While Michael Jackson was being buried in a lavish ceremony across town, friends, family and fans paid a final tribute to DJ AM (born Adam Goldstein) on Thursday night at the Hollywood Palladium, less than one week after the popular celebrity DJ was found dead in his New York apartment of an apparent drug overdose.
According to People, hundreds of invited guests and fans turned out to remember AM, 36, who was buried on Wednesday, among them former fiancée Nicole Richie and friends Lindsay Lohan, Samantha Ronson, Eric Dane, Rebecca Gayheart and Robert Downey Jr. E! Online reported that the VIPs also included Dr. Drew Pinsky, Tom Arnold, Jon Favreau and Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath.
"He was my soulmate and now he is my soul," girlfriend Hayley Wood said during the two-and-a-half-hour memorial. "He is my amazing grace."
Because of the anonymity requested by organizers to honor the structure of a 12-step meeting, no press was allowed into the event, and few details have emerged about what was said inside.
Radar Online reported that the 3,500 attendees also included John Mayer and that the event was organized by Hollywood club promoter Brent Bolthouse. While fans reportedly scrambled to get a seat in the venue, an eyewitness described the crowd as "very hip and eclectic," with some in T-shirts and jeans and others in black suits. "It was packed, though. You could tell how well loved he was," the witness told the site. "It was a very somber and sad crowd."
The Palladium was a fitting place for AM's final memorial, as it was the first venue he performed in following the South Carolina plane crash he and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker survived last September.
The New York City medical examiner's office has not yet determined a cause of death and is conducting further toxicology tests, but there were several reports from unnamed sources earlier this week that AM had more than half a dozen undigested OxyContin pills in his stomach and one in his mouth when police found him face down on his bed in his barricaded Soho apartment.
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