his well being. On July 11, 1995, he checked into rehab. He was discharged right around the time Blind Melon released their second album, which was called Soup. It was agreed that a drug counselor would accompany Shannon on the next tour. On October 20, the band played a show at a club in Houston called Numbers. It did not go well. Shannon had an all night drug binge and eventually had to be corralled for the tour bus ride to the next show in New Orleans. He stayed up all night doing Coke during the 350 mile drive and as soon as he arrived in New Orleans, he left the bus to score more coke. Early on the morning of October 21, he crept back into the bus and made his way to one of the bunks at the back. Around noon, Lyle Eves, the band's sound tech, went to wake Shannon up in his bunk for soundcheck. He was unresponsive. An ambulance was called, but it was too late. He was buried in Dayton, Indiana. His grave is inscribed with the lyrics he'd written to the song change, the first song he ever wrote and one that appeared on the band's debut album. It reads, I know we can't all stay here forever, so I want to write my words on the face of today and they'll paint it. We've talked about the death of Michael Hutchins of INXS in depth on another program, but let's quickly review what happened leading up to the morning of November 22, 1997. The best years of INXS seem to have been in the rearview mirror. By this time, Michael was having all sorts of personal problems, special specifically with his relationship with UK TV presenter Paula Yates, the ex wife of Boomtown Rat singer Bob Geldof. He'd always lived a wild life, but with Paula it just got wilder. The media attention was intense and Michael wasn't quite the same. After an altercation with a taxi driver in Copenhagen in 1992 that resulted in him suffering a fractured skull, he and Paula were into heroin too. In November 1997, Hudgens returned to Australia from the UK to start rehearsals with the band for a tour that was scheduled to start on the 25th. He was not in a good place. The turmoil with Paula and Bob was peaking over children she was expecting. He was self medicating. On the night of Friday, November 21, he went out for an Indian dinner with his father and stepmother and he seemed like he was having a good time. But his father couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Around 10:30 that night, Michael went back to his suite, room 524 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Sydney. He joked with three girls on the ride up in the elevator. Once he got to the room, he went on one last bender. Calls were made to Kim Wilson, an Australian soap opera actress and former girlfriend. She and her current boyfriend came to the hotel where they drained the bar until about 2 that morning before going back to Michael's room. They left the hotel around 4. At around 5, Michael called Bob Geldof twice to complain about a court injunction that kept Paula from traveling with her kids to see him in Australia in time for Christmas. The second call was a loud argument that lasted for about 20 minutes. At 5:38am Paula called. this point, Michael sounded very desperate. Sometime after that, Michael went down to the front desk and asked the clerk to mail two letters, one to Paula and the other to a friend in Hong Kong. And that was the last time anyone saw him alive. More phone calls were made, but because it was so early in the morning, all of them went to answering machines. At 9:38am he left a message for Martha Troup, his manager, who was based in New York. But it was 7:30pm there the previous day, so she wasn't immediately available to take the call. She did get the message a few minutes later and and immediately called John Martin, the INXS tour manager. Meanwhile, Michael placed a call to Michelle Bennett, another ex girlfriend. This was at 9:54am she was worried about his state of mind, so she rushed over to the hotel. When she called room 524 from the lobby, there was no answer. Knocking on the door at 10:40am received no response, so all she could do was leave a note at reception. Meanwhile, depressed, drunk and sleep deprived, Michael had gone into a violent rage, throwing furniture around, breaking his hand, punching a wall and scattering five different prescription pills all over the place. Sometime between 9:55am and 10:30am he hanged himself with a leather snakeskin belt from a doorknob. His body was found by a housekeeper at 11:50am There was no suicide note.
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I was standing, you were there. Two worlds collided and they could never, ever tear us apart.
