The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (227 page)

Saturday 9

Victor Cross

(London, 21 June 1960)

The Robotics

(The Twinkle Brothers)

The Robotics was the unlikely name for a group of accomplished reggae musicians employed to back some of the biggest names in Jamaican music when on tour in Europe, including Horace Andy and Mad Professor. Forty-year-old keyboardist Victor Cross was one of the best-loved members, an experienced musician from a prolific family (which included his sister, singer Sandra Cross) who had also played with Norman Grant’s Twinkle Brothers group. One artist frequently associated with The Robotics was ‘Wet Dream’ hitmaker Max Romeo, by 2000 a veteran performer still much loved on the continent. As the Romeo/Robotics tour bus wended its way towards an engagement in Orléans, France, the vehicle was struck by another. Following the horrendous collision, Romeo pulled through unscathed, though several members of the party were badly hurt – in particular, guitarist Jerry Lions. Victor Cross was even less fortunate – he died at the scene from multiple internal injuries.

Close!

Brad Roberts

(Crash Test Dummies)

From our ‘It Had to Happen’ vault: Crash Test Dummies frontman, Canadian singer/songwriter and 1994 ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ hitmaker Brad Roberts rolled his prized 1989 Cadillac on 28 September 2000. Roberts - who was later fined for possession of marijuana - survived this Nova Scotia ‘crash test’, break-ing his arm in ten places. He was pulled from the wreckage by a passer-by only minutes before the stricken vehicle burst into flames.

OCTOBER

Tuesday 3

Benjamin Orr

(Benjamin Orsechowski - Cleveland, Ohio, 8 September 1947)

The Cars

(The Grasshoppers)

(Big People)

A high-school dropout with one ambition in mind, young Benjamin Orsechowski (who thankfully shortened his name upon turning professional) was to achieve success well beyond his adolescent hopes. It was a slow process, however. As leader of Ohio rock band The Grasshoppers, the renamed Orr proved a versatile musician, filling most band roles at one time or another. Shortly after the split of this band owing to the demands of the Vietnam call-up, Orr encountered vocalist/guitarist Rik Ocasek at a party in 1968, the pair fashioning a rock duo which eventually became The Cars.

‘If I fall down one day and can’t get up - that’s when you’ll know it’s over.’

Benjamin Orr takes it on the chin

By 1976, the band – who had wisely dropped their original name, Cap’n Swing – were finally complete: Orr took up the bass, as Elliot Easton (guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards) and David Robinson (ex-Modern Lovers, drums) completed the familiar Cars line-up. Initial success was greater in Europe, with ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’ (1978, featuring Orr’s vocal) climbing into the UK Top Five (mainly because it was Britain’s first-ever picture disc), but when the US cottoned on to the group, it cottoned on in some style. The best of The Cars shiny newwave hits were arguably ‘Let’s Go’ (1979) and ‘Shake It Up’ (1982), though it was to be the ballad ‘Drive’ (1984) that was to provoke the strongest reaction – particularly in the UK when applied to the harrowing scenes of the Ethiopian famine. In a 12-year career, The Cars racked up more than 20 million sales. Just prior to their split, Benjamin Orr issued his own solo album,
The Lace
(1986), giving him a hit under his own name. Post-Cars, he was quieter, but did reemerge with a supergroup called Big People, which featured Pat Travers, Jeff Carlisi (.38 Special), Derek St Holmes (Ted Nugent) and Liberty DeVito (Billy Joel).

In May 2000, fans and former bandmates were shocked to learn of Benjamin Orr’s hospitalization due to pancreatic cancer. Although Orr continued to play with Big People late into the year, his condition was deemed inoperable: the prolific and hardworking musician died at his Atlanta home just weeks after his band’s final show

Sunday 22

Bobby Soxx

(Robert Glenn Calverley - Dallas, Texas, 29 December 1954)

Stickmen with Ray Guns

Teenage Queers

(The Enemy)

He was so hard-drinking and wild-living that the biggest surprise for most who knew of him was that Dallas punk-figurehead Bobby Soxx hadn’t died years ago. Indeed, rumours had been bandied about for years that Soxx (Calverley, to his folks) had perished this way or that – but he somehow bounced back, whether with The Enemy, Texas punk legends Teenage Queers or his later band, the excellently named Stickmen with Ray Guns. Some tales about him had substance (though not as much as Soxx’s system): he’d been in countless fights, had been shot at and even stabbed by burglars on one occasion. Soxx himself had spent time incarcerated, or – if he was lucky – in a secure unit. Some of his behaviour was, it’s true, completely unacceptable (wife-beating, vandalism, you name it), the singer’s only excuse being that he could remember none of it. His self-purging was a key component of The Stickmen’s songs – best evoked on the album
Some People Deserve to Suffer
(2002).

But, as for death, well, that seemed to be reserved for others – such as his pal Mike Vomit, who died on Soxx’s porch back in 1984 (the Vomit Pigs’ singer had passed on after a furious bout of eating and drug-taking). By the late nineties, Soxx appeared to have beaten his demons: he had found regular employment as a cook and had stayed out of chokey for some years. In 2000, however, he was still claiming ‘drinking’s all I got’ – and early in the morning of 22 October, he had his final, fateful date with the bottle. It was no surprise to see the singer drink himself into a stupor – but this time his liver finally surrendered and he was never to wake up.

‘Death couldn’t touch Bobby. He was bulletproof.’

Barry Kooda, guitarist with Dallas punks The Nervehreakers

Friday 27

Winston Grennan

(Duckenfield, Jamaica, 16 September 1944)

Toots & The Maytals

The Ska Rocks

(Various acts)

Winston Grennan was the drummer whose one-drop rhythms informed the rocksteady sound that was to emerge in ska during the sixties and seventies. Grennan, whose family had a background in jazz, began in that genre, but made the move over to reggae and ska as the new styles grew in Jamaica. Recording at the studios of Duke Reid, Grennan played with The Caribbeats and The Supersonics, his percussive techniques taught to the likes of Sly Dunbar and The Wailers’ Carlton Barrett. He also played with Roland Alphonso and Jackie Mittoo, later of The Skatalites. By the time he left Jamaica, Grennan – who had seen something of the world as a member of Toots & The Maytals – had accompanied virtually every big name on the island. Based in the USA, the drummer inevitably became more invisible to Jamaican audiences, but nonetheless worked at his craft and led his own band, The Ska Rocks. He had moved to Nantucket, Massachusetts, by the time of his death from bone cancer.

See also
Jackie Mittoo (
December 1990); Roland Alphonso (
Golden Oldies #8). Founding MaytalHenry ‘Raleigh’ Gordon died in 1994.