Rock Mysteries

In April 1994, Seattle police found Kurt Cobain dead of a shotgun wound and called it a suicide before the autopsy was finished. More than 30 years later, the questions haven’t gone away.

Rock Mysteries host Scott Gulbransen talks with journalist Max Wallace, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain. Wallace started as a skeptic who figured the murder theory was a crackpot idea. Then he looked at the people making it.

In this episode:

• Why a heroin dose roughly triple the lethal amount doesn’t fit the official story
• Tom Grant, the former sheriff’s deputy turned private investigator Courtney Love hired, and the tapes he made
• Rosemary Carroll, the couple’s own attorney, saying on tape she believed the note was forged or traced
• The divorce and the unsigned will that would have cut Courtney Love out
• Wallace and Ian Halperin’s trip into Seattle’s heroin scene, including a 45-minute conversation with Dylan Carlson, who bought the gun
• Why Wallace spent more time debunking conspiracy theories than promoting them
• Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper saying the investigation was mishandled and he’d reopen it
• The 68 documented copycat suicides Wallace tracked in his first book

Wallace is clear that there’s no smoking gun, and he doesn’t accuse Courtney Love of murder. He wants the case reopened. The official ruling is still suicide. You decide.

Rock Mysteries is commercial-free. Support the show on Patreon, link below.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/rockmysteries

Max Wallace:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IXNTZ6

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Death-Murder-Kurt-Cobain-ebook/dp/B000FC1LNS?ref_=ast_author_mpb

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open: the news of Cobain’s death
01:50 Meet Max Wallace
03:20 Why Cobain mattered to a generation
06:29 How a skeptic got pulled into the case
10:29 Tom Grant, the private investigator
12:08 Rosemary Carroll and the note on tape
15:25 The official story and the missing days
20:00 Inside Seattle’s heroin scene
22:35 Dylan Carlson and the gun
24:21 Why most conspiracy theories fall apart
26:14 The heroin dose that doesn’t add up
31:21 The investigation that never happened
33:36 Norm Stamper wants the case reopened
35:49 Courtney Love, the divorce, and the unsigned will
38:52 The Dylan Carlson theory
43:13 The 68 copycat suicides
46:41 Can the case ever be solved?
49:18 El Duche and the strange cast of characters
51:19 Why Tom Grant is credible
52:29 Cobain vs. other rock conspiracies
54:47 Wallace’s conclusion
58:00 Wrap-up and thanks

The official story says Bon Scott drank too much, passed out in a friend’s car in London on February 18, 1980, and choked on his own vomit. Author Jesse Fink spent two years digging into that story for Bon: The Last Highway, and he came away convinced it doesn’t hold up.

Fink walks through what he found. A woman who was at the flat that night had never spoken about it in 40 years. Two members of UFO told a very different version of the evening in 2005. The investigation and autopsy were wrapped up in a matter of days, with no toxicology report he could locate. He lays out why he believes Bon died of heroin mixed with alcohol, and why he thinks Bon may have been dead before he was left in the car.

We also get into the Back in Black question. Fink points to his time in Miami with a woman Bon knew in 1979, the royalties Bon’s family reportedly receives, and a missing lyric notebook, and makes the case that Bon’s words ended up on the biggest album in the band’s history without credit. We finish with the Young brothers, why Bon was an outsider in his own band, and why Brian Johnson ended up, in Fink’s words, with the golden Wonka ticket.

Fink’s updated edition of Bon: The Last Highway is out now. More at jessefinkbooks.com.

Chapters

• 00:00 Welcome and Patreon thanks
• 01:25 Cold open: Bon on singing in the shower
• 01:44 Episode setup: Bon’s life and the mystery of his death
• 03:07 The 1980 news report
• 04:00 Meet Jesse Fink
• 05:02 How a sports journalist ended up writing about AC/DC
• 10:07 Why The Last Highway turned into a death investigation
• 12:42 The official story vs. the timeline
• 14:25 The UFO connection: Paul Chapman and Pete Way
• 17:30 Silver Smith and Alistair Kinnear
• 19:20 The witness nobody had spoken to in 40 years
• 22:28 The two Bon Scotts
• 25:51 Miami, 1979, and the woman behind “Holly X”
• 31:40 Whose lyrics are on Back in Black?
• 41:44 The Youngs, the band, and Bon as an outsider
• 45:25 Back to February 1980: the night in London
• 50:29 The police investigation and autopsy
• 53:58 Alcohol, heroin, and the cause of death
• 57:25 The Australian documentary and the fan reaction
• 1:01:50 Two AC/DCs
• 1:06:11 What’s next for Fink
• 1:11:24 Closing and Patreon

On December 11, 1964, the voice of the Civil Rights movement — the man who wrote “A Change Is Gonna Come” — was gunned down in a $3 Los Angeles motel. The police called it “justifiable homicide.” The newspapers painted Sam Cooke as a drunken, womanizing kidnapper who got what was coming to him.

