The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (245 page)

Thursday 25

Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 27 May 1971)

TLC

With US R & B fans still mourning the death of Aaliyah, the sudden loss of another female icon came as perhaps an even greater blow. The life of Lisa Lopes, filled as it was with great success, came to an end when she visited Honduras on missionary work, her new image a far cry from that of the tough cookie seldom out of the papers during the previous decade.

In 1991, Lopes answered the call from Atlanta teenager Crystal Jones who wished to start a hip-hop/R & B unit she was calling 2nd Nature. Iowa singer Tionne Watkins had been the first to respond, with Lopes – having arrived from Philadelphia with little more than a keyboard and a few dollars – soon joining them. Jones had to suffer the indignity of being sacked from her own project at the behest of early manager Peri ‘Pebbles’ Reid and record label LaFace, to be replaced by former Damian Dame dancer Rozonda Thomas. The name TLC (an acronym for ‘tender loving care’) was selected to reflect the girls’ nicknames, respectively T-Boz, Left Eye and Chili. (Lopes’s sobriquet derived either from an admirer’s comment on the beauty of her left eye, or the suggestion that she habitually replaced the left lens of her stage glasses with a condom – you can decide.) As the group became an instant smash in the US, it became obvious that Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes was very much the creative talent, her sassy songwriting and self-performed raps making her the focus of TLC. Their sound inevitably dubbed ‘New Jill Swing’, TLC’s first album,
Ooooh
…
On the TLC Tip
(1992), sold impressively, but
CrazySexyCool
(1994) broke new records, shifting an astonishing 11 million copies in the US alone and earning one of the RIAA’s first diamond awards. On top of this, TLC enjoyed an unbroken run of hit singles, the second album spawning the number ones ‘Creep’ and ‘Waterfalls’, as they rose to become the biggest female group since The Supremes. But, thanks mainly to Left Eye, keenly protected by TLC’s management, the girls were soon in debt to the tune of $3.5 million.

On 2 September 1993, Lopes filed a lawsuit against boyfriend Andre Rison (wide receiver with the Atlanta Falcons) for alleged assault. Rison denied the allegations and the couple attempted to make up, but matters were about to grow more serious. During another squabble in 1994 the singer – who had been battling alcoholism since her teens and was inclined to mood swings – took Rison’s designer sneakers and set fire to them in the football star’s bath. Within an hour, Rison’s entire $2-million mansion was ablaze: firefighters called to the scene could do nothing to save the property. Lopes was charged with first-degree arson, ordered to undergo rehabilitation and serve five years’ probation. TLC’s huge debts came about because of her spiralling insurance payments, though, remarkably, she and Rison were reunited later in the decade.

But none of these events seemed to faze Lopes, as she and TLC rallied to score another multiplatinum album,
Fanmail
(1999), which once again bore two Billboard chart-toppers with the familiarly man-baiting ‘No Scrubs’ and ‘Unpretty’. But the increasingly wilful Lopes (who had by now started her own production company) was feeling the restrictions of life within a group. In November, such was her belief that she was carrying TLC, Lopes penned a letter to
Entertainment Weekly
challenging both of her bandmates to record solo albums which they would then issue as a three-CD set. An interesting idea but, needless to say, one that didn’t get off the ground – not helped by Lopes’s disappearance without trace the following summer. She reemerged with a new boyfriend in tow (though this was not to last) and a UK number one with Mel ‘Sporty Spice’ C, ‘Never Be the Same Again’, drawn from her solo album
Supernova
(2001), which was not issued in the US. As though to distance herself further from TLC, Lopes then sought a tougher image, signing with Suge Knight’s Death Row label as NINA (‘New Identity Non-Applicable’, apparently).

