10 Hard Rock Musicians That Died Too Soon

Hard rock has never been a genre for the faint of heart. Anyone who takes to this style of music knows that there are heavy drums, chugging riffs, and choruses ready to strike you down at a moment's notice. While there's always a certain amount of power behind these tracks, no one could imagine how brutal it was for the people behind the scenes.

For as much great music that has come out of the hard rock genre, it has come at the expense of some of its greatest musicians. In trying to live the lifestyle to its fullest extent, these artists pushed it one step too far and reached the point of no return.

It's inevitable that these musicians will meet their end, but to have them taken from us at such a young age has left the rock world wondering what could have been. Though these artists may not be delivering their brand of hard rock to us anymore, their songs will still be blaring out of loudspeakers around the world for years to come. The loss of these musicians has left a hole in the rock community that we may never recover from, but the genre will carry on nonetheless.

During the early 90's, hair metal still had a firm grasp on the hard rock consciousness. As the poodle haired kings of the Sunset Strip were planning what kind of mansions they would buy once they hit it big, a new sound coming out of Seattle was slowly brewing, preparing to take the music world by storm. For all the notable superstars to come out of the grunge scene, the potential biggest one ended up checking out before he got his time in the spotlight.

Whereas most bands in the Seattle scene had a much more dour songwriting structure, Mother Love Bone was a lean rocking machine whose sounds seemed to fall somewhere between funk and hard rock. They may have been far from hair metal, but Andy Wood's charisma was on par with his childhood heroes Freddie Mercury and Steven Tyler.

Just as the band were set to conquer the rock world with their breakthrough album Apple, Wood suffered an overdose of heroin and died a few days after. While the band decided to fold, surviving members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament ended up finding new life in Pearl Jam. Since most grunge superstars seemed incredibly uncomfortable with their own celebrity, Andy Wood could have been the bridge that people needed to transition between hair metal and grunge.