Death of a Rock Star

4.6 (12)
MUSIC HISTORY
UPDATED WEEKLY

From Kurt Cobain to Whitney Houston, Michael Hutchence and Amy Winehouse, these are their stories - powerful, poignant and raw. This series will change how you feel about them.

2025-02-27

What is Artificial Intelligence? | Introducing SystemShift

Do you love Death of a Rock Star? Then you'll love this new podcast. Perfect for question-askers and curious minds, welcome to SystemShift! Have a listen, and if you love it, hit one of the links below to see and hear more. Enjoy! https://podfollow.com/1683278976 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENvqNLnE8js Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8 min
2024-02-29 · BONUS

Introducing: Oceans: Life Under Water

What do you hear at the bottom of the ocean? How does it feel to swim with whales? Or make friends with an octopus? Come and find out. This is Life Under Water. Wildlife filmmaker and TV personality Hannah Stitfall wants to take you the world below the waves. She’ll be chatting to freedivers, marine biologists, submarine pilots and more, hearing mind-boggling stories about the oceans-deep and its inhabitants. We explore The Lost City. We hang out with your favourite animals. The hypnotic sound design and storytelling will drop you right there. Oceans: Life Under Water is brought to you by Crowd Network and Greenpeace UK, which is how these stories can be told so beautifully but also responsibly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7 min
2022-06-15

David Bowie

David Bowie is dying, and no-one knows it. No journalists, no fans. Just the chosen few. His wife. His grown-up son, his young daughter. A handful of others, all sworn to secrecy. And he’s been rushing to get songs recorded, videos made, plays performed. Because his life's always been about reinvention, about creativity. About working out who you are, what you want to say. About control of image, and intent. All those wild incarnations – the costumes, the make-up, the poses. All those characters he becomes – Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, the Man Who Fell To Earth. And now, he's releasing one more album. It’s time for the final performance. The last great artistic move... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 min
2022-06-08

Richey Edwards

Richey Edwards is the frontman of the Manic Street Preachers. But he's quiet. A little pale. And one day... he's gone. For some fans, the possibility that he’s watching, listening, smiling somewhere, is impossible to resist. There are loose ends. The money that was never found. Richey’s fascination with Israel. The books he left behind. And there are the sightings. In Newport by the passport office. On the hippy trail in Goa. In a bar on a Spanish island. On a beach in the Canary Islands. Each time, the story’s similar. A gaunt, quiet man, flitting out of view and remaining out of reach... WARNING: this episode contains graphic descriptions of self-harm and references to suicide. If you’ve been affected by any of the issues we spoke about in this podcast or are worried about someone you love, please call the Samaritans at 116 123. Someone will always be there to listen, day or night, and it’s free for all UK phone numbers. Or, go to crowdnetwork.co.uk/helplines to find a list of people you can go to for help. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 min
2022-06-01

Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke's music makes you feel nostalgic for a time you never knew. Perfect little love songs that take you back to the innocence of the late Fifties, the early Sixties. But they could've sounded so different, in a world where a black man could sing like a black man to everyone. Where he could be himself everywhere. But there’s other stuff you need to know about Sam Cooke. Because he’s the voice, but he’s so much more. The dodgy managers stealing his money, the run-ins with the Mafia. The racism – the threats, the violence. The wiretaps from the FBI. And how it all ends… In a cheap motel, with a call girl and a handgun, when he’s just starting to change the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 min
2022-05-25

Mama Cass

Cass? She’s the one the band can’t do without. Those 40 million records sold? The six top ten hits? It’s her voice that powers them. Her charisma that makes the Mamas & the Papas so lovable. When they all sing together, it sounds like the times squeezed and bottled with added vitamins. It’s sunshine and smiles and bright swirls of primary colours. But there’s always this sadness close by. A melancholy, lying there just under the surface. And that's Cass. She doesn't feel lovable. Doesn’t fit the mould. Doesn't look like 60s rock'n'roll. She’s the sunshine and darkness in one troubled woman. The openness, the paranoia. The dreams of a golden generation, living and dying under a perfect blue Californian sky... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

31 min
2022-05-04

Keith Moon

‘Moon the Loon.’ That’s the nickname. The bloke who drove a Rolls-Royce into a swimming pool. Who liked blowing up toilets and trashing hotel rooms. Moon’s life and death is one of pop music’s great cautionary tales. It’s textbook stuff. A man who becomes so grotesque that people forget what a genius he was. Before the drink and drugs and darkness reduce him to a husk. Is the golden age of rock really so golden, when its gods die so young? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 min
2022-04-27

Billie Holiday

Lady Day was the greatest singer of a generation. A sound they’ll try and copy for years to come. A girl who starts with nothing, who runs with pimps and hookers, but grows up to diamonds, furs, and adulation. But there's always been heroin around jazz. And she's playing a game where the odds are stacked against her. There are powerful men who want to bring it all crashing down... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

30 min

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TRAILER

Coming Soon (Trailer)

