I was going to say that one of these people was not like the others, but it seems that Tammy Wynette was an intravenous drug user when she died of a blood clot, so it's likely there was at least a correlation. So they all likely died of drug consumption...

Interestingly, two of them were Black Jehovah's Witnesses who both became addicted to legal painkillers which they were forced to secretly use to deal with injuries suffered from during their work - being burned in a Pepsi commercial for MJ, and serious damage to his feet from decades of doing strenuous dance moves in lifts for Prince.

If religion is to have any point at all, it's supposed to help you out in such situations, not drive your problem underground.

For what it's worth, I saw another victim of substance abuse, Jaco Pastorius, a year before he died, in the crowd at a Chick Corea/Al Di Miola concert on Pier something-or-other on the West Side. He was off his ass on something or other, that shocked me because he'd been straight-edge, and was doing magic tricks, badly, for fans.

Here's a Pareles review of that show,. To be honest, it didn't make a huge impression on me musically. though it was perfectly fine. Aside from Jaco, my biggest memory was that Corea's Synclavier didn't appear in the mix for a whole song...

Within a year or two I was to see the Butthole Surfers at The World, a show I find almost no record of on the Internet, but one that changed my life.

I feel extremely lucky that as a significantly less successful musician I tried almost every drug under the sun and still outlived all of the above talents, and in good health. Only cannabis and caffeine became habitual, though I did stagger home at 6AM this May after a drunk to celebrate the passing of our little and very old dog...

But I never did try opiates or opioids, partly because of the bad examples above, partly because the idea didn't really appeal to me. (But then I had cocaine occasionally over a very long period, even bought a gram sometimes, and it didn't stick with me, probably because it's pretty boring.)

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, my hat is off to these great talents, and I wish someone had been able to help them away from the brink, but it was not to be.