This encyclopedia reveals the truth behind thousands of fascinating stories about the industry's biggest departed stars, including strange facts, lucky escapes, and top-ten death discs.

The dark moments of rock history fascinate and tantalize like the pathos of Greek tragedy. The bottom sinks lower, the air seems colder, the bad endings - when they are bad - seem beyond bad. The unlucky practitioners of our most thriving form of communal experience seem to hit rock bottom in ways only the most glamorous among us can - publicly. The stories remain obscure, half-seen in the shadowlands. In her familiar style, Pamela Des Barres shines...

"The stories of rock musicians who die young are the thing of lore and legend. Accidents, drug overdoses, plane crashes-all have taken the lives of male rock stars still in their primes. But what became of their widowed brides? How did they survive a loss so great? What is it like to have to share your grief with millions of strangers? And where are these widows today?"--

"Recounts more than seventy untimely, unexpected, and just plain unfortunate deaths, some in passing, some in depth, some in almost painful detail, drawn from well over a decade's worth of personal interviews and conversations."--Cover.

The summer of 1969 was a momentous one in modern history. It was a season punctuated with change. Apollo 11 landed on the moon, thousands of young fans flocked to rock 'n' roll festivals like Woodstock and the controversial Altamont Freeway concert, the Manson Family cult were on a high-profile killing spree, and the first uprisings that would become the Stonewall Riots began. It was an electric summer of violent endings, new beginnings, and social...

Robert Johnson. Brian Jones. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse. They were inspirational, controversial, talismanic and innovative. They lead lives full of myth, scandal, sex, drugs and some of the most glorious music that has ever heard. Though each of their lives were cut tragically short at the age of 27, they would all leave the world having changed it irrevocably. Chris Salewicz tells, in intimate detail, the...