Some rock stars fade into obscurity, what with changing trends and tastes. Others fade into oblivion. Here are some once-popular musicians who disappeared off the face of the Earth. 

The bassist from Loverboy

If you listen to the radio, you’ve probably heard Scott Smith’s legacy very recently. As the original bassist for the Canadian band Loverboy, Smith played on classic rock staples such as “Turn Me Loose” and “Working for the Weekend,” a Friday afternoon standard. Smith stayed with the group past its heyday…up until his mysterious disappearance in November 2000. After playing at a diabetes research benefit in Vancouver, Smith and some friends took off in his sailboat for Mexico. Near San Francisco, they hit a storm which produced 20-foot-high waves. One of them knocked Smith off the deck, and into the water. A Coast Guard search turned up nothing, and neither did a private search. Smith was 45 years old; his body was never recovered.

The Britpop guitarist

Richey Edwards wasn’t the lead singer of the edgy, 1990s British alternative rock (or “Britpop”) band the Manic Street Preachers, but he was certainly the star—a moody, good-looking guitarist who wrote a lot of the band’s lyrics…many of them about his depression. That’s why fans, friends, and family feared the worst when Edwards vanished in February 1995. Scheduled to fly to the U.S. with Manic Street Preachers singer James Dean Bradfield, Edwards disappeared from his hotel room, and his car was found abandoned by a U.K. bridge. Edwards never turned up, dead or alive, and he was declared legally dead in 2008.

The singer-songwriter that was ahead of her time

In the 1960s, folk-powered singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez brought a rawness and poetry to both mainstream music and the rising counterculture moment. Ahead of seven those pioneers was 1950s musician Connie Converse. She played the same Greenwich Village clubs as later folkies would, but she never found mainstream fame or success, outside of a 1954 performance on CBS’s The Morning Show. She quit music for good and got on with her life in 1961. The next big moment in Converse’s life came in 1974. She turned 50, told her friends she was going to make a new start, and drove out of town. She was never heard from again. In wasn’t until 2009 that demo recordings she made were released…to wide acclaim.