Unplugged: Rock's dead heroes...

Pop giveth and pop taketh away. It is written that our rock stars should emerge in the right place at the right time to live the fantasy - but there's a flip side, too. Rock'n'roll has its own natural selection: just as some are plucked from obscurity to create history, others will achieve immortality only by the manner of their departures. Success in the music industry offers the means to check out new pleasures - while simultaneously offering pleasurable new ways to "check out".

The first recurring method of artist disposal seems to have been that of self-transport. With the unexpected success of "the devil's music" in the late Fifties, increased income meant that young rock'n'roll artists such as Buddy Holly had the muscle to make decisions about how they travelled from gig to gig. In what remains the biggest single tragedy to befall the industry, Holly hired the Beechcraft that, of course, sent him, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens careering into Iowa ranchland - and immortality - early in 1959.

It was Holly's pilot, Roger Petersen, who'd been inexperienced with what appears a relatively uncomplicated craft, though the half-baked idea had already been mooted by Elvis-approved gospel stalwarts The Blackwood Brothers, whose mainstays RW Blackwood and Bill Lyles made an unexpectedly early date with inspiration in 1954. Similarly, country giants Patsy Cline (she "went to pieces" in a Piper Comanche) and Jim Reeves (yep, another Beechcraft) provided a raft of material for their surviving lyricists by perishing in similar accidents during the early Sixties. Then, on the second "day the music died" in December 1967, Otis Redding's craft emulated Buddy's by, well, not quite reaching the dock of the bay.

Of course, it wasn't just flying accidents: the first "name" pop star to meet his maker was probably Tommy Gaither (of the doo-wop heart-throbs The Orioles), whose reaction to the sight of a drive-in restaurant was sadly all too literal back in 1950. Gene Vincent - crippled until his own premature death - perhaps wished he'd also perished in the accident that took Eddie Cochran in 1960, while Carl Perkins never fully recovered from the accident that eventually claimed his brother Jay.

Of the myriad vehicular disasters of the era, also worthy of a mention are the youngest of the Isley Brothers, Vernon - killed on his bicycle in 1955 - and rocker Johnny Burnette, who fell from an unlit boat trying to avert a collision some years after.

Of course, drug abuse had been claiming victims left, right and centre in jazz and blues before increased availability saw its various temptations become rock and pop's most mortal enemies during the Seventies. Despite the apparently harmless nature of the music, R&B saw several shocking deaths in the Sixties, including that of the Drifters vocalist Rudy Lewis, whose band chose to announce that he'd passed away following a heavy dinner so as to avoid unwanted press attention.

There was no hiding place for former heart-throb Frankie Lymon, however: the press swarmed all over his grandmother's apartment when the near-destitute has-been was found overdosed in her bathroom. At least Janis Joplin's 1970 Class A calamity gave the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles (now the Highland Gardens) a huge selling-point for decades to come. Junk also accounted for Baby Huey, Gram Parsons, Paul Kossoff and Tommy Bolin, among many others before the decade was out. And Jimi Hendrix - well, you know what happened to him.

After a brief spate of alcohol-related incidents (Keith Moon, Bon Scott and John Bonham among them), the spectre of Aids emerged to become the highest-profile killer of the wayward pop star during the Eighties. Beginning with disco star/producer Patrick Cowley (whose main charge, Sylvester, also died of the disease), HIV picked off the plucky and the promiscuous with alarming regularity into the Nineties and beyond, the most widely-grieved passing, by some distance, being that of Freddie Mercury in 1991.

Since that time (aside from the deaths of those ageing stars whose bodies have simply given up the ghost), the music-industry fatalities that have garnered the most column inches have been the spate of shootings that continue to sully rap as a genre (Tupac, Biggie, Jam Master Jay - the list goes on), each mirroring the last with depressing familiarity.

But there will always be those whose passing at least matches what they achieved while alive: pop music has been no stranger to a few unfamiliar forms of checking out from the business.

SELENA, THE 'LATINA MADONNA'

The Tex-Mex starlet Selena Quintanilla, despite considerable success in her homeland, was only to achieve world fame posthumously. Selena was highly touted in the US, even dubbed "the Latina Madonna" by many who saw a huge future for the 23-year-old singer. But, in spite of all the accolades poured upon her during the early Nineties, she maintained a considerate nature - which was eventually to cost her her life.