Lisa Lopes: She had her eye on many during her time

Lopes had just begun work on both a second solo album and a new set with the partially reconciled TLC when she was killed in a road accident in Jutiapa, Honduras. The Mitsubishi sports vehicle, driven by Lopes, had been carrying eight passengers (including her sister) from the jungle to a natural-medicine compound. As Lopes attempted to pass another car, a truck approaching from the other direction caused the singer to veer drastically to avoid a collision. According to eyewitnesses, the van hit two trees and flipped several times before coming to rest. While no one else suffered more than superficial injuries, Lopes was killed outright, having suffered blunt trauma to her skull and chest. Her label’s spokesperson described the singer – who had recently adopted a young girl called Snow – as having recently undergone something of a spiritual epiphany and enjoying the best time she’d known for some years. Her funeral in Atlanta inevitably drew fans in their thousands. A shattered TLC carried on as a two-piece, though the dramatic downturn in their commercial fortunes perhaps tells its own story.

May

Saturday4

Juliette Valentine

(Juliette Williamson - California, 1952)

The Chicago Brother & Sister Blues Band

It was a classic, macabre tale of jealousy and murder, yet it all took place in 2002 – and in broad daylight. Juliette ‘Valentine’ Williamson was the gritty-voiced black singer/bassist of San Francisco blues trio The Chicago Brother & Sister Blues Band. The group hadn’t recorded a great deal, but remained massively popular in live performance. A regular feature of such gigs was the friction between Valentine and her boyfriend, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Bruce ‘The Judge’ Brooks. The latter had been in love with Valentine from the day he had met her – when she had been working as a secretary – wooing her into dating him by teaching her to play bass, but the relationship was to prove volatile, violent and ultimately tragic. Fuel to the fire was provided by Brooks’s heavy drinking: by 2002, he was downing a gallon of red wine a day. Although many guest musicians came and went from the ranks of Chicago Brother & Sister, the man usually caught in the middle of the constant infighting was veteran drummer Francis Clay.

On the evening of 4 May 2002, a performance at Frisco’s famed Pier 41 was brought to an abrupt halt by a fearsome fracas in which Valentine took a hammer to her lover’s incar stereo, destroying a prized gospel tape in the process. Most who witnessed the event laughed it off: after all, this was small fry compared to some of their spats – following a recent ding-dong Brooks had informed the police that his girlfriend had bitten him and set her dog on him. But this time, the guitarist was truly incensed: retrieving the hammer tossed out of his car, he sped off with Valentine, the pair still hollering at one another. That was the last anyone heard from the singer. Juliette Williamson’s severely decomposed body was recovered from the water nearly three weeks later near Yerba Buena Island. Further investigation revealed that she had received around a dozen blows to the head and was then dumped in the water by Hunters Point shipyard. Brooks – who had served time once before – threw himself on the mercy of the court and initially escaped a murder conviction on the grounds that his actions had not been premeditated: the guitarist was sentenced on a charge of manslaughter. In 2009, however, a San Francisco Superior Court jury found Brooks – in custody since the first hearing – guilty of second-degree murder, the judge passing an amended sentence of fifteen years to life.

‘I always loved Juliette. I feel like I cut myself in half.’

Bruce Brooks

Wednesday 8

Roland L Chambers III

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 9 March 1944)

MFSB

(The Dells)

Roland Chambers was a key figure in the rise of Philly soul throughout the seventies, achieving significant credits in composing, production and performance with a galaxy of major-league stars. As lead guitarist with The Romeos, Chambers played alongside his brother Karl (drums), but it was the meeting with singer Kenny Gamble and the group’s creator, Leon Huff (who in 1971 co-founded the Philadelphia label with Gamble), that was to prove the most significant in his career. Apart from placing the musician into sessions with, among others, Archie Bell, Phyllis Hyman, The O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass and Lou Rawls, Chambers was also to clinch a prestigious tour with Marvin Gaye. Label owners Gamble and Huff then recorded Chambers’s own band MFSB (Mother Father Sister Brother), and watched open-mouthed as the latter’s ‘TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)’ soared to number one across America in 1974, becoming the recognized theme tune to US television’s R & B showcase
Soul Train
thereafter. Roland Chambers retired from the studio in the 1990s, but continued occasional live dates with Philly-soul survivors The Dells. He passed away from heart failure just weeks after his younger brother.

See also
Norman Harris (
March 1987)