00:00The ungrounded guitar.
00:01On the 12th of May, 1976, William Keith Ralph, the 33-year-old English frontman of the Yardbirds,
00:09was down in the basement of his home in Hounslow, Greater London, practicing an electric guitar.
00:15He'd later founded Renaissance and sung lead and harmonica on some of the great British blues rock of the 60s.
00:22The guitar wasn't properly grounded.
00:24He was reportedly standing on a gas pipe when the current went through him,
00:28and electricity off that ungrounded instrument killed him.
00:31He was found by his 8-year-old son, Daniel.
00:35The popular story that he died in a bathtub is wrong.
00:38His death was electrocution while playing guitar at home, announced two days later.
00:43The party trick.
00:44Sandy Denny, born Alexandra Aline McLean Denny, was the preeminent British folk rock singer,
00:51the only guest vocalist ever on a Led Zeppelin studio album.
00:55By 31, her life had collapsed into heavy drinking.
01:00Friends knew her party trick.
01:02She'd throw herself off bar stools or downstairs for laughs,
01:05a slapstick routine that stopped being funny once the alcohol took over.
01:10In late March 1978, on holiday in Cornwall,
01:14she fell down a staircase and smashed her head on concrete.
01:18The headaches never really stopped.
01:20Doctors gave her strong painkillers,
01:22the kind you shouldn't mix with alcohol, but she kept drinking.
01:26In early April, she took at least one more serious fall at home.
01:30On April 13, her husband Trevor Lucas quietly sold their car
01:34and flew to Australia with their 9-month-old daughter Georgia,
01:38afraid to leave the baby with Sandy.
01:41She then moved into the London home of a friend, Miranda Ward.
01:45On the morning of April 17, she was found unconscious at the foot of a steep flight of stairs.
01:51This time, the party trick was no joke.
01:54Sandy never woke up.
01:56Taken to Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon,
01:59she died on the 21st of April 1978.
02:03Officially, the cause of death was traumatic midbrain injury
02:07from blunt force head trauma after a fall down stairs.
02:12Steve Peregrin took, born Stephen Ross Porter,
02:16took his stage name from a Tolkien hobbit
02:18and was Mark Bolin's percussion partner in Tyrannosaurus Rex
02:21before Bolin fired him in 1969.
02:24By 1980, he was 31, broke,
02:27and living in a girlfriend's council flat in Notting Hill.
02:30On the 26th of October, 1980,
02:34he and his girlfriend injected morphine and ate magic mushrooms.
02:38The next day, he drank something with a cocktail cherry in it.
02:43He inhaled the cherry.
02:44It lodged in his airway and he asphyxiated.
02:47His death certificate reads asphyxiation after inhaling a cocktail cherry,
02:51and authorities ruled the drugs did not contribute.
02:54The empty clip.
02:56On the 23rd of January, 1978,
02:59Terry Kath, the 31-year-old founding guitarist of Chicago,
03:03the American whom Jimi Hendrix reportedly called better than himself,
03:07was at Rhodey Don Johnson's apartment in Canoga Park, California.
03:12After an all-night party,
03:13he sat at the kitchen table cleaning a 9mm pistol.
03:17Johnson warned him to be careful.
03:20Kath pulled the magazine and showed it was empty,
03:22reportedly joking,
03:23what do you think I'm going to do?
03:25Blow my brains out?
03:27He didn't clear the chamber.
03:29He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger,
03:31and the single round left in the chamber fired.
03:34Death was instant.
03:36The coroner ruled it an accidental self-inflicted gunshot,
03:39a week before his 32nd birthday.
03:42No charges were filed.
03:43The hay bale.
03:45Mike Edwards,
03:46the 62-year-old English cellist
03:48who joined Electric Light Orchestra in 1972,
03:52had long since left rock
03:54to become an Osho Sannyasin named Pramada,
03:56settling in Totnes, Devon,
03:59teaching music and playing with Devon Baroque.
04:02On the 3rd of September 2010,
04:05around 12.30 p.m.,
04:07he was driving his white van
04:08along the A381
04:11between Harbertonford and Hallwell.
04:13A 600-kilogram bale of hay,
04:16about 1,300 pounds,
04:19fell from a tractor on the hillside above,
04:21rolled down,
04:22crashed through a fence,
04:23and slammed into his van.
04:25He died instantly of multiple catastrophic injuries.
04:29The first emergency call came around 12.36 p.m.
04:32Two men were later tried on health and safety charges
04:34and, on the 19th of November 2012,
04:37found not guilty.
04:39The microphone.
04:40Leslie Harvey,
04:41the 27-year-old Scottish guitarist of Stone the Crows,
04:45younger brother of Alex Harvey
04:46and signed up by Led Zeppelin's manager,
04:49Peter Grant,
04:49was at the top-ranked ballroom in Swansea,
04:52Wales,
04:53on May 3, 1972.
04:55The microphone he reached for
04:57hadn't been properly earthed
04:59and had gone live through an ungrounded amplifier.
05:02When Harvey, himself grounded,
05:05grabbed it to sing,
05:06his body completed the circuit.
05:08He collapsed on stage.
05:10Paramedics arrived within minutes,
05:12but pronounced him dead.
05:13His guitar setup had been checked.
05:15The mic was the killer.
05:17The cause was accidental electrocution,
05:19and his death became one of the cases
05:21that pushed the industry
05:22towards stricter electrical safety.
05:25Pooh's Pool
05:26Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones,
05:28the 27-year-old founder of the Rolling Stones,
05:31had just weeks earlier been dismissed
05:33from his own band
05:34over his drinking and drug problems.
