10 guitar heroes who cheated death

Nikki Sixx

In Mötley Crüe memoir, The Dirt, the bassist recalls his fatal OD of 1987, and how it felt to look down on his dead body (“I was lying covered with a sheet on a gurney, being pushed by medics into an ambulance”). Two adrenaline shots pulled him back - and Sixx later chronicled the incident in Kickstart My Heart.

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Kirk Hammett

As Metallica’s bus crossed Sweden in 1986, Kirk surrendered his top bunk to Cliff Burton after he beat him at cards.

Hours later the bus hit black ice and flipped, killing the bassist. A fortunate escape for Kirk, but Burton’s loss is still felt to this day.

Walter Trout

It seemed like his booze-fuelled 1980s had caught up with the blueser when he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in 2013.

Amazingly, he ducked the Reaper’s scythe with a last-minute transplant, suggesting that if a cat has nine lives, a Trout has 10.

Gary Rossington

When Lynyrd Skynyrd ‘s plane crashed in 1977 six members of the band’s inner circle (including frontman Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines) were killed. Guitarist Gary, Rossington survived, and flies the Skynyrd flag to this day.

Duff McKagan

At the depths of GN’R’s depravity, the self-styled ‘king of beers’ drank so hard that he popped his pancreas.

Fast-forward two decades and he’s not only above ground, but a super-buff Adonis who could appear on the cover of Men’s Health. Baffling.

Graham Coxon

In August 1995, Blur were at a bash to celebrate beating Oasis to No 1 with Country House, but their guitarist, in the grip of depression and alcoholism, tried to jump out of a sixth-floor window - Damon Albarn thankfully talked him out of it.

“I felt I was being forced into enjoying the moment," Coxon reflected. “It felt like a hollow, pointless victory.”

Sir Paul McCartney

In 2012, a helicopter transporting the Beatle and his wife, Nancy Shevell, came within feet of crashing into the trees at Macca’s estate in poor weather. The pilot pulled up at the last second, but Sir Paul probably wished he’d stuck with Wings…

Wilko Johnson

His inoperable pancreatic cancer should have killed him within a year, but even after his farewell tour in 2013, Wilko didn’t die - prompting doctors to rethink surgery. They removed a tumour “the size of a baby” and he’s amazingly now cancer-free.

Slash

A speedball almost did for the GN’R man in ’92.

“These dealers came to my hotel room at 5am,” he told The Guardian of his momentary ‘death’.

“They had everything and I took all of it. I started down the hallway and I ran into a maid, and I asked where the elevator was and then bam! I collapsed…”

Keith Richards

The Reaper’s most-wanted is officially indestructible, not only surviving seven decades of miscellaneous excess, but also bouncing back from on stage electrocution (1965), setting his own bed on fire (1971) and a nasty fall from a coconut tree (2006).

“Some doctor once told me I had six months to live,” he rasped, “and I went to their funeral…”