Charles Haddon Dead: Suicide During Ou Est Le Swimming Pool Concert

BRUSSELS — The lead singer of a British pop trio climbed a telecommunications mast behind the main stage at a Belgian rock festival and leaped to his death in the parking lot below, police said Saturday.

Twenty-two-year-old Charles Haddon of Ou Est Le Swimming Pool died late Friday during the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, a town in eastern Belgium. District attorney Marc Rubens said police were treating the death as a suicide.

Festival organizers said Haddon's family has been notified.

On Thursday, Michael Been, frontman for the U.S. group The Call, died of an apparent heart attack at the same festival. The 60-year-old was working as the soundman for his son's band, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Comments

[amleth]

10:03 PM on 08/24/2010

Rock'n'roll is a deadly serious business.

Lots of deaths in audience stampedes, electrical frying of roadies and musicians, falling light pipes, stabbings in the audience.

All started by some souped up 12 bar blues.

As the man said, a long strange trip.

But speaking as one who was 16 in 1956, the year Elvis broke huge, the year Chuck went viral, the year Bill Haley and the Comets were on my hometown screen, the year Great Balls 'o Fire swept the civilized world, the real birth year of R&R, I am pleased that my generation started a pop music revolution that changed the world.

I was a R&R roadie for a while, and it was the best time of my life.

That deaths occur relatively frequently compared to other forms of show biz is a shame. There is a lot of carelessness there, as promoters and show producers are looking at the numbers they can multiply only, and human life in the balance is not worth much.

Many of them, the late great Bill Graham and a few others excluded, don't have any respect for this kind of music as art, anyway; it's just another product to sell.

Condolences to those who have lost people in the business; show business should not require blood.
When I directed and produced, I made sure it did not.

Peace, best wishes.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

08:28 PM on 08/24/2010

Maybe he was just wasted and he fell off? Ever consider that?

[SteveNeptune]

12:22 PM on 08/24/2010

All I see in this report is that he fell off a tower in some small Belgian town (pop. 70,000) where the local police are treating it as suicide. Might make sense to get all the facts before judging this dude.

[GibsonSG]

11:33 AM on 08/24/2010

GG Allin would be proud. As long as he whizzed on the crowd on the way down.

[furby4]

12:47 PM on 08/24/2010

Guess he really couldn't find "le swimming pool".

[TheSpiderMind]

10:53 AM on 08/24/2010

If you ask me, that was a dick thing to do. If you want to off yourself, do it in a manner not calculated to give post traumatic stress disorder to 1,000 kids.

[AZCool]

12:09 PM on 08/24/2010

totally agree.

[Donkey Party]

04:54 AM on 08/24/2010

This is really taking stage-diving to new heights. Sorry, too soon?

[MarcEdward]

12:03 PM on 08/24/2010

Not too soon.

[furby4]

12:43 PM on 08/24/2010

LOL. Can't help myself, good joke.

[Morgantheaxe]

02:11 AM on 08/24/2010

Darwin wins again.

[lacasarosada]

01:31 AM on 08/24/2010

i think the Rolling Stones called this one back in the 70's. I know its only rock-n-roll but i like it

[poeticjustice4all]

12:59 AM on 08/24/2010

Just because the POLICE say they are "treating the death as a suicide" doesn't mean it was a suicide.

Your jokes are funny until it's remembered that you're all ignorant of the facts. You are jumping to conclusions and leaping based merely on your faith in the POLICE.

This display of willful ignorance is a form of suicide.

[Impaler]

05:13 AM on 08/24/2010

"leaping based merely on your faith".....ROTF. too soon?

[Colonel Angus]

12:30 PM on 08/24/2010

What sort of juridiction does Sting have here? Why arent the local authorites taking care of this?

[thereisonlyoneparty]

12:27 AM on 08/24/2010

What an discourteous fellow.

I have no problem with people killing themselves as long as they do it in a way that does not endanger or inconvenience other people. That is an incredibly selfish thing to do.

Why could have not have overdoses or something like that where it would be safe and clean?

[jcd8822]

11:24 PM on 08/23/2010

Two celeberity deaths at one concert...........thas is something else.

[RonRutherford]

12:04 AM on 08/24/2010

Eh, first off neither are exactly celebrities. Second they died at the same festival, two days apart, and one of them was 60 years old... so not that strange. It's extremely heart breaking that the musician chose to commit suicide, especially in such a public way. Suicide is always selfish but to mentally scar that many people makes the incident that much more tragic. A permanent solution to an often temporary problem, and now hundreds of concert goers had to witness it. Tragic..

[WisdomFirst]

07:26 AM on 08/24/2010

Thanks for your thoughtful and intelligent post.

[alkamm]

10:47 AM on 08/24/2010

"suicide is always selfish?"
I agree with the rest of your thinking, but to use the dominant metaphor, you are leaping to conclusions. I don't know how to feel other people's pain, but I've had some pretty painful moments and I don't know how selfish I'd be if I had to choose between living in excrutiating pain or dying with dignity. Like the sort of heroism that sends soldiers to their deaths by jumping on a grenade to save their comrades or a bond broker off a burning tower on 9/11, maybe what I'm thinking about is semantically not suicide.
But yes, it's pretty offensive if you drag your audience into your final curtain call.

[anitaj]

10:49 PM on 08/23/2010

How awful. My condolences to Mr. Haddon 's family and friends.

[Jason Kline]

10:15 PM on 08/23/2010

dude must have been high, at least until he hit Earth

[iwannafly]

09:35 PM on 08/23/2010

eeevooluutionnnnnn he said on the way down

[bryan broome]

08:47 PM on 08/23/2010

I suppose narcissism has gone global now. What a sad and pathetic genreation.

[Paralogos]

04:48 AM on 08/24/2010

You realize, of course, that that's been said about *every* generation since the dawn of human history?

[captain hooker]

10:44 AM on 08/24/2010

if the shoe fits