The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (182 page)

Later that evening, Japanese fans of Texas funk pioneer Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson were shocked when their hero collapsed on stage at a gig in Yokohama. One of the most underrated performers of all time, Watson was encouraged to play music by his pianist father and preacher grandfather, who bought him the guitar that was to give him the nickname for his last forty years. When the family shifted to Los Angeles, ‘Young John Watson’ (as he was then known) found himself back at the keys again, however, as the teenage pianist with Chuck Higgins’s Mellotones. By the mid fifties Watson had picked up the guitar again and sought to emulate the music of his hero and fellow Texan T-Bone Walker: as it turned out, this vibrant performer had his own sound and a unique onstage manner. Audiences were warming to the electrification of the blues, but they had yet to see the likes of Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, a personable, humorous presence one minute, whipping up a storm the next. One aghast young onlooker, Jimi Hendrix, was the first name to admit the influence of this vibrant talent, noting particularly the method by which the guitarist played with his teeth. For twenty years, Watson made his living recording for a variety of labels (even as a jazz-styled pianist when it was called for), before the funk boom of the seventies brought him a whole new audience. The DJM albums
Ain’t That a Bitch
(1976) and
A Real Mother for Ya
(1977) both sold half a million worldwide, Watson’s bass-centric deep funk finally having pushed him on to mainstream radio with great cuts like ‘I Need It’ (1976). The musician’s influence swept broadly through music in the eighties and nineties – the likes of Prince, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg have all paid homage in their recorded work. His own
Bow Wow
album (1994) achieved a long-overdue Grammy nomination for Watson.

‘They call Elvis “The King” - but the sure-enough “King” was Johnny “Guitar” Watson!’

EttaJames

Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson: A real mother for ya

Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson remained a huge live force into his sixties; the 1996 tour of Japan drew even more devotees than before. The musician’s performances had thrown up the usual mix of dynamism and good humour, with no suggestion of what was to befall him at the Ocean Boulevard Blues Café on the night of 17 May. During a rendition of his 1975 hit ‘Superman Lover’, Watson dropped to the stage. Though many initially thought this part of the performance, it soon became clear he was in trouble. His heart had stopped before he even reached hospital, and Watson was declared dead at 9.15 pm. While a sense of shock reverberated, a member of Watson’s band took the stage some nights later to tell fans that it was ‘kind of what he would have wanted’.

Sometime Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson collaborator, guitarist Gene Lamarr passed away in April 2007.

Saturday 25

Brad Nowell

(Long Beach, California, 22 February 1968)

Sublime

Ever a hyperactive character, Brad Nowell was a teenage surfing enthusiast who embraced punk rock, reggae and ska. Nowell was blond, tanned and ripped – a look that was starting to return to vogue following the wasted appearances of many grunge heroes. He was a natural frontman for Sublime, a band with a powerful sound reminiscent of Nowell’s favourite LA punk acts from the eighties. The buzzing Long Beach circuit readily accepted Sublime, but the scene was rife with drugs – a fact not missed by the band’s first album,
40 Oz to Freedom
(1996), nor indeed his Skunk label, upon which it was released. Nowell – who, considered a gifted child, had been prescribed Ritalin to stave off Attention Deficit Disorder – experimented, and became a heroin addict in his twenties. Nonetheless, Sublime appeared to be hitting the big time and in 1996 began work on a major-label debut for MCA.

Tours and publicity abounding, Nowell still found time to marry his girlfriend, Troy Bendekker (the mother of his year-old son, Jake), on 18 May – but a week later the singer was dead. Despite trying to stick to a rehabilitation regime, Nowell was found dead from an overdose on the floor of his hotel room the morning after a concert at Petaluma, California. The sessions for the album were released two years later as
Second Hand Smoke.

Close!

Dave Navarro

(Jane’s Addiction)

A familiar tale from Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro: in 1989, the altrock axe-god - not terribly sensibly - chose to spend his downtime from the band’s UK tour with a group of junkies in a London squat. It was, of course, an accident waiting to happen. “There was no electricity, just candles - really seedy,” the guitarist explained, “I took a shot, went blue and my heart stopped. All the people in the apartment freaked out and took off.” Navarro was rescued at the brink by an anonymous soul who called him an ambulance: “I don’t know exactly what happened, but somehow they brought me back.” Navarro survived this - and the problems of his other ‘Addiction’ - to become a major name, playing with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers as they hit the big league; however a heroin relapse saw him fired in 1998. The musician reunited with JA in 2002, Navarro also recording solo and for a host of other artists. And, of course, he left the drugs alone. Maybe.

Close!

David Gahan

(Depeche Mode)

‘New Life’ was Dave Gahan’s first major hit, and it was to resonate as doctors pulled the singer back from the other side in 1996. Once a bumfluff-sporting pretty boy of UK synthpop, the Depeche Mode singer had amazed fans by re-emerging in the early nineties as a tattooed rock god with a host of new pals like hard-rock figurehead Axl Rose. On 28 May, Gahan took his new tag a little too seriously, overdosing on a ‘speedball’ of heroin and cocaine at LA’s Sunset Marquis Hotel - just months after a failed suicide attempt at his home. Confirmed dead for several minutes, the Mode-man was revived by astonished paramedics - and was then promptly arrested by somewhat less-astonished law-enforcement officers.

Thursday 30

John Kahn

(California, 13 June 1947)

The Jerry Garcia Band

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

(Various acts)

Musician and artist John Kahn worked with some of the best-known San Francisco musicians of his era, including Jerry Garcia, whom he met in 1972. Kahn became a mainstay of Garcia’s various side projects while never quite graduating to Grateful Dead status (allegedly because band members felt he encouraged the leader’s drug usage) – although he was to work with them as a producer in 1978. As a bassist, Kahn also recorded with Elvin Bishop, Michael Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Maria Muldaur, then joined a later line-up of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. John Kahn’s own habit finally caught up with him in 1996 when he was found dead from a cardiac arrest at his home in Mill Valley – a combination of heroin, cocaine and antidepressants was found in his system.

See also
Michael Bloomfield (
February 1981) Paul Butterfield (
May 1987); Jerry Garcia (
August 1995)

Friday 31

Elsbeary Hobbs

(New York, 4 August 1936)

The Drifters