Dewey Phillips - Unknown

Ever more reliant on prescription painkillers following a car accident when he was younger, he slipped into decline and, despite finding other radio openings, Phillips’s on air tomfoolery became harsh and cynical, he was, by the mid sixties, a broken man. He died in his sleep, aged forty two.

Dewey Phillips born May 13, 1926, died September 28, 1968

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Jimi Hendrix - Suicide

Police arriving at London’s Samarkand Hotel the following morning definitely found Hendrix alone, lying dead in a pool of his own vomit. Perhaps the greatest musical talent of his generation was gone, in the saddest, most squalid way, the circumstances of which have been the subject of endless conjecture in the decades since, taking in suicide, medical incompetence, and even murder. But Jimi Hendrix was far from the drug crazed control freak that some would have him, more a sensitive, misguided soul frustrated and finally slain by the myth that had been encircling him for some time, when all he wanted to do was play.

Jimi Hendrix born November 27, 1942, died September 18, 1970

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Alan Wilson - Suicide

Wilson had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic, but to no avail, on 3 September 1970, his body was discovered in a sleeping bag outside Bob Hite’s California residence at Topanga Canyon, an empty bottle of tranquillizers by his side.

Alan Wilson born July 4, 1943, died September 3, 1970

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Leroy Griffin - Burned to Death

(front center)

Griffin’s death in September 1966 will forever remain mysterious. It seems that he and a work colleague had an altercation at a Koppers coke plant where Griffin still occasionally laboured to earn a living. Horrifically, Griffin either fell or was pushed into one of the factory’s giant furnaces, where he was quickly burned to death.

Leroy Griffin born April 5, 1934, died September 1, 1966

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