The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (254 page)

Alice Martineau

(London, 8 June 1972)

Her moving story posthumously revealed in a BBC television documentary, Alice Martineau appeared outwardly to have had it all: she was a talented musician/songwriter, with striking looks and many acquaintances in the business (her father had produced rock giants Def Leppard and Judas Priest). But Martineau was born with cystic fibrosis, the genetic disorder that hampers the functioning of vital organs such as the pancreas and lungs.

Though her chances of survival were written off time and again, the aspiring Martineau conquered goals as though routine: despising tags such as ‘brave’, she graduated from university against expectation, achieved her first ambition of becoming a model, and then defied the odds further by getting herself signed up to Sony Music in 2001. The corporate giant then faced flack from media cynics who accused the label of cynically seeking a ‘British Eva Cassidy’
(
November 1996).
The attitude of those around Martineau was best summed up by promoter Phil Long: ‘If they don’t sign Alice, it’s because she’s ill – if they do, they’re exploiting her. Her music stands up on its own.’ Indeed, the singer’s work was (rightly) compared favourably with multiplatinum artists like Dido, her debut ‘If I Fall’ (2002) chosen as Single of the Week by BBC Radio One disc jockey Jo Whiley, who also supported the rising star in her documentary – a television special intended to chronicle Martineau’s rise to commercial acceptance.

With a sad inevitability, Alice Martineau passed away during its making as she awaited a triple organ transplant, an operation that would in any case have entailed huge risk. Working at home in Kensington, she suffered massive internal haemorrhaging too sudden to allow transport to hospital, and the programme thereafter took on the tone of a tribute.

Gregory Slay - percussionist with Alabama altrockers Remy Zero - died from the disease in January 2010.

Saturday 8

Adam Faith

(Terry Nelhams-Wright - Acton, London, 23 June 1940)

(The Worried Men)

For a while, Adam Faith represented the only real challenge to Cliff Richard as pop’s heart-throb wars began to hot up in late 1959. If his music tended to be dismissed as slight, the versatile Faith was no slouch himself in a career that encompassed acting, music production and even financial journalism before his unexpected death. Terry Nelhams was widely regarded as a strong communicator who disregarded class barriers: originally from a council estate, he was discovered working as a film-studio assistant having rapidly climbed the ladder from messenger boy. With skiffle all the rage (thanks largely to Lonnie Donegan), the singer had formed his own group, The Worried Men, attracting the interest of television producer Jack Good who recorded the band for an edition of the BBC’s
Six Five Special.
It was clear to him that the singer could make it with a change of image and he even offered the would-be star a book of names from which to choose a suitable moniker. As the restyled Adam Faith, he was pushed forward by John Barry (the future movie-score composer) who provided the fledgling singer with some sure-fire hits – all delivered in Faith’s post-Buddy-Holly-hiccough style. Of these, the first two releases, ‘What Do You Want?’ (1959) and ‘Poor Me’ (1960), both made UK number one and a series of further smashes kept Faith at the top for the next three years. Critics derided some of the record choices (in the case of 1960’s ‘Lonely Pup (in a Christmas Shop)’, they had a point) and it became clear with the emergence of The Beatles and Stones that the shelflife of a pop crooner was now not a long one. With this in mind, Faith began a second career as an actor, which initially paid dividends as he began to pick up highprofile drama roles, the best remembered probably his television portrayal of ex-con
Budgie
or the tough rock manager in the movie
Stardust
during the early seventies. Remarkably, Faith found time to manage a charttopping star in real life, as he took on responsibility for Leo Sayer, producing both him and Roger Daltrey (to whom he’d recommended Sayer’s ‘Giving It All Away’, the Who frontman’s biggest solo hit). A near-fatal car crash in 1973 resulted in Faith’s autobiographical single ‘I Survive’, but after the record failed to break into the charts he retired from singing for good.

‘I can make believe that I am fit and healthy. It’s the thought of what I might be able to achieve after my transplant that will help get me through it. I get quite carried away sometimes - and then I wake up.’

Alice Martineau, writing for the
Telegraph
in 2002

During the 1980s, Faith fell out with Sayer, the latter suing him for unpaid earnings. Whether this prompted his foray into the world of financial journalism is uncertain, but
Daily Mail
readers were not the only ones to be astonished by this dramatic u-turn. Faith, now considered something of a guru to the moneymakers of the eighties, also invested in satellite TV’s
The Money Channel
– though, with sobering irony, this proved an enormous flop, bankrupting the former singer in 2002 and saddling him with debts reportedly approaching £32 million.

It’s uncertain whether this disappointing television experience inspired the now-famous last words with which Adam Faith has regularly been credited. The former singer had a history of heart problems that had led to emergency surgery in 1986. Then, after a performance in a play at Stoke-on-Trent, Faith was suddenly taken ill in his hotel room, dying shortly afterwards from a heart attack. Showing he’d lost none of his, shall we say, ‘charm’, Faith died in the arms of Tanya Arpino – a waitress some forty years his junior with whom he’d been having an affair. Faith’s widow Jackie was understandably upset by this, the couple only recently having been reconciled after seven years apart. The split had followed a series of previous misdemeanours including a ‘love match’ with tennis star Chris Evert. Jackie Nelhams subsequently banned Arpino from the funeral. (In another ironic twist, Faith had been appearing in the Donald Churchill play
Love and Marriage.)

Adam Faith: ‘Poor me’, indeed

‘Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it? Christ - the crap they put on there! It’s a waste of space!’

Adam Faith wins
The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Star’s
‘Finest Last Words’ award

Sunday 16

Teemu ‘Somnium’ Raimoranta

(Helsinki, 19 May 1977)

Finntroll

Impaled Nazarene

If you’d been wondering when you might see the first Finnish folk-metal entry in this book, well, the wait is over. Teemu Raimoranta was a versatile guitarist from Helsinki who could play bass, rhythm and lead guitar, thus making him ideal for black-metal act Impaled Nazarene, a unit seemingly obsessed with black magic and, especially, goats. The somewhat limited
oeuvre
encouraged Raimoranta – stage name ‘Somnium’ – to form his own band, Finntroll, in 1997. This time, the influences incorporated black metal, Finnish folk and even polka, the lyrics now extending to include goblins and trolls, for maximum effect all sung in Swedish! By 2003 Raimoranta was back working with Impaled Nazarene, however, after the enforced retirement of Finntroll singer J ‘Katla’ Jamsen.

Early one morning in March 2003, the guitarist had apparently been drinking heavily with friends when he suffered a fall on his way home. The story ran that Raimoranta had fallen from a Helsinki bridge, break-ing his spine, though later interviews with friends present at the time (including Impaled Nazarene singer Mika Luttinen) suggest that he had little alcohol in his system and had deliberately thrown himself off. The reliability of Luttinen’s testimony was questioned, however, following this ‘generous’ tribute to his close friend: ‘We didn’t miss him in rehearsal – he was always off saying he had to meet his mum or something. We’re a better band, now. We have a better guitarist.’

APRIL

Wednesday 2

Edwin Starr

(Charles Edwin Hatcher - Nashville, Tennessee, 21 January 1942)

(The Future Tones)