In 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. He is believed my many to be the first rock star, and the first rock star to die young. Marie de France, in her "Lay of Tyndall the Minstrel," wrote of a young lutist who died embarrassingly of autoerotic asphyxiation, but her story is largely believed to have been a factional invention.