Rock & Roll Heaven: John Bonham

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The late John Bonham was the drummer for Led Zeppelin

Sometime on September 23rd, 1980, John Bonham began to drink. This was not an unusual event in Bonham's life. He was a big drinker.

But the binge that he was about to undertake was a big one even by his standards. Over the next day and a half, Bonham, would take approximately 40 shots of vodka in a drinking binge that would end his life.

John Bonham was the drummer for the legendary rock band 'Led Zeppelin', and he was universally considered one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock music.

As he undertook that final late September alcohol binge, he and his mates in Zeppelin were in preparations for their first world tour in over three years, a tour that would never take place.

The legendary original Led Zeppelin lineup was born as a band in London, England in the latter half of 1968, at the height of the 1960's 'flower child' and 'hippie generation' crazes. Jimmy Page, who was and is universally regarded as one of the greatest guitarists on the planet, and his band 'The Yardbirds' had just broken up.

Page met up with singer Robert Plant and began to consider putting a new band together. It wasn't long before the talented Bonham, who both men knew from studio sessions, would be recruited heavily and agree to join the band.

With the addition of bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones the four men originally set out as 'The New Yardbirds', but following their first touring effort it was obvious to all that they had little in common with that original band. The band's name was changed to 'Led Zeppelin', and the rest is music history.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Ty Longley

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Members of Great White perform tribute to Ty Longley

Seven years ago tonight one of the greatest tragedies in music history happened. At about 11:05pm on what was a Thursday night, the band 'Great White' took the stage at a Rhode Island club known as 'The Station' and began to play the opening strains of their song "Desert Moon".

For 99 of the bands fans, and one of it's own members, what appeared to be the beginning of a night of great music would instead turn out to be the final moments of their lives.

As Ty Longley blasted into the opening chords of "Desert Moon" with his bandmates, the 31-year old was enjoying all that the rock and roll life had to offer. He was young, playing the music that he loved in front of enthusiastic fans for a living, and had a beautiful girlfriend who was expecting the couple's first child.

The Sharon, PA native Longley had joined Great White just three years earlier, well after the band had enjoyed their greatest success during the big-hair 'glam rock' days of the late 1980's. Back then the song "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" was heard across radios everywhere and the accompanying music video was an MTV staple. By that fateful night in 2003, the band was struggling for survival.

Great White had formally broken up during the period of 2000-2001, but original members Jack Russell and Mark Kendall decided to put on a tour together. Doing classic Great White songs and some of Russell's solo work, the band actually billed itself as "Jack Russell's Great White". Some of the original band's fans simply referred to them as 'Fake White', and it was this group that Longley joined as a guitarist and keyboard player.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter at the White House in 1972
(Photo: Robert L. Knudsen via Wiki Commons)

On February 4th, 1983, one of the most beautiful voices in the history of modern popular music was silenced forever when Karen Carpenter was rushed to a California hospital and pronounced dead. She was only a month shy of her 33rd birthday. The cause of death was heart failure brought on by a long term battle with anorexia.

Back in November of 2008, I began what was to be a series of articles called "Rock and Roll Heaven" that would examine the controversial deaths and lives of artists in the modern music world. At that time the series began with articles on Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence, and Jim Morrison. This examination of Karen Carpenter continues that series.

Karen and her brother Richard were born and raised in Connecticut, but their parents moved out to California in 1963. Richard became a piano prodigy, but Karen was more of a tomboy into sports and showed little interest in music as a young girl. On entering high school she joined the school band, and from that developed an interest in playing the drums.

Karen fell in love with the drums and became an outstanding drummer. She joined up with Richard and a friend named Wes Jacobs, and the three became 'The Richard Carpenter Trio', playing mostly jazz at local clubs. They also played with a band known as 'Spectrum' and recorded numerous demos, but they had little recording success throughout the mid-1960's.

Karen and Richard finally were signed to a recording contract by A&M Records in 1969, and then in 1970 released their second album and first big smash titled 'Close to You'. The album and the two hugely popular singles "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" proved to be hits, the songs becoming modern masterpieces.