With a new episode each Thursday, Death of a Rock Star explores what it’s like to be adored by millions: how you do it, what it does to you, the rewards it brings and the price you pay. We go back to the start of rock ‘n’ roll, take in the great stars and the forgotten legends, the modern-day superstars – the ones you knew, the ones you’ll wish you had. And we explore their legacy today – how they continue to move us, and change us, and define who we are. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2020-09-15

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8 min

This brand new pop culture history podcast is nothing like anything you've heard before, and it's everything you need to understand the modern world. Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce, an American pop culture buff and a British music lover, have taken the smash-hit song by Billy Joel and turned it into a podcast. Billy lists 120 people, places, and things in 'We Didn't Start The Fire', and Katie and Tom will do an episode on every single one to create the most fascinating, random and original history of the post-war world. Over the next two and a half years, we're going to learn about politics, rock 'n' roll, sport, space, television, the Cold War, guided along the way by historians, eyewitnesses, and mega-fans. Billy started it. We're going to finish it. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @spreadthatfire, email us at fire@crowdnetwork.co.uk, and go to spreadthatfire.com to buy merch.

4.8 (20)

HISTORY
The Secret History of Flight 149 Imagine boarding a flight thinking you’re heading on holiday, but instead you get taken hostage by Saddam Hussein. It might sound far-fetched, but in August 1990 this is what happened to the passengers and crew of BA Flight 149. What followed has been dubbed the most shocking government cover-up of the last thirty years. Journalist Stephen Davis has been reporting on this extraordinary story for the past three decades. In this series you’ll hear directly from the hostages - the people used as human shields by the Iraqi regime, with horrific and traumatic consequences. But why was the plane allowed to land at all, putting so many lives at risk? Why have secrets and lies persisted for so many years? Join Stephen in his search to uncover the truth behind The Secret History of Flight 149. Presenter: Stephen Davis Producer: Samantha Psyk Mixing and sound design: Rory Auskerry

4.8 (51)

TRUE CRIME
KC is the American Vigilante - A hugely complex, intelligent, contradictory man who could save your life but end it too. Who leads a group of violent men standing on the blurred line between right and wrong, between revenge and redemption. A man you want on your side when it all falls apart. American Vigilante is true crime, but so much more. It’s saving abducted children, it’s stepping beyond the law. It’s rescue missions, assassination attempts and last-gasp protection. It’s all the stuff you hope never comes to you, until it does. Former BBC Journalist Sam Walker presents this Crowd Network original. She’s been speaking to KC for months and has recorded everything he’s told her. You’ll need to listen to make your own mind up, but you might never be the same again. It’s shocking, inspiring, frightening and thought-provoking. It’ll change how you see the world, and it might change how you move within it. Everyone thinks they’re safe, until they aren’t. Everyone thinks they know how they’ll react, until the darkness comes.

4.6 (40)

TRUE CRIME
From Heath Ledger to Marilyn Monroe, Chadwick Boseman to James Dean, these are the stories of the stars who will never fade – adored, unforgettable, unique. The inside tales, the scandals, the truth about who they really were.

5.0 (2)

TV & FILM
These are the unforgettable, tragic stories of superstars we loved and lost - told as you’ve never heard them before. Death of a Sports Star is a Crowd Network original, presented by Elroy "Spoonface" Powell, Emma Clarke and Tom Price.

5.0 (4)

SPORTS
Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) stars in a dark, near-future science fiction fairytale about a robot who can feel, and the world that attempts to control her. When a robot called Eliza falls in love with Him (Arthur Darvill, Doctor Who), they work together to make her fully sentient. But consciousness doesn’t come without consequences. As Eliza gets caught in a web of both loving and abusive relationships, she has to fight to survive. #OneVoiceRaisesAnother Eliza is a Crowd Network original made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust / Manchester Women’s Aid. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, help is available now. You can call the 24/7 national helpline on 0808 2000 247 and get free confidential advice at https://www.womensaid.org.uk If you want early episodes and behind the scenes content, subscribe now to the Crowd Stories channel. Full transcripts of all episodes are available on the Crowd website.

4.2 (5)

DRAMA

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Elroy Powell

Host

4.6

out of 5

12 Ratings

Check it out!

2020-10-12

beagle paws

Really enjoying these stories and the writing and narration are so well done. Looking forward to more episodes...
Poor research

2023-01-16

princesspinelope

Please update your podcast on Whitney Houston. Several key people were left out. The autopsy report was left out. Information about Krissy is left out. Please do your research before assuming what you know to be true is true. It is sad that so many people are profiting off of the death of the celebrities that they say they love. Very disappointed with the lack of information. Basically it’s an opinion piece. The research comes from people who sold her story for their own gain. Thus it’s their narrative only. This podcast is a definite do over. Probably will not waste time on other episodes as I’m worried the lack of research will remain.

From Kurt Cobain to Whitney Houston, Michael Hutchence and Amy Winehouse, these are their stories - powerful, poignant and raw. This series will change how you feel about them.