Arnold Schoenberg

popular name: France Gall

date_of_death: January 7, 2018

age: 70

cause_of_death: Severe infection complicated by cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: France Gall was a French yé-yé singer who first rose to fame in 1965 when, at the age of 17, she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg. What little did she know at the time was the song that she won the Eurovision Song Contest, Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, was later adapted for the song My Way made famous by Frank Sinatra. Between 1973 and 1992 she collaborated with singer-songwriter Michel Berger who she later married. Although she had a long and successful career, it wasn't without it's troubles and tragedies. Serge Gainsbourg later plunged Gall into controversy when she had a massive hit with his sexually suggestive song, Les Sucettes (Lollipops), complete with promotional images of her dressed in a skimpy bikini and licking a lollypop. She said later she had been too young to understand the double entendre of the lyrics, and refused either to perform it or to work with Gainsbourg again. She had another major international hit in 1987 with the album Babacar – including the song Ella, elle l’a, her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald – with music and lyrics by her husband and musical partner Michel Berger, who died in 1992 aged 44. She retired from recording and performing in 1997, following the death from cystic fibrosis of their eldest child, Pauline. She devoted herself largely to humanitarian work until a comeback performance in a 2015 stage show based on her and her husband’s songs.

popular name: Michael Bloomfield

date_of_death: February 15, 1981

age: 37

cause_of_death: Cocaine and methamphetamine poisoning

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Michael Bloomfield was an American guitarist and composer who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's legendary blues musicians such as as Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival. Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

popular name: D. Boon

date_of_death: December 22, 1985

age: 27

cause_of_death: Broken neck, blunt force trauma (car accident)

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: D. Boon was a pioneer of the punk scene in the early 1980s in Los Angeles, California. As singer, songwriter, guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock trio the Minutemen, D. Boon mixed funk, punk, metal, country and a healthy dose of rage that influenced the likes of Nirvana for generations. Like peers Black Flag, Husker Du and the Meat Puppets, the Minutemen built a solid cult following throughout the U.S. the old-fashioned way - by living in a van on the road for six years. Tragically the end came suddenly when after a concert D. Boon was killed in a tragic auto accident at the young age of 27.