R. Gary Patterson's Take a Walk on the Dark Side: Rock and Roll Myths, Legends, and Curses

Not a bad book but Patterson uses "ironically" in place of "coincedentally" every chance he gets. Did you know [spooky voice]
that Robert Johnson died August 16, 1938, the same date as Babe Ruth and Elvis? (Patterson links dates in the life of Johnson to everyone involved with rock.) Did you know that Aleister Crowley is linked to everyone who ever picked up a guitar? That the Illuminati were founded by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria on May 1, 1776 which links them to everything from the American Revolution to the death of Tupac.

Some other facts:

There's a lot of material on Anton LaVey who it turns out died October 29, 1997 but his followers [L. Ron-eque] tried to withhold the news until October 31...to be more devilish. Reading excerpts of LaVey's writing made me remember writer/professor Austin Wright's comment on narrative styles: "Exclamation points are for wimps." LaVey couldn't write a check without sticking a few dozen exclamation points on it.

Bob Dornan introduced House Bill 6363 which wanted to label suspect albums with "Warning: This record contains backward masking that makes a verbal statement which is audible when this record is played backward and which may be perceptible at a subliminal level when the record is played forward." Among the other silliness, wouldn't that be "subaural," not "subliminal"?

Testifying on behalf of the bill was a woman identified only as "Elaine" who said "I was, for 17 years, a servant of Satan. . . I attended special ceremonies at varying recording studios throughout the U.S. for the specific purpose of placing Satanic blessings on the rock music recorded. We did incantations which placed demons on every record and tape of rock music that was sold. At times we also called up special demons who spoke on the recording—the various back masked messages." Does this mean that there are still demons on some of my old records that I haven't played for years? Do demons have a shelf life?

Mark David Chapman led church youth-groups in a parody of John Lennon's Imagine which began "Imagine there's no John Lennon."

Young Deaths of Musicians (and some other famous people I could think of):

Ritchie Valens 17

Joan of Arc 19

Buddy Holly 22

John Keats 25
Tupac Shakur 25

Robert Johnson 27
Brian Jones (found of the Rolling Stones) 27
Jimi Hendrix 27
Janis Joplin 27
Jim Morrison 27
Kurt Cobain 27

J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson 28

Percy Shelley 29

Alexander the Great 33
Jesus 33 (traditional)
John Belushi 33
Chris Farley 33

Lord Byron 36

I'm sure there's many more but I'm not sure what to google this under.