The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (151 page)

That the male partner in Peters & Lee achieved brief but notable success during his career is remarkable, given the extraordinary misfortune and ill health that afflicted him throughout his life. His blindness was not, as many believe, a birth defect: Lennie Sergeant’s parents may have felt lucky that their 5-year-old son lost only the sight in his left eye when knocked down by a careless driver. Ten years later, though, Sergeant – an uncle to The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts – got into an argument with some stone-throwing thugs as he attempted to sunbathe: the ringleader resolved the disagreement by lobbing a brick at the hapless teenager, permanently damaging his right eye.

Overcoming his disability to master the piano, the renamed Lennie Peters began his music career as a soloist, playing with The Migil Five, though he left before the quintet’s Top Ten hit ‘Mockingbird Hill’ (1964). A panel-pleasing performance with singer Dianne Lee on ITV’s
Opportunity Knocks
talent show in 1972 changed the musician’s fortunes for ever. In 1973, the duo topped the UK charts with the million-selling ‘Welcome Home’, the first of a number of schmaltzy hits that included the near-identikit ‘Don’t Stay Away Too Long’ (1974) as well as a series of gold albums. The duo were never romantically inclined – Lee married Rick Price of glamrockers Wizzard – but overcame a brief hiatus to remain together recording and touring until Lennie Peters’s death from bone cancer in Enfield, London.

Sunday 25

Roger Miller

(Fort Worth, Texas, 2 January 1936)

The future King of the Road had a difficult start: when just a baby, Roger Miller lost his father to spinal meningitis and was sent with his two older brothers to live in the C & W-drenched state of Oklahoma, his only real companion his radio and the weekly broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry it offered. A break for the young music-lover came unexpectedly when he stole a guitar at seventeen; he confessed to the theft and chose military service over a custodial sentence. Miller honed his playing skills while on duty in Korea, and entered the field of songwriting in Nashville when he returned home. At the age of twenty-three, he penned his first country chart-topper, Jim Reeves’ ‘Billy Bayou’, but it wasn’t until the mid sixties that Miller hit paydirt with his own hit records. The biggest, of course, was ‘King of the Road’ (1965), a warm account of hobo life that became a US million-seller and went to number one in the UK: this song now boasts countless cover versions by artists as diverse as Dean Martin, The Proclaimers and REM. Miller’s other hits included ‘Dang Me’ (1964), the somewhat rose-tinted ‘England Swings’ (1965) and the unexpectedly tender ‘Husbands and Wives’ (1966) (Miller himself was to marry three times). Though he won numerous Grammys during the sixties, Miller’s crowning achievement in his own eyes was a 1985 Tony award for his score to the
Huckleberry Finn-
inspired Broadway musical
Big River.

‘What do I do with unused songs and lyrics? I smoke ‘em.’

Roger Miller

Like many of his generation, Miller had known little of the dangers of cigarettes, and succumbed to lung cancer at California’s Century City Hospital – the fourth big name to die of a smoking-related disease in 1992.

NOVEMBER

Friday 13

Ronnie Bond

(Ronald Bullis - Andover, Hampshire, 4 May 1942)

The Troggs

Ronald Bullis had been a bricklayer before he became Ronnie Bond, the engine behind the garage-inspired Troglodytes (earlier Ten Foot Five) – Reg Presley (Reginald Ball, vocals), Chris Britton (guitar) and Pete Staples (bass). Signed by Kinks manager Larry Page, The Troggs – sensibly having abbreviated their name – quickly became the latest sensation in Britain, where their second single ‘Wild Thing’ (1966) shot to number two (behind The Stones’ ‘Paint It, Black’). The record – which the group had originally resisted as ‘corny’ (it was probably closer to dumb genius) – went on to top the US charts, shifting a million copies and becoming a standard. Its follow-up, ‘A Girl Like You’, gave The Troggs a domestic number one and ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ completed a reasonably good year for the band by reaching number two. (The only black spot was a small amount of radio blanking of the third hit due to its supposedly overt sexual content.) The hits continued to a lesser extent throughout the next year – Bond occasionally adding songs or vocals to albums – with the drummer and Presley later recording solo material, by which time The Troggs were on a sabbatical: Bond’s first single, the oddly matched ‘Carolyn’/’Anything For You’ (1969), stiffed – as would all further releases. In 1972, Bond and Presley reconvened The Troggs, but the magic had gone. During the rest of the decade, the group toured the oldies circuit and issued a series of rather embarrassing covers. During this time a studio argument rich in foul language was stored and later issued as ‘The Troggs Tapes’. By the next decade even this kind of novelty had worn off, Bond and Presley falling out for ever.

After Ronnie Bond’s death from a lengthy illness, Presley happened upon untold wealth with Wet Wet Wet’s point-missing-but-fifteen-week-charttopping cover of ‘Love is All Around’ (1993), a Troggs hit from 1967. He reportedly spent much of it on crop-circle research.

Original vocalist and rhythm guitarist Dave Wright died in October 2008.

Saturday 14

John Cascella

(New York, 29 April 1947)

John Cougar Mellencamp

(The Faith Band)

John Cascella is best remembered as instrumentalist with Indiana-based mainstream rocker John Mellencamp, but the musician was close to thirty before he eschewed his jazz roots for rock ‘n’ roll. Cascella had previously played with The Faith Band, scoring a radio hit with ‘Dancin’ Shoes’ (1978). Like him, Mellencamp – then using the name ‘Cougar’ – was a late starter in popular music. Mellencamp had already crashed the US charts with million-sellers like ‘Hurts So Good’ and ‘Jack and Diane’ (both 1982) before the pair got together on the singer’s 1984 album
Uh Huh.
During his nine-year spell with Mellencamp’s band, Cascella contributed keyboard and saxophone, but it was his accordion-playing which inspired most – best demonstrated on the 1987 hit ‘Paper and Fire’. The musician also played sessions with many other performers including Bob Dylan and Kim Carnes.

On the night of 14 November 1992, John Cascella returned from the Evander Holyfield–Riddick Bowe Heavyweight Championship fight in Indiana. He suffered a massive coronary while driving his car, lost control and veered off into a cornfield – where the vehicle, with Cascella’s body still at the wheel, was later found by a passing motorist. The musician, who was buried in Indianapolis, has a playground named in his honour at the city’s Rhodius Park.

Saturday 21

Ricky Williams

(Richard Williams - San Francisco, California, 1955)

Flipper

(The Sleepers)

(The Toiling Midgets)

(Crime)

A mainstay of San Francisco’s throbbing underground punk scene, Ricky Williams had already spent time in an institution for his disturbing behaviour before taking up drums with Palo Alto band Crime, who, for some reason, renamed him ‘Ricky Tractor’. As singer with The Sleepers, Williams began to sculpt a style that saw him (briefly) recruited as lead with groundbreak-ing nihilists Flipper. The singer’s near-demented performance camouflaged lyrics of some intensity and were thought to be a significant influence on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Williams also recorded 1982’s engaging
Sea Of Unrest
album with The Toiling Midgets (who replaced him with Mark Eitzel, later of American Music Club). Contrary to widespread belief that Williams died from a heroin overdose, he in fact suffered a rare respiratory condition that finally accounted for him in his late thirties.

See also
Will Shatter (
December 1987); John Dougherty (
October 1997)