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In a Moment, the story of how a brilliant English singer met her aunt while on vacation in Mexico. If you don't know the name Kirsty McCall, you certainly should know her most famous performance. She's the woman who duets with Shane McGowan on the Pogue's Fairy Tale of New York. She was also the wife of producer Steve Lillywhite, who worked on albums by everyone from U2 to the Psychedelic Furs to Simple Minds. In December 2000, she went to Cuba where she participated in a radio program for the BBC. She and her boyfriend, a musician named James White. She had been divorced from Lily White by this time, hopped over to the Mexican island of Cozumel for a pre Christmas vacation. She'd been there twice before and loved water Sports. On December 18, two days before everyone was supposed to fly back to the uk, Kirsty and her sons were scuba diving in an area off Cozumel, the famous Chunkanab Reef, an area supposedly off limits to all power boats because it's a national marine park. With her was Ivan Diaz, a professional dive master. And Kirstie was also quite experienced with scuba diving. Just after 2pm, just as Kirsty came to the surface after the first of two planned dives, a 31 foot motorboat called the Percolito came roaring through this restricted area with its 315 horsepower engines. Kirsty was right in the way. She pushed her 15 year old son Jamie out of the way just in time. But the boat hit her in the head and caused severe chest injuries. She was killed instantly by the props. She was actually split in two, slicing her from the back of the neck to her waist. Her left leg and most of her chest were virtually severed. So much tissue was just gone. Turns out that the boat was owned and captained by a Mexican millionaire named Guillermo Gonzalez Nova, the owner of a large Mexican chain of supermarkets as well as hundreds of restaurants. Although he first apparently admitted to being at the helm at the time of the accident, he was seen being led away from the scene in handcuffs. The story later changed. The news story was that a 26 year old employee named Jose Senyam was actually piloting the boat at the time of the accident. Although there are a number of eyewitnesses who dispute that, including Diaz, the divemaster. If he was driving, well, he had no documents to prove that he was anything more than a deckhand. Witnesses say that the boat was going much faster than what had been claimed. It was certainly moving faster than the claimed one knot, and even then, the official speed limit for diver support boats was just 4 knots. Jose was arrested and found guilty of something known under Mexican law as culpable homicide. The sentence, 2 years, 10 months. However, the law also said he could avoid jail time if he simply paid a fine. And that fine was about US$90. He was also ordered to pay restitution to Kirstie's family, but that restitution was based on his salary and the total came to just over $2,100. Meanwhile, there were plenty of whispers that Sin Yam got a big payoff from someone for taking the fall. Kirstie's family created something called the justice for Kirstie Campaign and began pressuring the Mexican authorities to do something. They've made applications to human rights councils. A judge in the case was found to have made mistakes in his handling of the situation. And U2 has pushed the government to get to the bottom of what happened and what's happened since then? Very little. In December 2009, the justice for Christie Campaign closed, saying that they had done everything that they possibly could. We have time for one more story on death and dying in the 1990s, Joey Ramon was sick. He had lymphoma. Fortunately, he had been properly diagnosed in 1994, and the treatment he was getting was working. However, he was also suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, something he'd been fighting since he was a kid. For example, when whenever he'd leave his apartment, the urge was always there to go back to see if he turned off the stove or properly locked the door. On December 30, 2000, he was overcome with a feeling that he hadn't closed a door properly on the other side of town. He fought the urge, but eventually his OCD demanded that he do something. So he left his apartment to go check on that door. It was a cold and icy day in New York City. On his way to that door, wherever it was, Joey slipped and fell. And because his bones were so weak and brittle from all the chemo, he broke his hip. That required hospitalization. It turned out that his hip was broken so badly that he needed surgery, and for that he needed to be taken off his anti lymphoma meds. The lymphoma came out of remission and Joey wasn't ever able to go home again. On April 15, 2001, a month before his 50th birthday, he was close to the end. He asked to listen to a song in the boombox that was next to his bed at New York's Presbyterian hospital. It was U2's in a little While, a song from the all that you can't leave behind album. Those who were with him at the time say that just as the song ended, Joey passed away.
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Slow down my beating heart slowly.
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This has been heavy stuff, right? But there's still more to come. On the second half of this program detailing the last moments of famous musicians, we'll look at Amy Winehouse Scott Weiland, David Bowie, Dolores o' Riordan, and more. It won't bring them back, but at least we'll have some answers to deaths that we desperately need to have explanations for. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of ongoing history podcasts available through all the podcast platforms. They're all free, and binging is heartily encouraged. We can meet up at my website, which is a journal of musicalthhings.com it's updated every day with music, news, information and recommendations. You should probably also get the free daily newsletter so you won't miss anything. I'm on X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. Facebook, Instagram, Threads, blue sky, even TikTok from time to time. And all email can be directed to allenllencross CA for fastest service. Technical productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time for Part two of the Last Moments of I'm Alan Cross.
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You've been listening to the ongoing History of New Music Podcasts with Alan Cross. Subscribe to the podcast through itunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and everywhere you find your favorite podcasts.