Cliff Burton
While on their European tour, Burton and Kirk Hammett drew from a stack of cards to see who would get the top bunk on the bus. Burton picked the Ace of Spades and so he got to sleep on Kirk Hammett's bed, as Hammett recalls on MTV's 1992 Bio of the band as well as in the VH1 show "Behind the Music". Burton died when the band's tour bus hit black ice (though it is still disputed that they may have crashed because the driver may have been drinking) and flipped over in rural Sweden (Kronobergs län). As the bus was skidding out of control and eventually rolled over on the grass, Burton fell out of a window, landed underneath the bus and was crushed by the bus. [1] Burton was crushed again when the winch cable lifting the bus off him snapped, dropping the bus on him a second time.
The other people on the bus (James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, the drum technician, and two guitar technicians) recount seeing Burton's feet sticking out from under the bus. That sight has haunted them for a long time.
Burton's body was cremated. At the ceremony, the instrumental "Orion" from the album Master of Puppets was played. Because of this, Metallica never played Orion in full live until June 3, 2006, although bits of the song have been used to bridge between other songs.
Tim Buckley
On June 28, 1975 after returning from the last show of a tour in Dallas he decided he could relax and snorted heroin at a friend's house. Having diligently controlled his habit while on the road, his tolerance was lowered, and the combination of a small amount of drugs mixed with the amount of alcohol he'd been consuming all day to celebrate the tour's end was too much. His friend took him home thinking he was merely drunk. Tim was put to bed by his friends, who told his wife that he'd also used some barbituates. As she watched TV in bed beside him, Buckley turned blue. Attempts by friends and paramedics to revive him were unsuccessful. Reportedly, Buckley's last words were "Bye Bye Baby," delivered in a way reminiscent of the line in Ray Charles' "Driftin' Blues." Buckley was 28.
Nick Drake
In 1974, Drake felt well enough to write and record a few new songs. However, on November 25, he died of an overdose of the antidepressant Tryptizol. The coroner concluded that the cause of Drake's death was suicide, although this was disputed by friends and relatives. Antidepressants of that type (tricyclic) are lethal if ingested at doses higher than as typically prescribed. His mother recounts that he must have had difficulty sleeping and had got up in the night to have a bowl of cornflakes. It's unclear whether he took more pills to help him sleep or to take his own life.
John Entwistle
John Entwistle died in a hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on June 27, 2002 one day before the scheduled first show of The Who's 2002 US tour. The number of the actual room in which he died has remained a closely guarded secret, ostensibly to prevent the room becoming a shrine/place of pilgrimage.
The Las Vegas medical examiner determined that death was due to a heart attack induced by an undetermined amount of cocaine. Though the amount in his bloodstream was not great, the drug caused his coronary arteries — already damaged by a pre-existing heart condition — to contract, which led to the fatal heart attack. Entwistle, like Townshend, battled cocaine addiction through much of his adult life.