The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (240 page)

In 2001 the multi-tattooed Bianca Butthole – whose name was perhaps not the most glamorous of pseudonyms – appeared to be making something of a late bid for alternative stardom. During her early career the singer – formerly Bianca Halstead – had experienced a number of disappointments with other bands in her adopted Los Angeles before joining amusingly named punkettes Butt Trumpet in the early nineties. When this too went pear-shaped, the singer/bassist and bandmates Blare N Bitch and Sharon Needles (both guitarists) formed Betty Blowtorch, with drummer Judy Molish, in 1998. But, with a first album,
Are You Man Enough?,
just out on the Foodchain label, this band also began to fall apart. Butthole rallied, recruiting notorious L7 guitarist Jennifer Finch and a standin drummer and continuing to promote the record.

Following a gig with Nashville Pussy at the New Orleans El Matador Club, Butthole left the venue after partying into the small hours with brothers Brian and William McAllister. The trio jumped into Brian McAllister’s 1986 Corvette and sped off into the night. Shortly after 5.30 am, the car reached a speed of 100 mph, spinning out of control across lanes on St Louis Route 110 near Kinner, before being hit full on by a car travelling in the other direction. The Corvette was nearly ripped in two and Butthole, travelling in the passenger seat, was killed instantly. Brian McAllister – discovered to be more than three times over the legal alcohol limit – was found guilty of reckless driving and sentenced to twenty years in prison. One particularly sad footnote was that Butthole herself had been sober for ten years.

Sunday 16

Stuart Adamson

(William Stuart Adamson - Manchester, 11 April 1958)

Big Country

The Skids

(The Raphaels)

Almost a decade before grunge emerged, Stuart Adamson and his Big Country pals seemed singlehandedly responsible for keeping the plaid-shirt industry afloat. Born in Manchester, the future guitar hero’s family moved to the Crossgates area of Dunfermline, Scotland, where his fascination with rock ‘n’ roll began. Adamson had grown up listening to pomp and prog groups, but when punk and new wave came along, it gave him the impetus he needed to do it himself. In 1977, the dream because reality when The Skids – the band he’d formed with writer/singer Richard Jobson (plus bassist William Simpson and drummer Tom Kellichan, replaced by Rusty Egan in 1980) – received a call from Virgin following the release of their self-financed EP,
Charles.
Richard Branson’s label then signed the band to a hopelessly optimistic eight-album deal. By the third single, ‘Into the Valley’ (1979), the band was climbing the charts and appearing on
Top of the Pops.
With further records making the listings (‘Masquerade’ and ‘Working for the Yankee Dollar’ also hit the Top Twenty that year), it seemed perhaps the deal wasn’t so farfetched after all … until a rift between Adamson and Jobson caused the guitarist to leave after three albums to set up on his own. This, of course, proved a good move.

By the mid eighties, Big Country – Adamson (now on vocals as well as guitar), Bruce Watson (guitar), Tony Butler (bass) and Mark Brzezicki (drums) – were one of the UK’s most successful bands. The first two albums,
The Crossing
(1983) and
Steeltown
(1984), both went platinum, while the singles chart was bombarded with anthemic hits like ‘Fields Of Fire’, ‘In a Big Country’ (also a US smash), ‘Chance’ and ‘Wonderland’ over a triumphant two-year period. But it was in performing live that Big Country’s meshing of new wave and stadium rock was shown to best advantage, and their tours were always sold out. The cracks began to show with hackneyed third album
The Seer
(1986), however, which nonetheless still sold well (a single, ‘Look Away’, also gave the band their highest UK chart position). It was then that the workaholic frontman experienced the first of his breakdowns: subsequent recordings were only to sell to Big Country’s steadfast fanbase as the brush cuts and sleeveless checked tops started to look very dated indeed.

‘Back by noon Sunday.’

The note left by Stuart Adamson for his son Calum on 7 November 2001

Stuart Adamson
(right)
with Big Country pals Watson, Butler and Brzezicki: Checked out

Despite worldwide record sales of more than 10 million, Stuart Adamson descended into alcoholism, racked with manic depression even when he was off the bottle. In 1999, it appeared that Big Country might yet have something to offer when the band headlined Kosovo charity events in Scotland (where they were always welcome) and Kosovo itself. But this was a false dawn: after some time on the wagon, Adamson returned to drink and split the group – after eighteen years as a going concern. Despite forming a new act, The Raphaels, the singer – now living in Nashville, Tennessee – found that his world was falling apart. With his second marriage close to collapse, Adamson went missing twice in 1999 and 2001: on the second occasion, the mystery of his disappearance ended in tragedy. With his wife, Melanie Shelley, filing for divorce and a drink-driving charge hanging over him, Stuart Adamson decamped to Hawaii without informing friends or relatives. After over a month away, his body was discovered in his room at the Best Western Plaza Hotel in Honolulu. The musician – heavily under the influence of alcohol – had died by his own hand, the verdict given as asphyxiation by hanging. Despite his success in America, no one involved in Adamson’s inquest recognized the former star, although a wealth of international tributes soon followed news of the singer’s death.

Tuesday 18

Clifford T Ward

(Kidderminster, 10 February 1944)

(Cliff Ward & The Cruisers)

His was the sunnier face of British folk, a lighter Nick Drake, perhaps. Clifford T Ward was an amiable Bromsgrove school teacher momentarily turned pop star when his ballad ‘Gaye’ surged into the UK Top Ten during the summer of 1973. It had been something of an uphill struggle for the musician before his brief flirtation with fame: in 1963, his beat group Cliff Ward & The Cruisers won a Midland band contest and expectations were high. When success didn’t happen, the singer held down a number of clerical jobs before taking up his post teaching English and divinity. Still working as a teacher, Ward then recorded for John Peel’s Dandelion label. A debut album,
Singer-Songwriter
(1972), did not set any bells ringing but did enable Ward to graduate to the Charisma label. Already a substantial hit in Britain, ‘Gaye’ (1973) took him into the Top Five in, of all places, Brazil. A follow-up, ‘Scullery’, boasted an equally attractive melody but failed to have the same impact, mainly owing to its somewhat optimistic lyrical stereotyping at a time when the Women’s Liberation movement was making waves. Changing fashions in general were to make it hard for Ward to sell further records.

Clifford T Ward embarks on perhaps the most ‘DIY’ promotional campaign ever seen in pop music

In 1984, his output (now mainly songwriting) was curtailed by the distressing news that he had multiple sclerosis. As the musician’s condition deteriorated, friends such as Elton John and Sting raised money to finance his treatment, but it became clear that extending his life, rather than improving his condition, was the most that could be achieved. By the nineties Ward was effectively confined to his Worcestershire home: it is reported that the creation of his final album,
Julia and Other New Stories
(1994), had entailed the singer crawling to his home studio to work on it. To his many followers, Clifford T Ward’s death from pneumonia, after years of suffering, arrived as something of a blessing.

Despite only ever achieving a fraction of the acclaim or success of the recently departed George Harrison (
November 2001),
Ward could at least claim one thing in common with the ex-Beatle – his songs were also recorded by Ringo Starr and Art Garfunkel. Added to which, Ward’s fine ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’ (1973) was, remarkably, voted fourth in a 2002 BBC Radio poll of the best songs of the last half-century.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 2001:

Chet Atkins
(influential US country guitarist who worked with The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams Sr, among countless others; born Tennessee, 20/6/1924; lung cancer, 30/6)