Selena's most ardent follower was an otherwise dour nurse named Yolanda Saldivar, who pestered the singer for months until allowed to run her fan club - an essential, after all. But it became obvious within months that all was not well. With fans complaining of getting nothing for their $20, Saldivar began withholding receipts and even went into hiding, having conjured up a trumped-up rape charge to deflect attention from her scam.

Eventually, Selena pursued her to a motel in Corpus Christi. Here, Saldivar finally confronted her boss - with a gun. Firing once, she managed to hit the singer in the shoulder, severing a main artery: Selena died in the foyer of the modest hostelry as the television cameras descended upon the scene. Those who took over the club then almost surreally offered fans tickets to Saldivar's trial in late 1995 - during which Selena's killer was sentenced to life imprisonment.

STEVE TOOK

Although not as high profile a demise as that of his boss - the meeting of the Mini in which Marc Bolan was a passenger and the killer tree in Barnes, south-west London, in 1977 - the former Tyrannosaurus Rex bongo player Steve Peregrine Took's untimely passing certainly outplayed Bolan's in the esoteric stakes.

It had taken three years since the latter's death for royalties to find their way into Took's bank account, but once they did, he celebrated. In a haze of booze, morphine and magic mushrooms, Took lay back to enjoy his temporary wealth, snacking on a bowl of cherries as he did so. His mouth numbed, the percussionist choked on a stray pit. If there's any moral to this frankly peculiar tale, it's perhaps that if you're going to get stoned, then see that your cherries are, too.

TERRY KATH

One of rock'n'roll's keenest weaponry enthusiasts, the guitarist with the band Chicago Terry Kath almost predictably boasted one of the most idiotic deaths in rock. Years of platinum success had culminated with the group's transatlantic 1976 chart-topper, "If You Leave Me Now", a pretty tune that had seen Kath pocket a pretty penny - much of which was then offloaded to furnish his growing firearms collection.

One could say that it all came to a head at a party for one of Chicago's crew members in January 1978. Eager to impress anyone who could be bothered - or was sober enough - to pay attention, Kath twirled a .38 about his head before proceeding to pull the trigger and, uh, "take away the biggest part" of himself before all and sundry. Again, he'd not been the first to pull this foolish stunt (Johnny Ace, Christmas 1954), and nor would he be the last (Hungary still mourns schmaltzy Jimmy Zambo, who shot himself, accidentally, in 2002). And "Montego Bay" hit-maker Bobby Bloom shot himself as he cleaned his gun.

DIMEBAG DARRELL

Metal's first and only on-stage assassination would appear to be that of 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott - former axe-wielder with the incendiary and hugely popular Pantera - who, by 2004, had emerged with a new band in the shape of Damageplan. As 250 rock diehards crammed into the Villa Rosa Club, in Columbus, Ohio, they were unaware that a gunman, angered by Abbott's earlier decision to break up his beloved Panthera, was in their midst. Nathan Gale managed to take out not only Abbott, but three others, including (ironically) the band's security guard, before being picked off himself by a policeman.

The venue was soon awash with a variety of inverted crosses; it's little surprise that rockers refer to this event as 'The Day the Metal Died'.

MAMONAS ASSASSINAS

Premonitions are a recurring theme. Eddie Cochran feared his own death in a car crash just before it occurred, and Marc Bolan dreaded that he'd emulate his hero.

The strangest tale is that of the Brazilian rock scoundrels Mamonas Assassinas. Shifting millions of records at home in 1995, the group anticipated a private flight to Portugal with trepidation. Perhaps prompted by the drummer Sergio Reoli (who collected air-crash cuttings as a hobby), the keyboardist Julio Rasec had told his hairdresser the previous day of his premonition of a plane crash, while the singer Dinho Alves told ground staff that the only "smash" they'd make would be his own head in an accident. Within hours, the group lay shattered on a Sao Paulo mountainside. Mourning fans lined the route to disaster as they wailed through their greatest hits (surely a bizarre display, given the overtly sexual nature of the lyrics). Religious groups used the event as a cautionary tale against "the devil's music", but the public were in shock at the prescience of the Brazilian psychic Mother Mae Dinah, who'd described "dark shadows" around the band and predicted their passing in an air crash some months before the event.

