Wendy O. Williams

Wendy Orlean Williams was an American singer, songwriter, and actress, who was born on May 28th, 1949, in Webster, New York, U.S.A.  At school, where she played the clarinet, Williams was recalled as a "shy and pretty girl" and "an average student".  She had the first of many run-ins with the law for sunbathing topless at the age of fifteen, and left R. L. Thomas High School in Webster before graduating.  Apparently feeling like an outcast, and misunderstood by her strict parents, Williams left home at age sixteen, hitchhiking to Colorado, and then onto Florida and Europe, taking several jobs on her travels, and also being arrested many times for shoplifting and possessing counterfeit money.  Arriving back in New York City in 1976, she met radical artist Rod Swenson, who became her manager, and she began performing in his live sex shows, and later in adult films.  Swenson and Williams became romantic partners for the rest of her life, with Swenson recruiting her to front his punk-rock band, The Plasmatics, in 1977.  Williams became known for her theatrical and sexually-provocative on-stage antics, resulting in several arrests and obscenity charges.  Although she drank and experimented with mind-altering drugs in her early-adult years, Williams later became more "straight-edge", giving up drug use and smoking, as well as being teetotal.  She had been a vegetarian since 1966.  Between 1984 and '86, Williams released two solo albums.  In 1985, during the height of her popularity, Williams was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.  In 1986, she starred in the indie-film, Reform School Girls, and in 1987 in the television show, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter.  Williams toured for the last time with The Plasmatics in 1988, and put out another solo album that same year.  She retired from the music business in 1990, and moved to Storrs, Connecticut, with Rod Swenson the following year, working as an animal rehabilitator and in a food co-op.  Williams attempted suicide in 1993 by hammering a knife into her chest, which lodged in her sternum; changing her mind, she asked her partner to take her to hospital for treatment.  In 1997, she tried again, this time by taking an overdose of ephedrine.  On April 6th, 1998, Swenson returned home to find Williams missing, having left a package for him containing some of his favourite things and sealed letters from her, including suicide notes.  Swenson began searching nearby woods for her, eventually finding Williams's dead body after about an hour as darkness fell.  She had shot herself in the head with a pistol, and had apparently been feeding wild squirrels moments before she died, as well as putting a bag over her head to spare her partner the horrible sight.  Wendy Williams was 48 years old. 

Screaming Lord Sutch

David Edward Such, who was born on November 10th, 1940, in Hampstead, London, England, was an English musician and serial parliamentary candidate.  In the 1960s, inspired by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, he changed his stage name to "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", despite having no connections to the peerage.  Such released a series of records throughout his life, with little commercial success, and despite a self-professed lack of vocal talent; he and his band The Savages had a horror-themed stage show in which Sutch would dress up as Jack the Ripper or appear out of a coffin. Sutch's 1970 album, Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends, was voted in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time.
Sutch appeared as an election candidate for various political parties in the 1960s and '70s, before forming the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983, and declaring himself leader.  In all, he appeared in 40 elections between 1963 and 1997, winning none, with his highest vote share being in the Rotherham by-election of 1994, when his party received 1,114 votes, for a 4.2% votes share.
Such had a history of depression, and committed suicide by hanging on June 16th, 1999, at his mother's home in Harrow, Greater London, England.  He was 58 years old.  At the inquest, his fiancee Yvonne Elwood said he had, "manic depression".  Such was survived by a son, Tristan Lord Gwynne Sutch, who was born in 1975 to American model, Than Rendessy.

Del Shannon

Charles Weedon Westover was an American rock 'n' roll and country musician and singer-songwriter, best-known for his 1961 U.S. Billboard No.1 hit, Runaway. Born on December 30th, 1934, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A., Westover had several jobs, and played guitar and sang in several bands, before changing his name to Del Shannon, whereafter he had his biggest hit with his co-written song, Runaway, which hit number-one in several countries. After several more hits, Shannon's career began to stall in the 1970s, partly due to his alcoholism; and, despite continuing to record and perform, he began to suffer from depression during the 1980s.  On February 8th, 1990, Shannon shot himself dead with a .22 calibre rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California, U.S.A.  He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered.  He was 55 years old.

