The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (114 page)

‘Vampires don’t come out and bite your neck any more. [Instead] they cause something destructive to happen. Blood will spill and those invisible vampires will get their meals.’

Peter Tosh ruminates

Under the combined watch of manager Joe Higgs and producers Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, The Wailers became the hottest thing in Jamaica – yet the three band members barely saw a penny until they teamed up with Chris Blackwell at Island Records. Tainted by previous experience, Tosh was mistrustful of Blackwell, and very unhappy to be demoted to support once it was decided Marley would take a leading role (‘I did not come on this earth to be a “background vocal”,’ he would often say). Despite seminal albums such as
Burnin’
(1973), Tosh knew he must go his own way in order to be heard properly. The first of several solid solo efforts,
Legalize It!,
was released on Capitol in 1976; the title track caused such consternation that it was banned from the radio in his homeland. Playing the 1978 One Love Festival alongside Marley, Inner Circle and others, Peter Tosh found himself in severe trouble after criticizing then-Prime Minister Michael Manley (and also his opposition, Eric Seaga) – the singer received a brutal beating at the hands of six policemen. (Tosh claimed that he only survived the ninety-minute attack because he knew how to roll his eyes back.) Some good was to come out of the appearance, however: Tosh was approached by admiring onlooker Mick Jagger – and a whole new professional chapter opened. Jagger signed Tosh to The Rolling Stones’ label, contributing vocals to the song ‘Don’t Look Back’ on Tosh’s great album
Bush Doctor
(1978) and inviting Tosh to support The Stones on their American tour; on this occasion, the singer’s criticisms of those in power were not met with violence. On the contrary, the shows did much to enhance Tosh’s profile and two further albums were cut for the label, followed by two more for EMI – albums dubbed ‘the Red X Tapes’ for their inflammatory content. By the mid eighties, though, Tosh was happier at home with his wife and out of the limelight, the police beating – plus another he received from a drunk wielding a barstool, which left Tosh’s left hand lacerated – sobering to the artist. Sadly, it was far from the end of the violence for Tosh.

Ever the humanitarian, Peter Tosh was to die a martyr. He’d befriended a street vendor known as Dennis Lobban, or ‘Leppo’ – a man with a long criminal record who had recently been incarcerated, but, Tosh believed, deserved an opportunity to get back on his feet. His belief was misguided. On the night of 11 September, Tosh was entertaining friends at his Kingston home when Lobban and two accomplices stormed the reggae star’s house, all carrying guns. Pistol-whipping Tosh, they demanded money – which Tosh didn’t keep indoors. Following a needless and frenzied attack, Tosh’s friend Winston ‘Doc’ Brown was shot dead, while the host and another guest, DJ Free-I, died later at Kingston’s University Hospital from their wounds. Lobban – believed by some to have been a paid pawn, given that nothing was taken from Tosh’s house – turned himself in soon after, and was convicted in just eleven minutes (a record for Jamaican justice). Neither of his accomplices has ever been captured.

See also
Bob Marley (
May 1981); Junior Braithwaite (
June 1999); Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd (
Golden Oldies #19)

Monday 21

Jaco Pastorius

(John Francis Pastorius III - Norristown, Pennsylvania, 1 December 1951)

Weather Report

Word of Mouth

(Various acts)

A bass-guitar original, Jaco Pastorius developed his revolutionary style of fretless ‘scattergunning’ as a boy in Fort Lauderdale – going on to rival Stanley Clarke as the biggest influence in jazz/crossover playing. Until he was thirteen, Pastorius had played only percussion – his father was famed jazz drummer Jack Pastorius – but his bass craft soon made him a local wonder. Purchasing a 1962 Fender jazz bass, he removed the frets from it (to the horror of some) within the next four years Pastorius became Florida’s finest exponent of the instrument.

The peerless Jaco Pastorius, with his weapon set to stun

His first spell with a ‘name’ band was with Wayne Cochran & The C C Riders, a Tampa Bay rock ‘n’ roll outfit very much a vehicle for its frontman. However, Pastorius was quickly fired for being far too prominent – or, more likely, too good. Teaching music part-time at the University of Miami, Pastorius befriended a number of other notable musicians, including guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Joe Zawinul of Weather Report, the seventies fusion pioneers, of whom he was already a fan. By now the bassist was much in demand: as well as producing his own stunning self-titled solo album (1976), Pastorius’s nimble-fingered playing was much to the fore on releases by Metheny, Joni Mitchell, Ian Hunter, and Blood, Sweat & Tears – with whom he also toured. With the decks cleared, Pastorius finally hooked up with Weather Report (replacing the incumbent Alphonso Johnson), for whom he recorded six albums to 1981, and with whom his stage performances became legendary.

He was now dubbed The Greatest bass-player in the World’, but alongside Pastorius’s genius came severe mental and psychological problems, only intensified by his growing dependence on drugs and alcohol. Pastorius’s final year with Weather Report saw some bizarrely distorted behaviour: he sometimes painted his face with marker pens, sometimes chose to appear naked in public. After quitting the band, he took his own project, Word of Mouth, out on the road, but that he was ill was clear to all. One of the more distressing episodes was an onstage eruption of violence at the 1983 Playboy Jazz Festival – one of several flashpoints that would ostracize him from his peers. By 1986 Pastorius was diagnosed manic depressive and committed to New York’s Bellevue Hospital psychiatric unit. From this point on, the much-revered musician lived his life in the shadows, more often than not moving within low-rent drug circles, sleeping rough and jettisoning most of what his fame had bought him. On the night of 12 September 1987, Pastorius attempted to gain entry to Fort Lauderdale’s Midnight Bottle Club – he was promptly refused entry by security man Luc Havan because of his dishevelled appearance. In a fit of anger, Pastorius then tried to kick in the door, enraging Havan to the point where the bouncer, a martial-arts expert, beat him senseless, aiming a series of kicks at the musician’s head. His skull fractured in several places – and his face battered beyond all recognition – Jaco Pastorius was admitted to nearby Broward Medical Center. He never emerged from a coma, and died in his father’s arms nine days later. Although Pastorius was canonized within the music industry, his death went almost unreported by the media, while Havan – who’d initially blamed the musician’s injuries on a fall – was released from jail after serving just four months of a two-year sentence.

Occasional Weather Report singer Dee Dee Bellson died in 2009.

DECEMBER

Saturday 5

Fat Larry James

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2 August 1949)

Fat Larry’s Band

(The Delfonics)

(Blue Magic)

Short and very round, Larry James looked like neither a frontman nor a drummer, but he possessed a warmth that filtered through his bands’ output over a relatively short career. James was first noticed by the public during his brief stints as a back-up man with The Delfonics and Blue Magic, but it was the formation of entertaining Philly funk unit Fat Larry’s Band (sometimes FLB) that made his name. Oddly, the very US-centric band was far more successful in the UK, where they secured a radio hit in 1977 with ‘Center City’. Even in his other capacity as manager of disco group Slick, James saw more action in the British singles charts, where his first taste of Top Twenty success was with 1979’s ‘Space Bass’. Fat Larry’s Band – who put out six albums before 1986 – finally hit paydirt with the smash ‘Zoom’ (1982), which was only kept from UK number one by Musical Youth; inexplicably, this very commercial disc failed to travel past number eighty-nine on the US R & B listings.