by Pete Childs on guitar, John Sebastian on harmonica, and Harvey Brooks on bass. The second album was more fully arranged, with Neil accompanied by the New York session band Stuff and some old friends, including Slick Aguilar. The songs on these albums were written by Bobby Charles, John Braheny, Bobby Ingram, Billy Joe Shaver, and Billy Roberts (composer of "Hey Joe"). Through the 1980s, Neil retreated from music and public life, living in Florida. In June 1987, in Miami, he was involved in a tragic accident that killed Christine Purcell, his girlfriend, when she hotwired her camper truck, which had a defective starter, and called for Neil to start the vehicle. Apparently she had not put it fully into neutral or set a parking brake, and the wheels ran over her, causing "massive blunt trauma." Afterward, Neil moved from Coconut Grove, visiting New York, travelling to Mexico and Texas, then, by the early 1990s, relocating to coastal Oregon. In 1996, he returned east, to the Florida Keys. In 1998, he remarked on a sore on his face that he claimed was a spider bite. It was the first sign of a later-diagnosed squamous-cell carcinoma, for which he received radiation treatment and surgery. The cancer returned in 2001, and he was scheduled to begin chemotherapy on July 16, but he was found dead on July 7. He was reported to have died of natural causes, and to have left a written will on his nightstand. Vince Martin said that a police officer told him there was also a bottle of Vicodin. Legacy Neil gained public recognition in 1969, when Nilsson's recording of "Everybody's Talkin'" was featured in the film Midnight Cowboy; the song became a hit and won a Grammy Award. He was one of the pioneers of the folk rock and singer-songwriter musical genres, his most prominent musical descendants being Tim Buckley, Stephen Stills, David Crosby and Joni Mitchell. In Neil's obituary in Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis wrote, "So why is Neil a hero to David Crosby? Because back when Crosby was an aspiring folkie who just arrived in New York, Neil bothered to take an interest in him, just as he did for the young Bob Dylan, who backed Neil on harmonica at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. 'He taught me that everything was music,' Crosby says." His most frequently cited disciples are Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin,