The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (135 page)

Sean Oliver
(Antiguan/British bassist with the excellent Pop Group and Rip, Rig & Panic - the band that launched Neneh Cherry - later with Float Up CP and Terence Trent D’Arby; sickle-cell anaemia, 3/1990)

Dave Prichard
(US guitarist with metal act Armoured Saint; born California, 27/11/1963; leukaemia, 27/2)

Joel Rundell
(US rhythm guitarist with New Orleans alt-pop band Better Than Ezra; born Louisiana, 26/9/1965; suicide, 8/8)

Bert Sommer
(US guitarist/vocalist with a later version of hippy/bubblegum band The Left Banke - and another cast member from
Hair
to pass on; born 1948; liver failure, 23/7)

Hal Worthington
(US baritone singer with soul act The Unifics; born Harold Worthington, 1947; innocent victim of gangland crossfire in a Washington, DC, restaurant/billiard parlour, 20/2)

Evelyn Young
(aka ‘The Whip’ - US blues sax player who worked with B B King, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Memphis Slim; born 1928; heart failure, 2/10)

1991

JANUARY

Tuesday 8

Steve ‘Steamin’’ Clark

(Sheffield, 23 April 1960)

Def Leppard

Although not an original member of Def Leppard, Steve Clark was the Sheffield metallers’ most gifted musician. He learned classical guitar as a boy and attended Stannington College – to drop out in January 1978 when early Leppard Pete Willis booked the guitarist after hearing him play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Freebird’ note-for-note. Clark’s first contributions were on the debut EP
Getcha Rocks Off
(1979) – a statement of intent as the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) began in earnest. The band soon fell into its familiar line-up – Clark, Joey Elliott (vocals), Willis (guitar, replaced by Phil Collen in 1982), Rick Savage (bass) and Rick Allen (drums) – signing with Peter Mensch (AC/DC’s manager) and Mercury Records. Leppard’s first album
On through the Night
(1980) was a moderate hit in the UK, and the band rubbed shoulders with a host of new British rockers like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang and Wychfynde – but it was in the US that they really hit the big time. Consecutive albums
Pyromania
(1983) and
Hysteria
(1987) shifted a staggering 8 million copies
apiece
in America – the highest-ever sales for a band – where Leppard were easily (and a shade bizarrely) the biggest UK rock export of the era. Similarly, the extracted singles – of which ‘Photograph’ (1983) was probably the best – cleaned up across the Atlantic, ‘Animal’ finally taking the band into the Top Ten at home (1987), encouraging huge domestic sales for
Hysteria.
Despite this overwhelming success, Def Leppard still had something of a bumpy ride: in 1984, Allen lost an arm (
Close!)
while Willis’s sacking two years before had been a direct result of his alcoholism, to which Clark appeared to pay little heed.

Def Leppard as ‘cubs’: Clark, Collen, Elliot, Savage and Allen

The guitarist, with his flowing golden locks and duck-walking stage performance, had long been the focal point of the band for groupies, and his relentless partying began to take its toll by the end of the eighties. Shortly after attending rehabilitation in London, Steve Clark died in his sleep from a combination of alcohol, barbiturates and antidepressants taken during a party at his flat. The late guitarist was replaced by former Whitesnake axe-wielder Vivian Campbell, but, without the flamboyant Clark, Def Leppard lost much of their flair.

Sunday 20

Stan Szelest

(Buffalo, New York, 11 February 1942)

Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks

The Band

(Various acts)

An associate of The Band since their early days as part of Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks, pianist Stan Szelest was very much mentor to musicians such as guitarist Rick Danko. His first tenure with The Hawks was not a long one, Szelest choosing in 1960 to return to his engineering studies while playing sessions with various bands from his locale, including his own Ravens and also Bill Black’s Combo. Before rejoining The Band in 1990, Szelest was constantly in demand as studio/touring musician, playing with a wide array of US artists including Captain Beefheart, Neil Diamond and Maria Muldaur. Just as the reformed Band had won a four-album deal with CBS, Szelest died suddenly from a heart attack in New York. He was just forty-eight.

See also
Richard Manuel (
March 1986); Rick Danko (
December 1999); Richard Bell (
June 2007)

‘Stan transmitted some powerful force to me.’

Rick Danko, The Band

Close!

Rick Allen

(Def Leppard)

After a punishing touring and recording schedule, Leppard’s drummer Rick Allen was back in Britain to enjoy the 1984 Christmas and New Year break. Eager to show off his beloved Corvette Stingray, Allen took new girlfriend Miriam out to the Yorkshire moors - where he soon found himself in a game of cat-and-mouse with an Alfa Romeo. The percussionist put his foot down (as drummers do) and lost control of the left-hand drive; the car smashed through a dry stone wall and Allen was hurled through the sun roof - leaving his left arm in the vehicle. While his partner escaped with scratches, Allen was unable to have the limb reattached. Remarkably, the drummer was out of hospital within a month and back behind the traps a matter of weeks after that. By 1986 Allen’s kit was almost entirely electronic; singer Joey Elliott has said, ‘He’s a better drummer with one arm than he ever was with two.’