Musician Funerals Overshadowed By Controversy

The lives of famous musicians have often courted scandal, with the media greedily lapping it up. And sometimes the controversy continues after they've died, but before they've even had a proper burial. Over the years, there have been many a rock star's funeral that didn't go as planned and overshadowed the event and the moment that should have been a celebration of the cultural importance of their lives.

It's happened again and again, whether it was to Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, whose funeral included inappropriate touching and a eulogy that went off the rails, or Jim Morrison, whose burial was so cloaked in mystery it left his fans unable to believe he'd actually died. Then there was the ghoulish photo of Elvis Presley in his casket that appeared on the front cover of the National Enquirer and Michael Jackson's funeral that was allegedly held up by his sister, Janet Jackson, due to money issues. In death as in life, controversy has indeed hounded many a famous musician.

In life, Aretha Franklin led a relatively controversy-free life, at least compared to many other stars. Her funeral, on the other hand, was anything but. Franklin died on August 16, 2018, from pancreatic cancer. Her funeral, held at the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit on August 31, was a celebrity-heavy event, with everyone from singer Stevie Wonder to actor Jennifer Hudson to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in attendance.

Pop star Ariana Grande performed during the live televised funeral. Afterwards, she appeared at the pulpit with Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who officiated. As Ellis spoke with Grande, he put his arm around the singer's waist and eventually touched her chest while comparing her name to a Taco Bell menu item. He later publicly apologized. Besides this fiasco, Franklin's family was none too happy with the Reverend Jasper Williams Jr's eulogy for Franklin. He spent most of the 50 minutes questioning the Black Lives Matter movement and Black families, then he talked about the Queen of Soul, in the opinion of Franklin's family.

When Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, it only took mere hours before his devoted, some might say rabid, fans began to descend on Graceland, his Memphis mansion. The furor only grew at his funeral held two days later. It was a private ceremony under heavy guard that included a small coterie of stars, like Sammy Davis Jr, among the attendees. Meanwhile, 80,000 people lined the streets to watch the hearse and 17 white Cadillacs go from Graceland to nearby Forrest Hill Cemetery (he was later reinterred at Graceland).

Among the controversies that would overshadow the King's funeral was an alleged plot to steal his body and hold it for ransom. The other was a macabre photo surreptitiously taken of Presley in his casket, allegedly by one of his cousins who was paid somewhere between $15,000 and $75,000 for the photo by the National Enquirer. The photo helped sell more than 6 million copies of the tabloid newspaper, but was considered in very poor taste.

When Michael Jackson died suddenly on June 25, 2009, under similar circumstances to the King of Rock 'n' Roll, there was sure to be controversy dogging the mega-star's funeral. To start, there were rumors swirling around about Jackson's overuse of prescription drugs (his private doctor, Conrad Murray, would later be convicted of involuntary manslaughter for giving Jackson a fatal dose of the sedative Propofol). But there were other issues, including the continuing allegations of child sexual abuse, the guardianship of his three children, and other family drama that overshadowed the King of Pop's funeral.

Among these was the alleged delay of the star-studded event. It didn't take place until September 3, 2009, more than two months after his death. The delay was due to $49,000 that Janet Jackson had put down for her brother's gravesite that she wanted paid back before allowing the funeral to move forward, according to Vanity Fair, in an exclusive excerpt from Randall Sullivan's "Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson." She later disputed this, demanding a retraction by the magazine, but none ever came.

By the time the news broke that the Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison had died suddenly, he had already been buried in Paris in a secretive ceremony. His long-time girlfriend Pamela Courson found Morrison dead in the bathtub of the apartment they'd been renting while Morrison was on a sabbatical from the band. The funeral was so hush-hush, apparently to avoid a media circus. "The initial news of his death and funeral was kept quiet because all of us knew him intimately and loved him as a person and wanted to avoid all the notoriety and circus-like atmosphere surrounding the death of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin," the singer's lawyer Max Fink told the Evening Standard in 1971.

Unfortunately, the secretiveness of the funeral and the fact that the French police didn't perform an autopsy on Morrison's remains led to a slew of conspiracies that buried the rock star's tragic end in a mire of misinformation. It was just one of the many times controversies subsumed famous musicians' funerals and their legacies.