The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (246 page)

Thursday 16

James Dewar

(Glasgow, 12 October 1942)

The Robin Trower Band

Lulu & The Luvvers

Stone the Crows

Originally a near-anonymous bassplayer with the backing band for Scots teenage sensation Lulu, James Dewar graduated to become one of the most recognizable voices in rock. Dewar only began to gain recognition after the shy musician was approached to be both singer and bassist by blues chanteuse Maggie Bell for her band Stone the Crows. By far his best work, though, was with the band of ex-Procol Harum guitarist, Robin Trower, with whom his soaring vocals can be heard on several big-selling albums. The band were particularly huge in America, where the stadium concerts that so suited Dewar’s voice were always sold out. The ‘little guy with the big voice’ found that his health was beginning to let him down by the mid eighties, however; Dewar’s days in the limelight were far behind by the time of his death from a massive stroke.

See also
Les Harvey (
May 1972)

Thursday 30

Kenny Craddock

(Wrekenton, Gateshead, 18 April 1950)

Lindisfarne

Ginger Baker’s Airforce

(Various acts)

To list all Kenny Craddock’s credits would take a book in itself. He was ‘high priest of the Hammond’, a versatile musician whose best work was on recordings by better-known names. Craddock began as a club-hopping musician who followed his own heroes (such as British blues giant Graham Bond) before finding a footing with the Alan Price-approved Happy Magazine in the mid sixties. By 1970, Craddock was performing with a post-Cream Ginger Baker and his Airforce, as well as participating in early ex-Beatle projects such as George Harrison’s
All Things Must Pass
(1970). Thereafter, it was Craddock’s collaborations with Alan Hull that drew most attention, the musician contributing to his friend’s solo albums as well as attempted comebacks by Hull’s formerly successful Lindisfarne. He was in fact working with Hull when the latter passed away during the making of his final album (
November 1995).

For Kenny Craddock, the end came after moving with his second wife to his beloved Portugal: while working on a solo album, he was involved in a horrific car crash, dying from his injuries soon after.

June

Wednesday 5

Dee Dee Ramone

(Douglas Colvin - Fort Lee, Virginia, 18 September 1952)

The Ramones

(Various acts)

It was perhaps unsurprising that Dee Dee died the way he did: he’d been ‘using’ since he was plain old Douglas Colvin, a shit-kicking teen roaming the streets of Queens, New York, in search of something to do. Having moved from Virginia to Berlin as the son of a US soldier and his German wife, Colvin found himself a bit of an outsider when he returned to America at the age of sixteen. The first ‘brudders’ to hook up with Colvin were similarly ‘alienated’ guitarist John Cummings and as-yet-undecided musician Thomas Erdelyi, two guys with whom he played bass in The Tangerine Puppets, a sort of pre-pubescent Ramones that shared a love of sixties music as well as cheap drugs. The first genuine Ramones tunes came from early sessions at Cummings’s Forest Hill home. Finding themselves unable to master cover versions of songs, bassist Colvin (shortly to become Dee Dee Ramone) was prompted to write early numbers like ‘Loudmouth’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Walk around with You’. With the ungainly Jeff Hyman joining in 1974 as first drummer then singer (Tommy picked up the sticks), the final piece of this perverse jigsaw was now in place and the myth around what became for many the greatest punk-rock band of them all could begin to unfold. Just who were these ‘punk Monkees’ who dressed the same, talked the same and even took the same identity? Well, none other than Dee Dee (Colvin), Joey (Hyman), Johnny (Cummings) and Tommy (Erdelyi): The Ramones had blasted away rock’s cobwebs in just two and a half minutes flat.

‘OK … I gotta go now.’

Dee Dee’s gravestone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Dee Dee Ramone guided the band’s music for fifteen years, sometimes with clarity, more often through a drug-fuelled haze. As The Ramones became figureheads of the punk establishment, Dee Dee’s continued dabbling with heroin irritated the hell out of his colleagues (especially Johnny and the cleaned-up Joey) but it was to inform many of their best-loved songs, such as ‘Glad to See You Go’ (1977, written about his junkie ex-girlfriend), ‘I Wanna be Sedated’ (1978) and ‘Chinese Rocks’ (1980, co-written with fellow user and ex-New York Doll Johnny Thunders), while ‘53rd & 3rd’ (1976) fuelled some speculation that the bassplayer might have worked as a rent boy at the infamous New York pickup point referred to in the title. Feeling the strain of a long-term relationship with both his Ramones buddies and the needle, Dee Dee left the band in 1989 (replaced by Chris ‘C J’ Ramone), although he was to reunite with the group in the nineties. A brief, bizarre stint as rapper Dee Dee King on the
Standing in the Spotlight
album (1987) was followed by the formation of two very shortlived acts, The Chinese Dragons and Sprockett. The bassist’s final recorded work was to be with California postpunks Youth Gone Mad in 2002, while The Ramones themselves were finally inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame that March. On collecting the band’s gong, Dee Dee commented: ‘I would like to thank, uh, myself. Thank you, Dee Dee, you’re very wonderful.’

At about 8.25 on the evening of 5 June, Dee Dee Ramone’s wife Barbara Zampini found the musician lying face down on the sofa in a pool of his own vomit – with heroin balloons and other impedimenta within reach. Within a quarter of an hour, the former Ramone was confirmed dead, from an accidental overdose. His autobiography – which had woven a lurid tale of borderline insanity and chemical dependence, with little emphasis on the music – had suggested that Dee Dee had been completely clear of drugs by 2001.

See also
Joey Ramone (
April 2001); Johnny Ramone (
September 2004). Dee Dee also collaborated with Sid Vicious (
February 1979), Stiv Bator(s) (
June 1990), Johnny Thunders (
April 1991) and even G G Allin (
June 1993) - the first three of whom featured as ‘ghosts’ in his ‘completely fictional 2001 novel,
Chelsea Horror Hotel.