KENNEDY: Liam Payne’s death reminds me of all the tragic young stars I’ve known – and what drove them to an early grave

Liam Payne had been crying out for help for years.

Maybe no one could have saved him.

To the casual fan, it may have seemed like the young, handsome One Direction star had it all. He was a father known to his friends as a cheerful and optimistic soul. As a former member of an iconic band, he had sold an unfathomable 70 million records. Even stranger, as a solo artist, he had also been successful.

How could someone like that spiral so horribly out of control that he would indulge in a reckless drug binge and fall to his death?

A woman, who was staying in the same Argentine hotel where Liam died on Wednesday, claims to have captured some of his last words.

She says he was acting erratically in the lobby, seemingly out of it, and, after smashing her laptop, told her: “I used to be in a boy band, that’s why I’m so screwed.”

‘I used to be…’

What a tragic admission. And so revealing.

When I heard about Liam’s death, memories of people I knew from my time as an MTV video jockey in the ’90s came to mind.

I’d seen a lot of guys go from stinking string players playing in bars to overnight global sensations that made grown men cry. I thought of Kurt Cobain, Scott Weiland, Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell, Michael Jackson and, the sweetest of them all to me, Shannon Hoon.

Shannon, the lead singer of Blind Melon, was only a few years older than me when we met in 1993.

In our first interview, he gave me a hard time by disparagingly referring to him on air as Shannon ‘Who Cares’, after he sang backing vocals in the music video for the Guns N’ Roses song ‘Don’t Cry’. ‘.

Before Blind Melon’s ‘No Rain’ (Remember Bee Girl? Nothing more ’90s than that!) completely blew up, Shannon was a goofy, kind, enthusiastic rocker.

I immediately identified with their charming Midwestern energy. He had lived in his hometown of Lafayette, Indiana, the birthplace of Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose (Rose and my brother attended the same preschool).

Shannon seemed familiar to me, like an older brother.

But at each of our subsequent meetings, his light dimmed. In one year, he had gone from a cutie pie to an egomaniacal weirdo.

He’d been around musicians long enough to see that Shannon was slipping into an abyss. Fame was driving him crazy.

Imagine playing for 80,000 people who love you so much that they shout your songs so loud you can’t even hear your own instruments.

What do you do for a living? Many meet as many girls as possible and keep the parties as late as they can (night after night, year after year), surrounding themselves with facilitators with bags of drugs to make sure the rabid guy stays raging.

Obviously, that has a price.

In a 2021 interview, Liam Payne said his band’s managers would put the One Direction children in a hotel room for their safety after their unimaginable stardom became too much.

‘Of course, what’s in the room? Mini bar,” Payne recalled. “So at one point I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to throw a party for one.'”

Fame is lonely. Alcohol and drugs are ruinous. And then everything becomes impossible to live without.

That’s what happened to Shannon. He died of a heart attack in 1995, alone and face down on a tour bus after a cocaine binge.

Like Liam, he left behind a child and an audience that had soured on his last work.

It is now reported that Liam’s label, Capitol Records, had dropped him days before his death. His public relations manager had resigned earlier this month. And his girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, had left him alone in Argentina.

In the coming days and weeks, we will learn the truth about Liam’s death and how and why he fell from that balcony to his death.

But I know what killed Liam: fame.

Fat Uncle Sam

Elon Musk, who recently lost 30 pounds with the help of weight-loss injections, is threatening to put Uncle Sam on a diet.

Trump has said that if he is re-elected, he will name Elon “Secretary of Cost Reduction.”

But Musk will soon discover that there is no Ozempic cure for a bloated bureaucracy.

Simply the worst!

Why can’t mother-daughter duo Heidi Klum and Leni stop posing for near-nude photos together?

In their latest ad for lingerie brand Intimissimi, it’s practically boob-to-boob, with Heidi, 51, looking less like the once peerless jewel in Germany’s crown, and more and more like a dirty Berlin pimp.

Little interest

That is Victoria’s secret? Nobody really cares.

After upper management wokies ruined sales by tying their panties to cranky braggarts like Megan Rapinoe and ‘body positive’ runway stomps with BMIs closer to Joe Biden’s age, they brought back the old fashion show after a five-year break.

The problem: We’ve all moved on… and now buy our underwear at Target (but you can blame Biden for that!).

Need a new Taylor

Isn’t Taylor Swift a billionaire? Can’t afford to have your assistant pack a steamer on the private jet and maybe some nicer shoes while you’re at it?

For someone who is an artistic and cultural tour de force, she really drops the ball every time she opens her closet to search for any discernible sense of style.

clean veep

Whatever JD Vance is doing, it’s working.

He’s denied using eyeliner, but I don’t care if he goes crazy on November 5th.

With his newly slim physique, dreamy blue eyes, wrinkle-free forehead and permanent tan, this couch lover has become a real lady killer!

Out of the waltz

Meanwhile, Tim Walz is making the most condescending stump speech in American history.

After admitting that he was a “fool” for bad-mouthing being in China when he wasn’t, he now seems to be telling us that he is a complete idiot.

‘I don’t even know what a venture capitalist does!’ he said this week, in what was supposed to be an insult to his MAGA counterpart.

Hi Tim, acting stupid doesn’t make you relatable… or electable.