The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (257 page)

Mickie Most: ‘If that’s The Arrows again, tell ‘em I’m busy …’

In 2000, Mickie Most – who also made a name as the ‘voice of reason’ on ITV’s
New Faces
– contracted mesothelioma, a rare, inoperable form of lung cancer, from which he died at his London home. He was believed to be worth at least £50 million at the time of his death.

JUNE

Friday 6

Dave Rowberry

(Nottingham, 4 July 1940)

The Animals

(The Mike Cotton Sound)

Well before he joined the charttopping Animals, keyboardist Dave Rowberry gained experience backing some of pop music’s biggest names on the club circuit. With The Mike Cotton Sound, Rowberry accompanied The Four Tops and even a young Stevie Wonder, before Eric Burdon came knocking to find a replacement for the departing Alan Price, who had grown weary of his band’s constant travelling abroad. Already a major band, The Animals had been to the top with ‘House of the Rising Sun’ (1964), but enjoyed further major international hits once Rowberry joined the following year: the keyboardist proved himself more than adept as backing vocalist to Burdon on several of these songs, including the insistent ‘We’ve Gotta Get out of This Place’ (1965). With The Animals falling apart after a US tour in 1967, it was a short stint for Rowberry, who was a far better player than often credited.

Dave Rowberry returned to the relative anonymity of session work for the remainder of his career, appearing on stage in 1994 with Burdon and ‘The Animals II’ before his unexpected death from heart failure some years later.

Thursday 19

Ethan James

(Ralph Burns Kellogg - Pasadena, California, 1946)

Blue Cheer

(Various acts)

He may have had a conventional end but Ethan James was a highly unconventional musician. Extremely proficient at the piano, guitar, bass and drums, James was a founder member of Blue Cheer, the cult West Coast band believed by many (mainly US fans) to be the world’s original heavy-metal band. A member of Cheer for six years and three albums, James was revered by fellow musicians and even played with fellow Haight-Ashburians Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia before joining Mint Tattoo. Believing two forenames were essential for a musician, James legally ditched his birth name in his thirties, by which time he’d set up the prolific Radio Tokyo studios in Los Angeles, the perfect home for California’s burgeoning postpunk scene. Among the acts James produced there were the future platinum-toting Bangles and Red Hot Chili Peppers, while significant alternative names such as Black Flag and The Minutemen were also regular clients. Fascinated by medieval music, James was able to add the nyckelharpa and hurdy-gurdy – which he often played as a Los Angeles busker – to his impressive repertoire. A man of deep faith, the musician was also a churchgoer for three decades up until his death from liver cancer. Blue Cheer co-founder Jerry Russell survived James by just two years.

Wednesday 25

Orion Satushek

(Portland, Oregon, 1976)

Reeks & The Wrecks

The Spooky Dance Band

It was a textbook drunk-driver scenario: a van disappeared into the night, leaving three popular young people shattered on the tarmac, two dead, one seriously injured. The victims were Orion Satushek, singer and keyboardist with Portland rock bands Reeks & The Wrecks and The Spooky Dance Band; his collaborator in the latter, 23-year-old Caroline Buchalter; plus visiting artist Angela Leazenby, aged twenty-six.

Satushek was eagerly anticipating the release of The Wrecks’ latest album,
Knife Hits,
at the time that the three friends and a fourth companion, Larry Needham, took to the streets on their bicycles around midnight on 25 June. As they travelled at leisurely pace, van-driver Lindsey Llaneza (already charged with a recent drink-driving offence) approached rapidly from the opposite direction; the man, who was discovered to be three times over the limit, swerved past the first cyclist, Needham, but struck the remaining three. Of the group, Satushek and Leazenby (having only recently arrived in the area) were killed outright: the musician was hurtled through the windscreen of a parked Chevy, while his friend was thrown a reported 400 feet by the impact. The ‘lucky one’, Buchalter, was taken into intensive care, her pelvis smashed, but she eventually recovered. The incident galvanized an extraordinary number of Oregon cyclists, who took to the streets several days later to protest against the dangers of drink-driving. For his part, Llaneza – dubbed a murderer by the mob – faced charges of first-degree assault and manslaughter. In April 2004, he received twenty years’ imprisonment.

JULY

Friday 4

Barry White

(Barry Eugene Carter - Galveston, Texas, 12 September 1944)

(Love Unlimited)

(The Upfronts)

He may have been the first of his kind, he might well be the last – and, at eighteen stone, he was almost certainly ‘everything’ – but the sultan of steaming, sexual soul was actually a devout Christian. Accompanying his single mother and siblings, Barry Eugene Carter left Texas for Los Angeles’ tough East Side when he was a boy, his choir singing merely a cover-up for a tearaway lifestyle that could have resulted in the future superstar spending his entire life on the wrong side of the tracks. At seventeen, Carter was locked up for his part in the theft of $30,000 dollars’ worth of tyres (he obviously had plans to become a Michelin man even then): this came on the back of lesser felonies. This was a wake-up call and from then on the renamed White’s priorities were clearly delineated. He found some work backing smalltime vocal group The Upfronts (two of whom were reform-school friends), which brought him to the attention of their label. Subsequently, he managed to sell a few songs (one of which was recorded by Bobby Fuller) while playing various instruments on many small-label sessions, something White had done since playing the piano on a Jess Belvin record when just eleven years old. The major break for White came with his backing of post-Supremes Philly girl group Love Unlimited from 1969, by which time White had already married, separated and sired four children. The singer stamped his authority on proceedings to the extent that he married lead singer Glodean James (supposedly the focus of his later lyrics) and soon had the group backing
him.

Barry White: Qualified to satisfy

For a few years, White was to be lord of soul’s steamy jungle, swatting away the opposition (Billy Paul, Teddy Pendergrass, etc) like so many flies – and even giving Marvin Gaye a run for his money for the very top position. In one sense, he was
definitely
the bigger star, his awesome stage presence seducing an entire generation of female admirers, who dubbed the neatly bearded White ‘The Walrus of Love’. Albums and singles flew from the shelves – nearly 100 million in all. Principal among his many snappily titled hits were the sultry ‘Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe’ (1974, US number one), ‘You’re the First, the Last, My Everything’ (1974, UK number one, US number two) and the near-faultless ‘You See the Trouble with Me’ (1976, UK number two). Despite his devout background, White’s albums at this stage featured some seriously moist moments, though White cited his religious convictions when later turning down the opportunity to parody his former character as Chef in television’s
South Park
– a job that then went instead to his friend Isaac Hayes.

In 1983, White was given a stark reminder of his criminal past when his older brother Darryl was shot dead in a needless dispute with a neighbour over just twenty dollars. There was little solace in music either: a climate change restricted White’s later successes to the occasional hit, 1994’s US/UK Top Twenty comeback ‘Practice What You Preach’ a notable example. Barry White’s immense bulk, however, meant that he suffered greatly from high blood pressure as he grew older and, relying more and more heavily on his forty-strong Love Unlimited Orchestra who had supported him for almost thirty years, he was advised to stop touring in 1999. His final months were believed to have been spent in a great deal of pain as his vital organs began to fail him; White’s death from kidney failure was therefore seen by many as a blessing. He may have retired to that velvet-lined boudoir in the sky, but posthumously White retains the love of a generation of fans who just ain’t never,
never
gonna give him up …