Tom Evans

Thomas Evans, Jr., was an English musician and songwriter.  Born on June 5th, 1947, in Liverpool, England, Evans was a guitarist and vocalist for the British band, Badfinger, and co-wrote the classic song, Without You, with Pete Ham.  After great success with Badfinger in the 1970s, financial problems led to lead singer Ham committing suicide in 1975.  Evans later joined other reincarnations of Badfinger, but without much commercial success.  After a disastrous U.S. tour in 1982, Evans returrned to Britain, where he was sued for $5 million in damages for abandoning his touring contract. On November 19th, 1983, following a dispute with former bandmate Joey Molland over royalties to the song Without You, Evans hanged himself in his garden in London, England.  He was 36 years old.

Pete Ham

Peter William Ham, who was born on April 27th, 1947, in Townhill, Swansea, Wales, U.K., was a Welsh singer, songwriter, and guitarist.  The son of William and Catherine Ham, he formed his first rock group, The Panthers, around 1961.  Undergoing several name changes, they became The Iveys in 1965, moving to London the following year after being talent-spotted by The Mojos' manager, Bill Collins.  With Ham becoming the band's chief songwriter, they toured around the U.K. for the next three years, coming to the attention of both The Kinks' Ray Davies (who produced some of their early tracks) and The Beatles' personal assistant Mal Evans (who signed them to The Beatles' Apple Records label).  Changing their name to Badfinger, the band's first single release was a Paul McCartney composition, Come and Get It, which became a worldwide top-ten hit.  They followed this with three more Ham-composed singles in 1970 and '71, which all did well around the world.  Ham's greatest success as a songwriter came with the song Without You, co-written with bandmate Tom Evans, which became a worldwide number-one hit for Harry Nilsson in 1972, and has become a widely-covered standard; Ham received two Ivor Novello songwriting awards related to the song in 1973.  In 1974, Badfinger transferred to Warner Brothers Records, releasing possibly their finest album, Wish You Were Here.  Shortly thereafter, Warner Bros. sued the band's manager, Stan Polley, after an advance payment vanished, and, after Polley disappeared, the band were left penniless.  Ham found himself unable to pay mortgage payments on the new house which he shared with his pregnant girlfriend, Anne Herriot, and her son.  Believing that his finances had been wiped out, Pete Ham hanged himself in his garage in Weybridge, Surrey, England, on April 24th, 1975.  Five weeks after his death, Anne gave birth to Ham's daughter, Petera.  Fellow bandmember, Tom Evans, also committed suicide by hanging in 1983.  Only three days before his twenty-eighth birthday, Pete Ham was just 27 years old.

Tony Hancock

Anthony John Hancock - who was born on May 12th, 1924 - was an English comedian and actor. Born in Hall Green, Birmingham, England, Hancock was the son of John Hancock, who was also a comedian and entertainer. Hancock had a high profile in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, with his show, Hancock's Half Hour, being popular on radio and later television.  After parting with his scriptwriters, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Hancock's career went into gradual decline, and he began to turn to drink in an attempt to cope.  His alcoholism started to affect his performance, and he collapsed after suffering a liver attack on January 1st, 1967; and, in December of the same year, while recovering from a broken rib after a drunken fall, he became ill with pneumonia.
Hancock arrived in Austalia in March, 1968, under contract to make a 13-part series for the Seven Network.  However, only three episodes were completed, and these remained unaired for nearly four years.  On June 25th, 1968, Hancock committed suicide by overdose at his flat in Bellevue Hill, Sydney, Australia.  An empty vodka bottle and a scattering of amylo-barbitone tablets were found by his side. He was 44 years old. 

Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and comedian.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., on July 21st, 1951, Williams rose to fame in the 1970s in the sitcom Mork and Mindy.  He subsequently had a very successful career as a stand-up comedian and a film actor, including being nominated for four Academy Awards, winning the award for Best Supporting Actor in the 1997 film, Good Will Hunting.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams was addicted to cocaine, and later identified as an alcoholic.  In 2009, he had heart problems, having surgery to rectify the defects.
On August 11th, 2014, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California, U.S.A., at the age of 63.  After Williams's death, his publicist, Mara Buxbaum, stated that Williams had been suffering from severe depression before his death; and his third wife, Susan Schneider, stated that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease shortly before he died.  An autopsy revealed he had diffuse Lewy body dementia, which may have contributed to the sudden appearance of anxiety, insomnia, memory loss, paranoia, and delusions, which became apparent in the year before his death.