The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (193 page)

Slim Chance

(Various acts)

It’s impressive to think that rhythm guitarist turned bassist Ronnie Lane was just twenty when he laid down the distinctive tones that backed The Small Faces’
Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake
(1968). The affable young Eastender befriended another, singer Steve Marriott – the pair were most integral to the rise of the mod movement’s earliest heroes. Lane was as significant a contributor as the vocalist/guitarist, sharing songwriting duties as The Small Faces – Marriott, Lane, Ian McLagan (organ) and Kenney Jones (drums) – enjoyed well-documented singles-chart success during the mid to late sixties (1966 number one ‘All Or Nothing’ was the high spot). Some of the band’s most impressive, idiosyncratic material lay in their album output, however, and with the charttopping
Ogden
they proved they could compete with The Beatles and Stones as far as homespun psychedelia was concerned. The album also performed admirably in the US, spawning The Small Faces’ only American hit, ‘Itchycoo Park’ (1968). Lane stayed put after the departure of his sidekick in 1969, the band becoming The Faces, now with still-wet-behind-the-ears Rod Stewart as singer. Commercial success continued as the band veered down a seventies pub-rock avenue, songs such as ‘Last Orders Please’ (1971) and ‘Pool Hall Richard’ (1973) suggesting where the new band would be happiest spending a lazy Sunday afternoon. But, with Stewart becoming the focal point – he was concurrently cleaning up in both the US and UK as a solo act – Lane found his input compromised, and embarked upon his own folk-rock project, Slim Chance, which earned modest approval with Top Forty hits in ‘How Come?’ and ‘The Poacher’ (both 1974). By now Lane was living a maverick lifestyle, making a caravan his home as he further busied himself on projects with top-table associates Marriott (as Majik Mijits), sometime-Face Ronnie Wood and that other mod guru Pete Townshend – their
Rough Mix
(1977) was one of the best-received records of Lane’s career.

Ronnie Lane had been advised that he had multiple sclerosis as early as 1976 (the condition had occurred previously within his family). This news shocked many of his contemporaries such as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, who, in 1983, rallied to raise money for both Lane and MS research (as would natural successors Paul Weller, Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene at the time of his death). Lane continued much of his professional life from the confines of a wheelchair, relocating to the USA – the harrowing death of his old friend Marriott (
April 1991)
was another hard psychological burden with which he had to deal. Although he continued to perform and record as much as he was physically able, Lane finally succumbed to his debilitating condition in hospital near his home in Trinada, Colorado. His third wife, Susan, buried the guitarist on the day of his death – apparently an Apache tradition.

The Four Tops: They just couldn’t help themselves

Friday 20

Lawrence Payton

(Detroit, Michigan, 2 March 1938)

The Four Tops

For the extraordinarily enduring Four Tops, the death of Lawrence Payton was the first time the group were forced to alter their roster; bearing in mind that they first came together in 1953, this is some achievement.

High-school track-and-field star Payton met his group – Renaldo ‘Obie’ Benson (his colleague at Northern High), Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir and lead singer Levi Stubbs (both from Pershing High) – as 14-year-old Detroit students at a birthday party. As The Four Aims, they found little success, but having replaced ‘intent’ with ‘target’, the renamed Four Tops signed first to Chess, then Motown on the way to becoming a muchloved institution. Ten years had passed by the time Berry Gordy persuaded the group to sign, and a first hit arrived in the shape of ‘Baby I Need Your Loving’ the following summer. Stubbs’s far-reaching vocal on ‘Baby …’ thereafter became the norm as the group hit the heights with out-and-out classics such as the number-one pop hits ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ (1965) and ‘Reach out I’ll be There’ (1966 – also a UK chart-topper). These and a host of other Tops chartbusters were penned by the near-faultless team of Holland, Dozier and Holland, as Motown became the world’s leading music factory. Without HDH – who left the stable in 1967 – Payton and his cohorts found hit-making tougher, but they still troubled the listings into the seventies, recording for a number of labels, and The Tops remained a big draw. They rejoined Motown in 1983, but by now greatest-hits packages were more the order of the day. (Payton had pursued a less-successful solo career in the mid seventies, which spawned just one album.)

Lawrence Payton fathered nine children by his wife, Elizabeth, before his death from a heart attack prompted by recently diagnosed liver cancer. The Four Tops continued to tour, making their first line-up change in four and a half decades with the introduction of Theo Peoples of The Temptations.

See also
Renaldo ‘Obie’ Benson (
Golden Oldies #26); Levi Stubbs (
Golden Oldies #77). Later musical director/trumpeter George Rountree died in 2011.

JULY

Friday 11

Howard Pickup

(Howard Boak - London, 1951)

The Adverts

The short, interesting career of London punks The Adverts was kickstarted when young guitarist Howard Boak answered singer/guitarist Tim Smith’s small ad in
Melody Maker.
Like many UK bands of their era, The Adverts – the renamed TV Smith and Howard Pickup, Gaye Advert (Gaye Black, bass) and Laurie Driver (Laurie Muscat, drums) – made a virtue out of their lack of musical proficiency, releasing the 45 ‘One Chord Wonders’ on Stiff in 1977. Indeed, a poster campaign publicizing the band’s imminent tour proclaimed: ‘The Adverts know one chord. The Damned know three. See all four.’ Within months, a second single, the dark classic ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’ (based on the tale of the executed US murderer (
Death Toll
#2)) vaulted the band into the Top Twenty and on to
Top of the Pops.
Although debut album
Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts
(1978) was also a moderate success, the group could muster no further hits (despite some kicking singles like ‘No Time to be 21’ and ‘Television’s Over’) and, after an ignored second album, went their separate ways at the end of 1979. For Pickup, there was to be no further involvement in the music world. He died at his London home just weeks after having been diagnosed with brain cancer.