Rock & Roll Heaven, or Gone to Hell?

This past week I've brought you a series of mini-bios on rock stars who died young: 60's & 70's hippie icons Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison; 80's MTV generation star Michael Hutchence; 90's grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain.

Each of these young people died at those youthful stages of their lives thanks to conditions largely brought on by themselves: illicit drug use, excessive alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity.

In general, they were killed by their full immersion into the 'sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll' lifestyle.

There really is not a lot of redeeming value, but there are plenty of valuable lessons to be learned. They all seemed to have some similarities in background including unusual or unstable family situations as youngsters.

Most were the loner, artistic types whose outwardly extroverted lifestyles belied a depressed introverted reality only made worse by their substance abuse. They simply couldn't manage to face life squarely.

Many didn't become parents themselves, never found the joy that raising a child and caring for something deeply outside your own self brings. They never grew up. And they often left a trail of death and destruction in their wakes.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Jim Morrison

How many times have you heard the old adage 'These things happen in threes' concerning the deaths of famous people?

In July of 1971, while the youth of America in general and the rock world in particular were still reeling from the dual deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix just months earlier, the third domino fell.

Jim Morrison, the electrifying lead singer of the rock band 'The Doors', snorted some heroin, climbed into a bathtub, and died there of an overdose of the drug. He was just 27 years old. Is that age of death getting to sound like a broken record?

Morrison was born in Florida in 1943 to a U.S. Navy officer and his wife. His father, George Morrison, fought in the Pacific theatre of World War II, was intimately involved in the 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident during the Vietnam War, and became the youngest Admiral in the history of the Navy. He is still alive today, about to turn 90 years old this coming January, nearly four decades after his son's death.

As a small child, the Morrison family moved to New Mexico, and he became fascinated by many of the customs and the culture of the Native Americans in the area. At only four years of age, young Jim was out in the desert for a drive with his family when they witnessed the aftermath of a horrific auto accident that resulted in death and injuries to members of a Native American family.

He would later go on to say that it was the pivotal incident in his life, one that he would repeatedly make reference to and draw upon images of in his songs. The move to New Mexico was just one of a number of family moves in his childhood that included California, Virginia, and Florida stops due to his father's military duties.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Michael Hutchence

Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. It's the oldest cliche in the business. Rock stars are legendary for their booze consumption, drug abuse, and sexual escapades.

Some, including the legends already profiled in this "Rock and Roll Heaven" series - Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain - have died from this excessive lifestyle.

In April of 1997, the popular Aussie rock band 'INXS' released their new album, and front man Michael Hutchence and the rest of the group commenced a tour to support the work. They wound down this leg of the tour in Australia in November and were preparing for a big 20th anniversary world tour for the band.

Hutchence was in a generally upbeat mood. The band was doing well and he had a new girlfriend, Paula Yates. Life was good for the 37-year old star as he went out to dinner with his father on Friday, November 21st. Later that night he drank and partied with a couple of friends back at his hotel, but the next morning he would miss a hastily arranged breakfast with a former girlfriend.

At noon on November 22nd, the maid went to his room and found Hutchence hanging from the door's spring lever by a belt wrapped around his neck. He was naked, and the room was reportedly littered with booze bottles and prescription drug containers.

An investigation revealed there was no foul play, and there was no suicide note. Interviews with family and friends found it highly unlikely that he had committed suicide, though that was the officially recognized cause of death.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Kurt Cobain

The tragic, untimely loss of young superstar talent in the rock-n-roll world has often been associated with the hippie-era, flower child period of the late 1960's and early 1970'2.

But the passing years have shown that it is not times that are to blame, but the choices these individuals made within a culture and lifestyle that often encourages those choices.

The perfect case in point came over three decades after the deaths of Janis and Jimi, with the death of garage band, grunge-rock legend Kurt Cobain. On April 5th, 1994, Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the popular band 'Nirvana', killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head at his home in Seattle.

Cobain had chronic suicidal tendencies that manifested themselves many times over the years, and increasingly in the months leading to his death. These incidents, and indeed his final demise, likely grew out of a bout with classic, severe depression made worse by the abuse of alcohol and drugs, particularly heroin.

