The music industry isn’t exactly the most moral or law-abiding place, either…if you know where to look, you’ll find crime all over the place.

We’ve tackled this topic before…episode 4 of this podcast dealt with the mysterious disappearance of $200,000 of Led Zeppelin’s money from a hotel safety deposit box…there was the time when Joe Strummer and Topper Headon from the clash were jailed for stealing some pillowcases from a holiday inn…and another episode featured the epically violent theft of two of Lady Gaga’s dogs…

 We’re going to build on those stories with more tales of people in the music industry who took things they had no business taking…

I’m Alan Cross and this is episode 41 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and this time, it’s some wild stories of robbery and theft.

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On the evening of February 25, 1682, Alessandro Stradella was stabbed to death in a square in genoa, Italy…Stradella was a classical composer of some renown…it appears he was killed by three brothers looking to avenge the honour of their sister…and when the knives were put away, Stradella became the first documented case of the murder of a professional musician. 

Fortunately, the purposeful killing of musicians was a rare thing until we got to the 20th century…then came a string of shootings, stabbings, beatings, and strangling’s. 

Some of these killings were high-profile—Sam Cook, John Lennon, Tupac, and Biggie, for example, and we still talk about those murders…but what about all the others? 

Many have faded from memory because we’ve either moved on, the case didn’t get much attention, or the murder was solved and there’s nothing else to say…but the victims need to be remembered because they were human beings. 

This is episode 40 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…this time, it’s a survey of musicians whose lives were cut short by someone with a gun, a knife, and even torture devices…and wow: there are some wild stories here.

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This is a show about censorship…wait, wait!...don’t

 Let try this from a different angle…there is an area

 Humans are dumb creatures, and that dumbness is always on display…and this can be really, really funny…if more of this stuff was taught in history classes, we’d have more historians and writers and people curious about the human condition.

 Let me give you an idea…instead of going through the details of the war of the roses, include this in a history less…in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was common knowledge that ground of bits of mummies stolen from tombs in Egypt was good for you…mix in a little chocolate and you have a nice little snack…so yes, cannibalism in powdered form use to be a thing…and this true: it’s why there aren’t many ancient Egyptian mummies around anymore.

Here’s another…Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of the United States when he died in June 1845, his beloved parrot was thrown out of his funeral because the thing kept swearing.

One more…Jack Daniels—yes, the bourbon guy—died of an infected toe…he stubbed it very badly when he kicked a safe to which he’d forgotten the combinations…

See what i mean?...and here on “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry,” talk about some seriously grisly and awful

 Yes, it is about censorship…but it’s also stupid history…it’s episode 39…and boy, this is one is dumb…it’s the insane true story of The Kingsmen and “Louie Louie”.

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I once had a conversation with someone about the craziest tours in the history of music…the usual names came up.

The who trashing hotel rooms…led zeppelin’s tours with their private jet, groupies, and tons of drugs…that time in Atlanta when Ozzy drank himself into oblivion, passed out in the wrong hotel room for 24 hours, and missed a show as a result.

In 1976, ZZ Top tried to take the entire Texas experience on the road, which involved transporting real live animals to every gig…a buffalo escaped and managed to wreck nine rented limos that were parked at the gig.

Around the same time, there was the disastrous Sex Pistols tour of America…there were also stories about The Rolling Stones, Metallica, Van Halen, and all the usual suspects.

But the conversation turned to the subject of the most depraved and dangerous tour of all time…who was responsible for that?... Motley Crue?...Marilyn Manson?...Oasis?

The debate when on for some time—until someone mentioned a road trip in 1993 that nearly killed every member of the group.

We’re not talking about any sort of violence…it was a tour featuring so much alcohol, so many drugs, and so much stupid behaviour that members suffered heart attacks, seizures, serious mental illness, and overdoses so serious that one member was clinically dead for two minutes.

 That was a summary of something called “The Devotional Tour”…at the centre of it was Depeche Mode…it has gone down in rock history as “the most debauched rock tour ever”.

This is episode 37 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…an inside look at the tour that nearly took down Depeche Mode forever…and it was all their fault.

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It’s happening with increasing frequency…we’re doom-scrolling, and we see the message…we wake up to read the news…we get a text from a friend…or we turn on the radio and hear what happened…another rock star has died…

This always comes as a shock…it’s mitigated somewhat if the rock star in question is older or has known health or substance issues…but when it’s someone young or seemingly healthy, it’s extra hard to deal with.

This was the situation on the morning of Saturday, March 26th, 2022…Foo Fighters fans awoke to the news that Taylor Hawkins, the band’s beloved drummer and Dave Grohl’s best friend in the whole wide world, had died.

This didn’t make any sense…the guy had the greatest job in the world…he loved what he was doing…he had Dave and the highly protective Foo Fighters’ organization to look after him…he was physically active…he had a loving family…he had supportive friends throughout the music industry and beyond…and any drug problems he had were at least two decades behind him.

Taylor’s death was completely unexpected and a complete shock to the entire music world…it was one of the most high-profile rock star deaths of the 21st century…but strangely, there are gaps in what the public knows about what happened…and when there are gaps, conspiracies abound.

This is episode 37 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…this is everything we know about the death of Taylor Hawkins…and it is quite the story

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When you go to a concert or attend a festival, you have every right to expect to be reasonably safe…there’s security…there’s inevitably a police presence…and EMS people are standing by with their medical tents and ambulances.

In the last 25 years, security has stepped up…there are bag searches, pat-downs, and maybe even drug-sniffing dogs and magnetometers…there is also greater attention paid to everything from the paths people walk to crowd control to monitoring the weather.