DARBY CRASH

The nihilistic Darby Crash of LA punks The Germs decided to emulate the death (and thus, he believed, the immortality) of his hero Sid Vicious. On 7 December 1980, Crash loaded up on heroin in his bathroom and arranged himself in the shape of a cross, the legend "Here lies Darby C" above his head. He arrived on the other side without much trouble - but any shout he may have had of headlines was utterly scuppered by the actions of one Mark Chapman the following day.

KING CURTIS

Despite the propensity for shootings in rap, unlawful killing isn't a recent development in popular music. But perhaps the least likely victims were the early kings of knockabout, The Coasters. Beginning with the 1971 stabbing of saxophone legend "King" Curtis Ousley - outside his New York City apartment by a drug addict with whom he'd argued - the "Yakety Yak" hit-makers have suffered an extraordinary series of murders, the most notorious that of basso profundo Nathaniel "Buster" Wilson in 1980.

A member of original Coaster Cornell Gunter's spin-off act, Wilson knew too much about the double-dealings of band manager Patrick Cavanaugh - who, grimly, had the performer shot and dismembered. The resultant case went via US television's 60 Minutes before Cavanaugh was eventually brought to justice. Gunter himself was then shot in mysterious circumstances as he sat in his car 10 years later.

HARRY NILSSON

No conspiracies surrounding Harry Nilsson. However, this apparently genial star appears to have been something of a dark talisman during the Seventies and early Eighties. The talented singer/songwriter (who died prematurely in 1994) racked up an astonishing string of casualties-by-association during his most prolific era.

With early success proving somewhat elusive, Nilsson was presented with the song "Without You" in 1971, cowritten by Brits Pete Ham and Tom Evans. The pair had scored several hits with Badfinger, the Beatles-approved Welsh pop act. Nilsson's version was a worldwide smash the following year. A shockingly poor management deal, however, saw that Evans and Ham secured almost no royalties for a hit that today would see them millionaires many times over. For the impoverished Pete Ham, it was all too much - he hanged himself just three years later, his suicide note talking of the " bastards" who'd cheated him out of his legacy. Tom Evans never overcame the death of his close friend - he, too, hanged himself at his home, in 1983.

By this time, though, Nilsson's "influence" had taken its toll elsewhere....

No longer raking it in as she had with The Mamas & The Papas, the now solo Cass Elliot needed a place to stay as she toured the UK in 1974: her good friend, it seemed, had a solution. Sadly, the critically overweight singer was found dead in Nilsson's Chelsea flat on July 29 that year. Then, four years on lightning struck a second time: incorrigible Who drummer Keith Moon (another of Nilsson's long-time pals) borrowed the same apartment as he and his girlfriend recovered from the excesses of attending the launch of (perhaps fittingly) The Buddy Holly Story. Except that Moon didn't recover: aged just 32, he slipped away after ingesting that number of prescription tablets.

Understandably, Nilsson was horrified by this latest development and sold the London property immediately. Now feeling himself to be cursed, the musician looked to the solace of other friends. He wasn't short of support: one very close friend helped to allay Nilsson's fears, inviting his former drinking buddy to join him in New York. Yep, John Lennon - who'd predicted the shocking manner of his own death in an interview some years before.

MERLE WATSON

Finally - can death be unavoidable, written in the stars perhaps? In the case of musician Merle Watson, this would appear to be so. In October 1985, the noted blues slide-guitarist made the misguided decision of embarking upon some woodwork in the middle of the night. Gashing his arm severely on a splinter from his band-saw, Watson raced off in his tractor to a neighbour's house to have a tourniquet applied: he then attempted to drive home with one arm. Unfortunately, so determined were the higher powers to get their man that Watson's brakes locked, throwing the seriously injured man from his vehicle, which then fell on top of him, killing him.

'Number One in Heaven - The Heroes Who Died for Rock'n'Roll' by Jeremy Simmonds is published by Penguin in October

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