The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (126 page)

Another New York hip-hop innovator, Keith Wiggins was among the first credited with rapping itself, joining DJ Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler) in the mid seventies as the latter – already getting attention for his fast-action craft of breaks and cuts – decided a vocal accompaniment would provide the hammer to knock in the nail. Wiggins came in to replace original choice Lovebug Starski (Kevin Smith), under the nickname ‘Cowboy’, becoming one of the first MCs as he delivered a series of rough ‘n’ ready rhymes to the beats: his call-to-arms phrases became rap staples within the next decade. With the addition of Grandmaster Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) and his brother Nathaniel, aka Kidd Creole, Flash’s support troupe became The 3MCs. Operating much like Jamaican soundsystem rivals, various posses would take one another on – with their equipment at stake. Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s careers were also developing separately – Mel had expanded his unit to become The Furious Five, with Rahiem (Guy Williams) and Scorpio (Eddie Morris) – and Joe Robinson Jr of Sugar Hill Records saw huge studio potential in what each was doing. After a few marginal offerings, the combined units gave the world the breakthrough hit ‘The Message’ (1982, penned by Robinson’s wife, former hitmaker Sylvia). This record’s extraordinary rumble was to change the face of black American music. But Flash was nonplussed by royalty policies, for which he would sue Sugar Hill (the subject of 1983’s We Don’t Work for Free’), and he left the label with Creole and Rahiem in 1984. Cowboy, Mel and Scorpio remained to score another massive international hit with ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’ (in Britain, this track stayed on the charts for almost a year and was the thirteenth-biggest seller of 1984).

The subject matter of the record was to prove deeply ironic, though – Flash was now addicted to cocaine and Cowboy was slipping into the far darker world of crack. By 1987 he was serving time for possession, his career at an apparent standstill. With drugs becoming the main focus of his last two years, Cowboy slipped off rap’s radar to die in relative obscurity in a New York hospital. The cause of death was believed to be a heart attack brought on by his habit.

OCTOBER

Alan Murphy

(Finsbury, London, 18 November 1953)

Level 42

Kate Bush

(Various acts)

A rebellious metalhead as a youngster, Alan Murphy survived expulsion from school to become one of the most respected British mainstream guitarists of the eighties. Blues-influenced Murphy spent his early career mainly in session mode, hopping from one act to another, in 1975 flying to Los Angeles to record with British band Ace only to join Long John Baldry when the sessions didn’t work out. After three years of touring, Murphy returned to Britain to join the band of very ‘happening’ singer Kate Bush (despite never having heard of Wuthering Heights’) for her
Never Forever
(1980) and
The Dreaming
(1982) albums – the singer apparently liked his ‘whale sounds’ and invited him back for later work. In the early eighties, work was more sporadic for Murphy, despite recording with Joan Armatrading, Go West, Nick Heyward, Mike & The Mechanics, Scritti Politti and Amii Stewart – as well as his own band SFX – but an opportunity with white soul/fusion act Level 42 arose early in 1988. By now Murphy had learned and accepted that he was HIV positive, so playing with the established British band perhaps represented a chance to end his days on a high: he contributed to the gold album
Staring at the Sun
(1988).

Although he kept the news of his condition to himself, many who saw Alan Murphy during his final year felt he hadn’t long to live. Just three months after leaving Level 42, the guitarist passed away from pneumonia at the Westminster Hospital. Kate Bush’s 1991 hit cover of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ was perhaps the last release to feature Murphy’s work. The singer remembered him by featuring an empty chair with an acoustic guitar on it in the promotional video.

DECEMBER

Billy Lyall

(Edinburgh, 26 March 1953)

Pilot

(The Bay City Rollers)

(Various acts)

In the seventies, a young keyboard and flute-playing Scot was doing his best to extricate himself from the potential shackles of new teen group The Bay City Rollers. As someone who could actually play his instrument, Billy Lyall had no real place in a band that was effectively a pretty-boy front for a series of anonymous session men. Around the same time, another bunch of young Edinburgh boys were being touted as the next Rollers – but this band could play and had a tune (well, two) about them. Via a stint as an engineer at Craighall Studios, Lyall joined fellow ex-Roller David Paton (vocals/ bass), Ian Bairnson (guitar) and Stuart Tosh (drums) in Pilot, and the group quickly secured a big transatlantic hit with the hopelessly optimistic but mightily infectious ‘Magic’ (1974). Pilot had been signed to EMI at the same time as both Cockney Rebel and Queen – and the race was on to nail a number one. All three were to manage the feat during 1975, but Pilot, with the hopelessly optimistic but mightily infectious ‘January’, landed first.

However, after this blurt of huge success, they were unable to chart any further records higher than number thirty-one (1975’s ‘Just a Smile’), and Paton and Bairnson ran off to join The Alan Parsons Project. Lyall attempted a solo career with little success, during the eighties enjoying the dubious double honour of playing with Sheena Easton and Dollar. Diagnosed two years before, he, too, died of an AIDS-related illness in December 1989.

Billy Lyall : Dropped the Pilot

Thursday 14

Pattie Santos

(San Francisco, California, 16 November 1944)

It’s a Beautiful Day

(Pharoe’s Whistle)

She was working as – well, not a waitress in a cocktail bar – a checkout girl in a grocery store when It’s a Beautiful Day’s manager/promoter Matthew Katz decided that winsome teenager Patricia Santos was just the face to front the San Fran folk-pop band. As luck would have it, Santos had belonged to a school choir and possessed the voice to match the look. In IABD, she joined violinist and founder member David LaFlamme and his keyboardist wife, Linda; the group signed to Columbia (after a winning 1968 performance opening for Cream in place of Traffic) and issued their eponymous debut a year later. This record contained the band’s best-known song in ‘White Bird’. The LaFlammes’ messy divorce probably dented the band’s progress thereafter (Linda had already had enough, having been bottled at a gig), and numerous line-up changes followed. Santos was to be a permanent fixture, though, and It’s a Beautiful Day issued four more albums to 1974; she also formed her own band, Pharoe’s Whistle, and recorded with Bud Cockrell and Jaco Pastorius later in the decade.

In late 1989, an inebriated Pattie Santos was heading westwards through Santa Rosa at breakneck speed along a notorious stretch of Route 128 when she hit the kerb, then a fence, her car flipping up into the air and colliding with trees. The singer – who had not been strapped in – was pronounced dead at 1.20 am. Various members of IABD fell into protracted legal wrangles with Katz, and keyboardist Fred Webb also passed away just months later. Occasional vibraphonist Larry Blackshere was murdered in 2002.

See also
Jaco Pastorius (
September 1987). Cockrell- to whom Santos had briefly been married - died from diabetes in
March 2006.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1989:

Rick Aitken
(UK guitarist with rated UK indie band A Witness; born Stockport, England, 1966; accident while rock-climbing in the Scottish highlands, 11/10)

Dean Beard
(US rockabilly guitarist/pianist, leader of The Crew Cats and briefly a member of The Champs; born Texas, 1935; leukaemia, 4/1989)

Joseph Boatner
(US vocalist with influential group The Ink Spots; born 27/9/1918; unknown - shortly before later members Cliff Givens and Stanley Morgan - 8/5)

Wick Larsen
(US guitarist with oddly named Southern rockers Wet Willie; born 2/5/1951; diabetic coma, 14/2)