Rock Stars That Hid A Tragic Secret For Years

There's no reason that being good at playing a certain type of music means you need to have a personality type that's just as loud, strong, and aggressive. But rock musicians often used to play up to this stereotype, trashing hotel rooms, romanticizing abusive relationships both with romantic partners and bandmates, and presenting a tough-as-nails exterior to their fans. But underneath, many of these seemingly invincible rock stars were hurting, badly. No matter how rich or famous they became, it couldn't keep bad things from happening. The best one can hope for as a rock musician who has dealt with trauma is that money and a flexible schedule will make it easier to get therapy and other treatment. 

Unfortunately, there is also the added burden of deciding if they want to tell their fans about the issues they are dealing with. For a variety of very valid and personal reasons, many choose not to, which means having to deal with the stress of hiding their secret, in some cases for years.

Many rock stars who went through something horrible will eventually tell the world about what happened after they have had time to process it themselves. Other times, they take the secret to the grave, and fans only learn after their hero's death the terrible weight they lived with. Here are rock stars who hid a tragic secret for years.

This article contains references to sexual assault, child abuse, eating disorders, suicide, and addiction issues.

Daniel Johns of Silverchair was just 15 when his band released their debut album, according to Who Australia. By the time he was 18 and their second album was an even bigger hit, he was fighting depression. There was another mental health problem he was dealing with, too, and from what the papers printed at the time, it should have been obvious. "Johns is slim to the point of thin," the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in 1997. "His jeans and shirt hanging loosely from him." Another reporter called him "dangerously emaciated."

Daniel Johns' biographer Jeff Apter said, "It was almost as if he was trying to physically disappear." Looking back at his struggle, Johns explained, "The only way I can describe it, is to say that it felt comforting to be in control of something, like I hadn't totally lost it." As a way to have that sense of control over his life, he restricted what he ate more and more, until he would only eat when forced to or when he was about to pass out. Eventually, this led to the paranoid belief that "every chef in the world wanted to poison me" and that apples contained hidden razor blades.

After getting a cold that wouldn't go away and finally seeing a doctor, Johns was told in no uncertain terms that he had to start eating again or he was going to die. Johns eventually recovered, but he kept his struggle from the public until his biography was released in 2018.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

Bobby Darin's early death at just 37 had come as no surprise, as his son Dodd explained to People Magazine in 1994 (via BobbyDarin.net), because as a boy, Bobby's heart was damaged from an illness. "My father knew he wouldn't live long," Dodd said. "He was trying to pack a lifetime of ambition into what little time he had." He was a very successful singer in the 1960s, with a close family. But five years before he died, he'd learn that some of his family members weren't who he thought, according to "Bobby Darin: A Life."

It was Bobby's talk about running for office that finally got his mother, who he had grown up thinking was his sister, to come clean. Bobby's half-brother Gary (not his cousin, like he believed), told Bobby's biographer that their sister told their mother, "You've got to tell [him] ... if he goes into politics, they will uncover the truth. And better that he knows it up front than trying to find it out in some other way."

Bobby's mother Nina was only 17 and unmarried when she got pregnant with him, leading to the deception that his grandmother was his mother. Nina also refused to tell him who his father was. As you might expect, "Bobby didn't take the news well." Gary explained, "Bobby never questioned it. Once he heard the words said to him, 'I'm not your sister, I'm your mother,' he knew it was the truth ... Unfortunately, he could never accept it." Bobby took the secret to his grave.

In 2013, lead singer of The Cranberries, Dolores O'Riordan told reporter Barry Egan of the Irish Independent a horrible secret she'd been carrying around for decades: "For four years, when I was a little girl, I was sexually abused. I was only a kid."

While telling anyone that information, let alone a reporter, took incredible bravery, O'Riordan found it was worth it. A month later when speaking to Egan again, she told him how it was "amazing to have the burden lifted off my shoulders; it is almost like going into therapy and confessing it, except you do it the other way around, because when you are famous you just open up and that is it. It does feel good to have that off the shoulders. I feel a definite sense of relief. I don't have to explain it to people. It happened. And you know, I think it makes people understand who you are and how you are a little bit better." They discussed everything that had happened in her life since the horror of her childhood, and she seemed genuinely happy with how it had all worked out. Hopefully, telling the public about her trauma helped her excise those demons.

Tragically, the BBC reports that O'Riordan died of accidental drowning in a London hotel room in 2018, after passing out from alcohol intoxication in the bathtub. She was 46.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

Alanis Morissette was huge in the 1990s, but had actually entered the entertainment industry even earlier, appearing on Nickelodeon's "You Can't Do That On Television" at just 10, and getting her first record contract at 14, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The music industry is rarely good to young girls, and in 2021, Morissette told a documentary filmmaker (via the Washington Post) she'd been abused at that age.

"I never talk about this. It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part," she said. "I would always say I was consenting, and then I'd be reminded like 'Hey, you were 15, you're not consenting at 15.' Now I'm like, 'Oh yeah, they're all pedophiles. It's all statutory rape." Horrifically, even though she did try to tell people what was happening, no one intervened. "I did tell a few people and it kind of fell on deaf ears," Morissette said. "It would usually be a stand-up, walk-out-of-the-room moment."

Morissette had spoken in more general terms about exploitation and abuse in the industry the year before, as well. However, a weird controversy erupted over the documentary in which Morissette told the world her tragic secret. She never named the people who assaulted her and never took the accusations back, but she backed out of supporting the documentary about her career after she was unhappy with the final product.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

In his 2019 autobiography (via US Weekly), Elton John revealed to his fans that two years previously he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and kept his treatment a secret. He was in the middle of preparing for his massive, worldwide farewell tour at the time, and the diagnosis must have been terrifying. The only good news was that the cancer was found in its early stages. Elton's doctors gave him the choice of chemotherapy or having his prostate removed.

The musician took the more aggressive approach, writing (via the Telegraph), "I went straight for the surgery. A lot of men won't have it, because it's a major operation, you can't have sex for at least a year afterwards and you can't control your bladder for a while. But effectively my kids made the decision for me. I didn't like the idea of cancer hanging over me — us — for years to come: I just wanted rid of it."

But while the surgery was successful (and Elton was onstage again just 10 days later), he wasn't out of the woods yet. He writes that he then "contracted a major infection in South America," which was so serious that his doctors told his husband David Furnish that Elton "was 24 hours away from death." But he pulled through, saying, "I wasn't ready to die yet." Even fans who'd seen him in concert in the years between his diagnosis and his book coming out likely had no idea Elton John had been having such serious health problems.