05:37He was living at Cotchford Farm
05:39near Hartfield, East Sussex,
05:41the former home of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne.
05:45On the night of July 2nd
05:47into the 3rd of July, 1969,
05:50after an evening of drinking,
05:51he was found motionless
05:53at the bottom of his swimming pool
05:54around midnight.
05:56His girlfriend gave artificial respiration,
05:58but he was gone.
06:00The coroner ruled death by misadventure,
06:02drowning while under the influence.
06:04His liver was twice normal weight.
06:07His children believe he was murdered,
06:09but Sussex police,
06:10reviewing it in 2010,
06:12found no evidence
06:13and refused to reopen the case.
06:15The front step.
06:17Wells Kelly,
06:18the 35-year-old American drummer
06:20and keyboardist
06:21who powered Orleans hits like
06:23Still the One
06:24and Dance With Me,
06:26was in London
06:26on the 28th of October, 1984,
06:30touring as Meatloaf's drummer.
06:32He went out partying,
06:33reportedly last seen drinking
06:35with Huey Lewis.
06:36He snorted a mixture of heroin
06:38and cocaine that night.
06:40Trying to get back
06:41into the London flat
06:42where he was staying,
06:43he collapsed on the front steps,
06:45slumped over a railing,
06:46and choked to death
06:47on his own vomit.
06:49The inquest pathologist
06:50found high levels
06:51of morphine and cocaine.
06:53The coroner ruled it misadventure.
06:55No one was ever charged.
06:57The wave.
06:58On the 2nd of January,
07:011997,
07:02Randy, California,
07:03born Randy Craig Wolf,
07:05the 45-year-old American guitarist
07:07of spirit
07:08who, as a teenager,
07:10played alongside Jimi Hendrix,
07:12was swimming off Molokai,
07:14Hawaii,
07:14on vacation visiting his mother,
07:16his 12-year-old son Quinn,
07:18in the water with him.
07:19Both got caught in a rip current.
07:21Randy shoved his son
07:22into an oncoming wave
07:23so it would carry the boy
07:24back toward shore.
07:26Quinn made it.
07:27Randy was swept out to sea
07:29and didn't surface.
07:31Authorities searched for two days
07:32before calling off the operation.
07:34His body was never recovered.
07:36After his death,
07:38royalties funded a music program
07:39for underprivileged kids
07:41in Ventura County,
07:42the Untouched Sandwich.
07:44Ellen Naomi Cohen,
07:46known as Mama Cass
07:47of the Mamas and the Papas,
07:49was 32 when she died,
07:51on the 29th of July, 1974,
07:54in a borrowed Mayfair flat in London,
07:57fresh off a successful two-week run
07:59at the London Palladium.
08:00Her dancer made her a ham sandwich
08:02and left it on the bedside table.
08:04She never took a bite of it.
08:06She went to bed
08:07and died in her sleep.
08:09Pathologist Keith Simpson
08:10found heart failure
08:11from fatty degeneration
08:13of the heart,
08:14no food in her airway,
08:15no drugs in her system.
08:17Her manager told a journalist
08:19to just say she died
08:21choking on the sandwich
08:22to dodge drug rumors.
08:23That lie became a global joke,
08:25and in 2020,
08:26the journalist finally admitted
08:28she'd spread it.
08:29Room 37.
08:31John Anthony Gonzale Jr.,
08:34known as Johnny Thunders,
08:36founder of the New York Dolls,
08:38was 38 when he checked
08:39into the street.
08:40Peter Guesthouse,
08:42in New Orleans' French Quarter
08:44on the 22nd of April, 1991,
08:47looking pale and sweaty.
08:49The clerk said he was
08:50very pale,
08:52like a geisha.
08:53On April 23rd,
08:55staff found him dead
08:56on the floor of Room 37,
08:58the room littered
08:59with methadone packets,
09:00a syringe in the toilet.
09:02The coroner's office
09:03publicly called it
09:04a cocaine and methadone overdose,
09:07but the full autopsy
09:09showed advanced lymphoma
09:10and leukemia,
09:12cirrhosis,
09:12and pulmonary edema,
09:14with only small,
09:15non-lethal drug levels.
09:17No one was ever charged,
09:19and Room 37
09:20became a fan pilgrimage site.
09:22The Junk on the Seabed
09:23Dennis Carl Wilson,
09:26the 39-year-old
09:27founding drummer
09:28of the Beach Boys
09:28and the only member
09:30who actually surfed,
09:31spent the 28th of December,
09:331983,
09:35drinking heavily
09:35around his boat
09:36in Marina del Rey
09:37Harbor, California.
09:39His blood alcohol
09:40later measured at 0.26.
09:42He got fixated
09:44on retrieving items
09:45he'd thrown overboard
09:45during his divorce
09:46three years earlier
09:47and kept diving
09:49into the 58-degree water
09:50in cut-off jeans
09:51and a mask.
09:52He dove one more time
09:54and didn't come back up.
09:55A forensic pathologist
09:57later concluded
09:57he likely suffered
09:58shallow water blackout.
10:00Divers found him
10:02curled in a fetal position
10:03about 13 feet down,
10:05beneath his own slip.
10:06The coroner ruled it
10:08accidental drowning,
10:09and on the 4th of January,
10:111984,
10:12the Coast Guard
10:13buried him at sea.
10:14Thanks so much
10:15for rocking with the channel
10:16for real.
10:17Hit that subscribe
10:18and turn on the bell
10:19so you don't miss
10:20a single one.
10:21And got a topic
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10:24Drop it in the comments.
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