The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (101 page)

The Cowsills - with ‘Mom’ Barbara
(third right):
The family that played together
didn’t
stay together

The Cowsills’ career hit the rocks only when the group declined an offer from ABC to make a TV series of their activities – in the wake of the success of
The Monkees.
The company required younger singer/ actress Shirley Jones to play Barbara’s role – which the family were understandably upset by. It cost them dearly: Jones took the part of ‘singing mom’ in
The Partridge Family
– and the David Cassidy-starring group took the Cowsills’ place as pop music’s top family act. Declaring bankruptcy, The Cowsills split in 1972. Barbara Cowsill took menial work to make ends meet. Her death from emphysema in 1985 remained a secret for years, though it now appears she passed away while working a shift at an Arizona nursing home.

See also
Barry Cowsill (
September 2005). Bud Cowsill survived his wife by seven years, while Bill Cowsill died early in 2006.

FEBRUARY

Thursday 7

Matt Monro

(Terence Parsons - Shoreditch, London, 1 December 1930)

Often dismissed as slight during his lifetime, MOR heart-throb Matt Monro has posthumously gained a credibility once thought unlikely – particularly in the USA where he was originally seen as a wannabe Frank Sinatra. Monro, a decent enough balladeer with a chocolatey-smooth voice, began his professional career as a club singer under the name Al Jordan, before pianist Winifred Atwell suggested the new moniker. It took a while to launch Monro’s recording career, and the singer worked as a bus driver until an advertisement slot for Camay soap made the voice public at last. Fabled producer George Martin recorded Monro first, using him as a Sinatra soundalike on a Peter Sellers comedy album. On the week of his thirtieth birthday, Parlophone issued Monro’s ‘Portrait of My Love’, a record that rose to UK number three and the first of several chart smashes over the next five years. Although he was less successful in the US, Monro chose to move there in 1965 to exploit the cabaret market. (That year, he also became the first artist – of several hundred – to cover The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’, securing another major UK hit.)

His reputation remained intact throughout the seventies, but Matt Monro’s health dwindled during the next decade and he died from cancer at just fifty-two.

Thursday 28

David Byron

(David Garrick - Epping, Essex, 29 January 1947)

Uriah Heep

(Rough Diamond)

(Spice)

(The Stalkers)

Teaming with guitarist Mick Box, teenage vocalist David Garrick made his first foray into rock via the R & B-influenced Stalkers before spending three years as frontman of live favourites Spice. While this group enjoyed a residency at London’s sweaty, boozy Marquee Club, Byron lived a twilight existence as a sessionsinger, recording a number of hit cover albums for the budget label Avenue. The group – now comprising Byron, Box, Paul Newton (bass) and Alex Napier (drums) – became Uriah Heep with the addition of keyboardist/guitarist Ken Hemsley and replacement drummer Nigel ‘Ollie’ Olsson, and a prog-rock legend was born. Debuting with the album
Very Eavy, Very ‘Umble
(1970 – coincidentally the hundredth anniversary of Charles Dickens’s death), Uriah Heep began a long career of album-orientated rock releases, negotiating some pretty serious critical disapproval along the way. The group juggled the usual predictable lyrical subjects, and also managed a sixteen-minute opening track on their second album,
Salisbury
(1971), which prompted a whole new craze among prog acts. (Having inspired Spinal Tap’s flirtation with Stonehenge, Uriah Heep might also be said to have blueprinted their drummer syndrome – Heep worked their way through at least five in their career.) As for Byron himself, he was every bit the star, usually taking the stage resplendent in a slashed jacket and other rock finery.

Although Heep charted a further eight albums over the next five years (unthinkable nowadays), the drug-related death of later bassist Gary Thain
(
December 1975)
was followed by David Byron’s professional decline – he gave a series of drunken performances that the band felt were compromising their own standing. He was sacked in July 1976, and joined metal band Rough Diamond. His health was by now in chronic deterioration (caused largely by a life dominated more and more by drugs and drinking) and, after the release of some indifferently received solo material on Arista, he succumbed to a premature heart attack.

MARCH

Saturday 30

The Singing Nun

(Jeanine Deckers - Wavre, Belgium, 17 October 1933)

Jeanine Deckers was perhaps encouraged to dedicate herself to God as a result of a childhood devoid of love – and, after an unexpected spell in the limelight, was finally, fatefully, let down by the Church to whom she had devoted her life. Entering the Dominican convent of Fichermont in Waterloo (Belgium), Deckers, now known as Sister Luc-Gabrielle, entertained friends and students with songs composed on her guitar (itself named ‘Sister Adele’); her superiors were so taken with her compositions, which they felt could be used in missions, that she was encouraged to record a selection in October 1961 at Philips Records’ Belgium studios. Although Deckers was not an especially gifted vocalist (and her songs were not particularly inspired), the company was sufficiently impressed to press a thousand copies under the name Soeur Sourire (‘Sister Smile’) – these sold out across Europe almost immediately. Perhaps in response to the Kennedy assassination, the phenomenon of The Singing Nun then caught on once the album was issued in the US. The lead track, ‘Dominique’, was released as a single in November 1963, astonishing everyone – not least Deckers herself – by racing to the top of the Billboard charts that Christmas. As a result, the album followed suit and The Singing Nun found herself on television specials such as the hugely influential
Ed Sullivan Show
(to the chagrin of some of her superiors back in Belgium); a lucrative biopic, starring Debbie Reynolds, was also hastily prepared – though Deckers herself was less than pleased with it, claiming it was not her life that was depicted.

But, despite all this media attention and the money-spinning ventures, The Singing Nun did not benefit: Deckers had taken a vow of poverty, so all of the royalties were reinvested into the Fichermont convent – which also owned her stage name. In 1967, Deckers decided to eschew the convent life and concentrate on a musical career under yet another new name (Sister Luc-Dominique, in deference to her hit record), producing unlikely songs such as ‘Glory be to God for the Golden Pill’ – a ditty celebrating birth control – which alienated all but a select few of her former sisters. The American market was equally sniffy, wanting more of the saccharine sweetness of earlier outings, and a follow-up hit was not forthcoming. A return to obscurity beckoned, and – infuriating her earlier colleagues further by beginning a lesbian relationship – Deckers, with her lover, Anne Pécher, turned her attention from music to the foundation of a school for autistic children.

There were those, however, who were not prepared to let her forget her past successes: the taxmen. Though her contract had almost completely cut Deckers out of any financial advantage, the revenue office still hit her with a bill of some £40,000 for past royalties; her objection that convent benefits were exempt went unheeded by the authorities. Plagued by depression, sexual confusion and becoming more and more substance-dependent, Deckers and Pécher took their lives with a lethal mixture of alcohol and barbiturates in a suicide pact that shocked Belgium. The couple were buried together on consecrated ground in Wavre.

‘We go now to God and hope he will welcome us -he saw us suffer.’

The suicide note of Jeanine Deckers and Anne Pécher

AUGUST

Monday 12

Kyu Sakamoto

(Kawasaki, Japan, 10 November 1941)