It’s not that organizers want to the authoritarian about anything…it’s just business…the business of staging concerts involves following local laws…and then there’s the matter of insurance.

When hundreds or thousands of humans gather in one place where alcohol and drugs are in use, dangerous and weird things can happen…people get angry, drug, high, and just carried away—and that leads to trouble.

As the organizer of the gig, you do not want anyone to get hurt (or worse) because that inevitably will lead to legal problems and lawsuits.

But sometimes imagination about what could go wrong fails us—probably because we can possibly conceive of something so horrible ever happening.

Such was the case on the Las Vegas strip on October 1, 2017…it was a country music festival called “Route 91 Harvest” …things started as usual…but just after 10, the festival was transformed into a shooting gallery.

By the time it was over, 60 people were dead and nearly 900 were injured… how?... A single gunman with an arsenal of weapons perched on the 32nd floor of a famous hotel across the street…it was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in the history of the United States.

I’m Alan Cross and this is episode 36 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry” …it’s an account of the horrific Route 91 Massacre.

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The Chelsea Hotel sits at 222 West 23rd Street in Manhattan…since it was completed in 1884, the place has been a hangout for some very colourful characters…most were New York eccentrics and bohemians who needed a place to live…but it also attracted some famous people.

At one point or another, it was home to sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke who wrote a big chunk of “2001: A Space Odyssey” in his room…later, Stanley Kubrick, the producer of the movie version of the book would stay there…

Other long-term guests included photographer Robert Mapplethorpe stayed there…so did included beat writer Jack Kerouac, playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepherd, actors Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliott Gould, and Jane Fonda…plus, for extra colour, poets William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg—not to mention Andy Warhol and some of his crew.

The Chelsea was also a favourite haunt of musicians…Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Jeff Beck, Joni Mitchell, Alice Cooper, the guys in Pink Floyd, and many, many others.

But the most notorious floor was floor 1…it was designated the “junkie floor,” the place where guests with drug problems were placed so that staff could keep an eye on things…

This was where ex-Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen checked in…they were given room 100.

It was in that room Nancy died…it looks like she was murdered...but by whom? ...Sid was charged with killing her, but did he?.

This is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and this time, it’s the wild story of the death of Nancy Spungen and the questions that still remain decades later…around whether Sid Vicious actually did it.

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It’s right there…point four on the text downloaded to Moses’ tablet: “thou shalt not steal” …if you didn’t acquire something legally and morally, then it’s not yours and you can’t just take it…but humans being a thieving species, we need that spelled out in our religious texts and legal codes.

Still, we steal a lot…money, food, clothing, cars, mobile phones, alcohol, drugs, jewelry, horses, razor blades—and music.

There are two main ways to steal music: claim or copy something someone else has written as your own creation…or to illegally acquire a finished piece of music without properly compensating the creator and the owners who hold the rights to that song. 

The music problem goes back centuries, but it became a global issue starting in the 90s…and there has been no end to people who willing to steal music or to facilitate its theft.

I’m this time on “uncharted: crime and mayhem in the music industry,” we’re going to look at those people: the pirates who made stealing music possible and how they did it.

These are some brazen, colourful, weird, and occasionally clueless people behind all that illegal (and often) free music out there…and boy, have I got some stories for you.

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It’s a summer night in 1998. Vienna, Austria. And petty thief Daniel Blanchard is about to carry out the heist of a lifetime. Stealing a crown jewel. The last remaining diamond Sisi Star.

His plan? A daring night-time parachute jump.

Daniel is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious, meticulously planned; his escapes from the law defy belief. And Daniel knows that if he can get his hands on the star, it will launch him into the criminal big-leagues.

Daniel’s exploits unleash a relentless game of cat-and-mouse, as police track him across continents yet vanishes from their grasp. 

What he doesn’t know is that the Sisi Star has a history. A dark history. Its original owner, the legendary Empress Elisabeth of Austria, used it to carve her own legacy of absolute beauty and power. That pursuit drove her to her very limits. 

And now Daniel’s fate is fixed to that same star. But how long can Sisi’s star stay lucky for Daniel? 

This is A Most Audacious Heist – it’s the story of a master thief, an intercontinental manhunt, and the jewel that changes everything.

Contact:

Facebook: @BlanchardHouseStories

Instagram: @BlanchardHouseStories

X (formerly Twitter): @BlanchardTweets

Blanchard House website: blanchard-house.com

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TV has conditioned us to believe that crimes can be solved in less than an hour…a detective or two (and maybe even a whole team) is assigned to a single case, and they somehow manage to solve it over 60 minutes—43, if you deduct commercial time.

That’s obviously not how it works in the real world…yes, some cases are solved quickly, but others take days, weeks, months, and even years…and then there are cold cases, crimes that don’t have any arrests, convictions, and in many instances, no suspects.

The most famous case has to be Jack the Ripper…in 1888, at least five prostitutes were found carved up in the Whitechapel area of London…the killer taunted the cops but was never found…the list of suspects continues to grow, even today.

There’s the infamous Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles…the body of a woman named Elizabeth Short was found mutilated and cut up…despite numerous suspects, this case has remained unsolved since 1947.

The Zodiac killer may have killed as many as 40 people in northern California in the 60s and 70s…he was never caught.

And who killed JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas in 1996? … her body was found in the basement of her family’s house…despite years of investigation by professionals, amateurs, and documentary-makers, we still have no answers.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

The world of music also has its share of cold murder cases…and the circumstances around each of them are, as you might expect, rather bizarre.

I’m Alan Cross, and this is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…let’s explore some of the most infamous unsolved and unresolved murder cases in music history…and there are more than you may realize.

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