His family never bought it for a second.

In this explosive Part 2 Rock Mysteries finale, author B.G. Rule (One More River to Cross: The Redemption of Sam Cooke) rips the lid off one of music’s darkest cover-ups:

• Why Sam’s wife Barbara showed up to the funeral in his Rolls-Royce with Bobby Womack… and then frantically asked, “Did anybody see my car?”
• How manager Allen Klein — the man even the Rolling Stones and Beatles later called a thief — quietly erased Sam’s brother Charles from the songwriting credits of “Chain Gang” just weeks after the killing.
• The mob ties, stolen royalties, scrubbed evidence, and a crime scene that was never properly processed.
• Why a sober, business-savvy Sam — fresh from dinner planning his next independent moves — suddenly became public enemy #1 to a mobbed-up music industry that couldn’t stand a Black man owning his masters.

Sixty-one years later, Sam’s children, grandchildren, and famously tight-knit family still refuse to accept the official lie. They don’t want myths — they want the truth spoken out loud.

This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is the story the industry prayed you’d never hear.

If you love Sam Cooke, you need to hear this episode.

“A Change Is Gonna Come”… but first, justice has to come for the man who sang it.

Subscribe now and join the fight to finally clear Sam Cooke’s name.

#SamCooke #MusicConspiracy #CivilRights #RockMysteries

61 years after soul legend Sam Cooke was found shot dead in a seedy LA motel wearing only a sport coat and one shoe, the official story of “self-defense” and “kidnapping” has never passed the smell test.

In this explosive Part 1 of a two-episode edition of the show, bestselling author B.G. Rule (One More River to Cross: The Redemption of Sam Cooke) reveals never-before-heard evidence that points to a cold-blooded Mafia assassination orchestrated over money, power, and control of Black music.

• Why the autopsy photos show a brutally beaten body the coroner deliberately downplayed
• How a .22 execution-style bullet (not the motel manager’s registered .38) ended up in Sam’s heart
• Elisa Boyer’s real identity, prostitution arrests, and ties to RCA and the LAPD
• Allen Klein’s hostile takeover of Sam’s catalog and the chilling last words Cooke heard
• Barbara Cooke’s suspicious behavior, the missing millions, and lingering questions about her possible involvement
• Eyewitness accounts claiming Sam was killed in a limousine — not the Hacienda Motel

From corrupt LAPD chief William H. Parker to mobbed-up nightclubs and payola scandals, discover why even as teenage girls in 1964 knew something didn’t add up — and why the truth has been buried for six decades.

If you love unsolved music mysteries like the deaths of Tupac, Biggie, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, or Bobby Fuller, this is the definitive deep dive into one of the biggest cover-ups in rock & soul history.

Subscribe now and don’t miss Part 2 — the conclusion will leave you speechless.

#SamCooke #SamCookeMurder #RockMysteries #UnsolvedMysteries #MobHits #MusicConspiracy #TrueCrimePodcast #SoulMusic #1960sMusic #AllenKlein #BlackMusicHistory

Our latest episode revolves around one of the strangest and most troubling rock mysteries: the murder of former Elf and Rainbow drummer Gary Driscoll. Driscoll first connected with Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio) in 1965 and his career peaked with the first Rainbow album before Ritchie Blackmore fired him after that record's release. He then left the music business and became a working-class tile layer in his hometown of Ithaca, New York. In 1987, he was brutally murdered and the case is unsolved today. We welcome rock-n-roll historian and author Staci Layne Wilson to discuss this mystery and why it remains a cold case today.

Staci Layne Willson Websites:

StaciLayneWilson.com

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Perhaps one of the most influential musicians of the 1970s and 80s, former New York Doll Johnny Thunders was a textbook rock star. With a biting guitar style and strong songwriting skills, Thunders was everything you could want in a rock star. After the demise of the Dolls, Thunders, and his band, the Heartbreakers, wowed critics and built a cult following. Later, Thunders found fleeting success as a solo artist, seemingly a step behind larger fame. Then, in 1991, it all came to a tragic and troubling end as Thunders died in a hotel room in New Orleans. We explore the life and death of rock legend Johnny Thunders.