Funny you should mention...This happened earlier this week:
Jefferson Airplane Drummer Dies
PETALUMA, Calif. - Spencer Dryden, the drummer for legendary rock band the Jefferson Airplane, has died of cancer. He was 66.
Dryden, who died at his home Tuesday, retired from performing 10 years ago, although he hadn't been working much before that.
"I'm gone," he told the San Francisco Chronicle last May. "I'm out of it. I've left the building."
A benefit concert last year featuring Bob Weir (news) of the Grateful Dead and Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule and raised $36,000 for Dryden, who was in the middle of two hip replacement surgeries and was facing heart surgery at the time. His Petaluma home and all his possessions had been destroyed in a fire in September 2003. He also had been diagnosed with stomach cancer.
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He last appeared in public in November, after he was already being treated for cancer, signing autographs and shaking hands at a release party for the DVD of Jefferson Airplane video clips.
<see this article for more>
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=495&ncid=762&e=7&u=/ap/20050113/ap_en_mu/obit_dryden