Famous Last Words of Musical Legends

When someone you love dies, the tiniest details became terribly important. You want to know which shirt he was wearing and was it tucked in, what meal he last ate and what cup he last drank from, whom he last talked to and what specifically was said before he took that dying breath. It’s comforting to arrange the particulars in your mind, to try to make sense of what doesn’t make sense at all.

The same is true of the late musicians we’ve loved, many of whose deaths have been recounted and retraced enough times to be rendered controversial. Whether their last words sound spookily prophetic or regrettably ordinary, these are sentences that resound with us. Here are the last known utterances of some of our favorite artists.

Marvin Gaye: “Mother, I’m going to get my things and get out of this house. Father hates me and I’m never coming back.”

Marvin Gaye’s father shot him point blank in the heart the day before he would have turned 45, in plain view of Marvin’s mother Alberta. Gutted by drugs and other illicit pleasures, the singer had moved into his parents’ home, where he spent his days in a burgundy bathrobe. Following a dispute with his father on April 1, 1984, Gaye told his mother, “I’m going to get my things and get out of this house. Father hates me and I’m never coming back.” Seconds later, Gaye was dealt a fatal gunshot.

Kurt Cobain: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

On April 5, 1994, Kurt Cobain pressed a shotgun against the stubbly flesh of his jaw and pulled the trigger. In the note, left behind, his uneven scrawl attributed the suicide to suffocating guilt over having lost – or never having felt at all – the ecstasy of performing. “Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on-stage,” explained the Nirvana frontman. Cobain ended the note with a lyric from Neil Young’s anthem “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black”: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Though Cobain and Young never met, the two frequently praised one another’s work in the media, and Young even tried to track down Cobain the week prior to his death. In a 2002 interview with The Guardian, Young revealed, “I like to think that I possibly could have done something [to save Cobain]. … I had an impulse to connect. Only when he used my song in that suicide note was the connection made. Then, I felt it was really unfortunate that I didn’t get through to him.”

Sam Cooke: “Lady, you shot me!”

In his Civil Rights anthem “A Change is Gonna Come,” Cooke admits, “It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die / ’Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky.” A year after writing that song, a half-naked Cooke was shot and killed by the manager of a Los Angeles hotel that he’d just checked into with a rumored prostitute. Though details of the death are debatable, it was ruled a justifiable homicide. Bertha Franklin, the woman who says she killed 33-year-old Cooke in self-defense, reported that his surprised last words were, “Lady, you shot me!”

George Harrison: “Love one another.”

Former Beatle George Harrison had battled cancer for four years by the time he passed away in 2001 of lung cancer that had traveled to his brain. Harrison spent his last days meditating in a Hollywood Hills mansion, visited by friends like Ravi Shankar, who had introduced him not only to the sitar but to Eastern philosophy, with which Harrison became fascinated. His final words were spoken to wife Olivia and son Dhani: “Love one another.”

Michael Jackson: “This is it... this really is it.”

After a press conference the month he died, Michael Jackson told fans, “I don’t know how I’m going to do 50 shows. I’m not a big eater. I need to put some weight on.” The King of Pop’s ill health was common knowledge, but his death a year ago of cardiac arrest nevertheless stunned the music community. The eve before he died, the 50-year-old had put the finishing touches on his This Is It comeback tour and was entering his limo when he reportedly remarked, “This is it... this really is it.”

John Lennon: “Yes, I am.”

In the back of a speeding squad car bound for New York City’s Roosevelt Hospital, John Lennon was asked to verify his identity, as his blood pooled on the floorboard. “Are you John Lennon?” a policeman asked him. “Yes, I am,” he replied and lost consciousness. The former Beatle was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital that Monday evening, December 8, 1980. Deranged fan Mark David Chapman had shot him four times in the back under the elegant arched entranceway of Lennon’s apartment building.

Bob Marley: “Money can’t buy life.”

In May 1981, Bob Marley hopped a flight out of Germany, intending to make it home to Jamaica. The reggae forefather had resigned himself to the fact that he would soon die of the skin cancer that had tormented him for three years, but he would make it no further than Miami before he had to be rushed to a hospital. Marley, 36, died in Miami on May 11, 1981, but not before telling son Ziggy, “Money can’t buy you life.”

Elvis Presley: “Okay, I won’t.”

On the night of August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley couldn’t sleep and told fiancée Ginger Alden that he was retiring to the bathroom to read. Alden says she told 42-year-old Presley not to fall asleep in there and he replied, “Okay, I won’t.” She found Presley dead on the bathroom floor of his Graceland home several hours later. An autopsy identified 14 drugs in his system. Of note, Presley ended his final press conference by saying, “I hope I haven’t bored you.”

Randy Rhoads: “Why do you drink that stuff, Ozzy? One of these days it’s gonna kill you.”

In Ozzy Osbourne’s autobiography I Am Ozzy, he reports that guitarist Randy Rhoads chided him about his drinking problem the day he died in a plane crash in 1982. “Why do you drink that stuff, Ozzy? “ Rhoads asked. “One of these days it’s gonna kill you.” While Osbourne was napping in the tour bus, the 25-year-old went up in a small plane piloted by bus driver Andrew Aycock, whose autopsy would later reveal cocaine. A foolish daredevil plane ride ended quickly in the deaths of Rhoads, Aycock and a hairdresser also on board. An autopsy found only nicotine in Rhoads’ system.