He was just 27 years old. Sound familiar? The more things change in the rock world, the more they stay the same.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Jimi Hendrix

The rock world's loss of Janis Joplin at such a young age was an especially difficult blow for the youth of America in 1970, in large part because it was their 2nd such blow in a short period.

Just two weeks before Janis' death by drug overdose, on the other side of the world, legendary American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix had died under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

In London, England, Hendrix attended a late-night party on Thursday night, September 17th. He was picked up from the party in the early morning hours of Friday the 18th by his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, who drove him back to her apartment at the Samarkand Hotel. Dannemann's story, which frequently changed, was that Hendrix then took nine of her sleeping pills.

What is definitely known is that at 11:18am the next morning, someone made a phone call for an ambulance to go to the room. The ambulance crew arrived just nine minutes later, and found the door to the flat was open. They saw a man lying on the bed, and there was no one else in the room.

As they looked closer, they found the man in what they described as a 'horrific' condition. There was red and brown vomit covering him, and covering the pillow and bed as well. The man's airway had been completely blocked, and he was clearly dead. Police arrived quickly as well, and the man was transported to the hospital where he was officially pronounced as dead on arrival.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Janis Joplin

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly four decades now. On Saturday, October 3rd, 1970 Janis Joplin had stopped at Sunset Sound Studios in L.A. to listen to the instrumental for a song that she would be recording the following day. She failed to show up on Sunday for that recording.

The producers became upset and sent a roadie to the Landmark Motor Hotel where Janis had been residing since the end of August. He found her custom-painted psychedelic Porsche in the parking lot, and proceeded to her room. No doubt he was likely thinking that the hard partying 27-year old was sleeping off a Saturday night hangover or high.

On entering her room, however, he was stunned to find her dead on the floor where she had collapsed after an overdose of heroin during a night in which she had also been drinking alone.

A small, private funeral service was attended by her immediate family, and Janis was cremated with her ashes scattered by plane into the Pacific Ocean and along California's Stinson Beach.

Just three days earlier, on October 1st, she had made what she never realized would be her final recording, a birthday greeting of the song "Happy Trails" for John Lennon. Lennon's birthday was October 9th, and the recording did not reach his home until after Joplin's death. It was like receiving a gift from the grave, the haunting voice of a ghost.

But the tragedy of Janis Joplin's death is not that she died so young, with so much talent, and with so much still to offer the world.

Rock & Roll Heaven ?

"If there's a rock-n-roll heaven, you know they got a hell of a band" are the famous lyrics from a song that was itself called "Rock and Roll Heaven" released as a comeback reunion hit by the 60's duo The Righteous Brothers.

 In 1974, the song rose to #3 on the U.S. charts, talking in its lyrics about the untimely deaths of a number of rock, soul, and pop music stars.

The song perfectly leads into a special series that I will be doing here at the blog next week called 'Rock and Roll Heaven'.

Each day from Monday through Saturday, barring some incredibly major world news event, I will do a mini-bio on some of the legendary rock stars over the years who have died young. I will explore how they died, how they lived, their contributions to music, their home lives, etc.

For diehard fans of particular stars, it may be old ground. But for many, it will be a nostalgic trip back in time, and not just to the psychedelic 60's and turbulent 70's, but also to the 80's and 90's and beyond. And hopefully for everyone, I will mix in enough lessons to be learned from those lives.

There will be good, bad, and ugly, and there will be criticism of legends. The following is the schedule: Janis Joplin (Monday), Jimi Hendrix (Tuesday), Kurt Cobain (Wednesday), Michael Hutchence (Thursday), Jim Morrison (Friday) - and then there will be a wrap-up piece.

If it goes well, and folks want to see a few more, I will consider it as an ongoing feature into the future. So stay tuned here each day next week to find out whether they have a hell of a rock band in heaven, or whether simply these burned-out stars went straight to hell.

NOTE: all entries in this series into the future can be viewed by simply clicking on the 'Rock and Roll Heaven' link at the bottom of each article in the series