I hope it’s not bad luck to write about rock star plane crashes… not that I’m a rock star — far from it, but I will be getting on a plane soon. Here goes nothing! Music mag Blender put together a list of the 10 worst rock star plane crashes, and here they are in no particular order:
- Buddy Holly, 1959
- Patsy Cine, 1969
- Otis Redding and the Bar-Keys, 1967
- Jim Croce, 1973
- Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1977
- Rhandy Rhoads, 1982
- Rick Nelson, 1985
- Stevie Ray Vaughan, 1990
- John Denver, 1997
- AAliyah, 2001
The most tragic of them all has to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, and not just because most of the band died. But check this out: according to Blender, “Immediately following the crash, drummer Artimus Pyle ran nearly a mile with broken ribs to get help from a nearby farmhouse, but the farmer freaked at the sight of the bloodied drummer and shot him in the shoulder with a shotgun, further injuring him but sparing his life.”
How’s that for bad luck?