Things Rock Stars Were Buried With

While people like to think that, deep down, the rich and famous are – as the tabloid puts it – just like us, in reality, their lives are so very, very different. Living as, say, a rock star even for one day would blow a regular Joe's mind, what with all the fan adoration, the ability to buy anything they want, and the strange job requirements. No human can be really normal after living like that for very long.

So it should come as no surprise that, considering how bizarre their lives are, the deaths of rock stars are often just as strange. Sure, many of them die in sudden or tragic ways, but after their loved ones get the news and things calm down, even then the late rockers can still manage to be so weird. Take their funerals, for instance. They might need walls of security guards, or be attended by thousands of fans, or even be broadcast live.

The trend continues even into those things that go into the ground with rock stars' bodies. When you have tons of money, priceless items, famous friends, and an odd personality molded from years of being way too famous, the resulting decisions of what a rock star is buried with can be eyebrow-raising. While some of the famous musicians on this list chose to be buried with keepsakes anyone could understand not wanting to leave behind, others decided they were going to go a much more rock-star route, even in death.

"Dimebag" Darrell Abbott of the band Pantera was, like many people, a massive fan of Van Halen. According to Van Halen News Desk, even as Pantera became an iconic band in their own right, with Dimebag Darrell in the thick of it for two decades, he still talked constantly in interviews about how much he loved, respected, and was inspired by the other band.

Dimebag Darrell was tragically killed while performing in 2004. On December 8, he was on stage at a venue in Ohio, headbanging and "doing his thing" according to a witness (via Rolling Stone), when a "deranged fan" jumped on the stage, pulled a gun, and shot him dead. The gunman killed three others before being shot by a police officer.

Eddie Van Halen had only met Dimebag Darrell once, a few weeks before the latter died. But when the late singer's brother asked for a copy of the iconic yellow and black "Bumblebee" guitar Van Halen made famous to put in the coffin with Dimebag Darrell, the rocker did one better. When Van Halen arrived for the memorial, he was carrying his actual guitar from the 1970s. His reasoning? "An original should have an original." Van Halen didn't place the guitar in the casket himself, saying he preferred to remember Dimebag Darrell as he was in life, the one time they met.

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Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, was a phenomenon. However, people commented on his physical appearance in his last years, which betrayed the fact he was unwell. Still, his death in 1977 at the age of just 42 was a shock.

It was also an event. Elvis in death was almost bigger than Elvis in life. According to The Express, by the time Elvis' body was returned to his Graceland Estate from the hospital, thousands of people were already surrounding his home. His father decided the public would be allowed to walk past Elvis' coffin. This meant he had to look his best. A BBC reporter was allowed in to see the body before everyone else, and decades later, he wrote in The Daily Mail that the rock star was dressed in a black suit and white cravat. The official fan club Elvis Australia records he was also wearing one of his famous "TCB" (Taking Care of Business) lightning bolt rings (a different one is pictured above).

The funeral director, Robert Kendall, later told the poignant story (via The Express) of how Elvis' daughter, the 9-year-old Lisa Marie, put something personal in her father's coffin. Approaching him with a thin bracelet, she asked, "Mister Kendall, can I give this to my daddy?" He agreed, and put it on Elvis' right wrist, as instructed by Lisa Marie, although he made sure to hide it under the rocker's sleeve cuff so none of the thousands of fans who were about to walk past would be tempted to grab a memento to take home.

Kevin Michael "GG" Allin, frontman of the Murder Junkies, was ... unique, to say the least. Kerrang! explained how Allin was the punkiest of punk rockers, a "poop-smeared man from New Hampshire" who would "slice open his skull with a broken bottle" on stage during a performance, and top it off by eating a women's sanitary product. That wasn't something he did once and it became infamous, either. That was every show. Or at least, the quieter ones.

Allin's life offstage was no less terrifying. As a boy, his father used to dig pits in the basement and threaten the family by saying that's where he would bury them. Allin escaped, at least mentally, by abusing drugs and alcohol. This eventually culminated in an overdose in 1993, when Allin was 36.

The funeral for GG Allin was never going to be normal. According to "Death and the Rock Star," Allin went to the grave as he had requested, with his body unwashed or cleaned in any way after he died. Mourners fed the five-days old corpse — displayed in an open casket — drugs and alcohol, added stickers to his coffin, and drew on the body in marker. Allin went to the grave in a jockstrap, leather jacket, and wearing headphones connected to a Walkman playing one of his albums. (He would have brought a bottle of whiskey as well, but the mourners took it out of the coffin and drank it.)

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Chris Bell's name might not ring a bell to most people, but his band Big Star has achieved cult status, according to Memphis news site Commercial Appeal. However, at the time, it wasn't clear they would ever make it big. After being signed to a small local label and releasing their first LP, the cockily named "#1 Album," to rave reviews, their success was hampered by distribution issues, a drug arrest that ended their tour, and limited radio play.

While he would go on to release a brilliant solo album as well, Chris was deeply hurt by what seemed like the failure of his band. "Depression can come on very strongly at a time of loss," his older brother David Bell told the website. "And it was almost my sense that he had put such an enormous amount of effort into this project, that ["#1 Album's"] failure was a crushing blow."

In 1978, things were finally looking up and the album was being rediscovered. It was even rereleased by a British record company. "[Chris] was over the moon about that," David said. "Because the LP had imprinted on the back 'EMI Records: Hayes, Middlesex, England' — just like all Beatles albums." But just after Christmas, Chris was in a single-car accident and died on impact. He was 27. At his funeral, his love for the music he'd worked so hard on was memorialized: His sister Sarah made sure someone brought a vinyl copy of "#1 Album" to put in the coffin and bury with Chris.

For two musical icons like James Brown and Michael Jackson, who lived lives as big as the performances they gave on stage, it's no surprise that they both went out the same way, with massive funerals that were just as much a show.

Brown was the first of the two to die, passing away in 2006. According to Yahoo! Entertainment, his funeral took place in the famous Apollo Theater in New York City and saw thousands of mourners attend. This means Brown is another one of those celebrities whose corpses are plastered across the internet. The most shocking thing about those photos, however, might be the coffin his body was in. It even has a name: The Promethean. Costing up to $30,000 in 2006 money, it was solid bronze and plated in 24-carat gold. 

One of the many celebrities who got to spend time with Brown's body before the larger ceremony was Michael Jackson. He was obviously transfixed. "He stood there, I guess, an hour or so just looking," funeral director Charles Reid told the New York Daily News (via Yahoo! Entertainment). "He asked who requested the gold-plated casket. I said, 'Well, it's the family's decision.' He asked if that's something Mr. Brown wanted. I said, 'Entertainers, they always say solid gold.'"

Jackson must have taken this to heart. When he died in 2009, he too was buried in The Promethean (pictured), per TMZ.