The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (265 page)

Golden Oldies #17

Johnny Bristol

(Morganton, North Carolina, 3 February 1939)

It was hard to believe that the hitmaker of ‘Hang on in There Baby’ had reached the golden age of sixty-five, let alone passed on. Johnny Bristol was to become a member of the Motown family in more senses than one: in his early career, he’d been an inhouse songwriter (with cohort Jackie Beavers) and producer for Berry Gordy, later marrying the founder’s niece Iris. Bristol’s own solo successes were fewer and farther between than his hits for Gordy, though in the last week of September 1974 he enjoyed two simultaneous UK Top Five hits with the aforementioned title track from his album of the time, plus The Osmonds’ take on another, ‘Love Me for a Reason’.

As a writer/producer, Bristol polished up the songs of Marvin Gaye, David Ruffin, Tammi Terrell and Junior Walker - with all of whom he can once again compare notes in some heavenly studio. Johnny Bristol died after an apparent seizure on 21 March 2004.

Friday 26 Jan Berry

(William Jan Berry - Los Angeles, California, 3 April 1941)

Jan & Dean

If The Beach Boys were the kings of surf, then Jan Berry might have been the genre’s mischievous knave. In fact, Jan & Dean dodged studies to trawl hits some years before their California friends/rivals introduced them to the wonders of saltwater recreation. The kids at University High, Los Angeles, all seemed to have captured a spirit of the time and appeared destined for success in music or the movies. Fellow alumni of Bel Air ‘bad boy’ Berry were future musicians Kim Fowley, Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, Nancy Sinatra and would-be actors James Brolin and Ryan O’Neal. An ‘A’ student, Berry often bunked off lessons to smoke cigars, race hotrods around the school area – and indeed father an illegitimate son, Stevie. (Remarkably, the latter was raised as Berry’s
brother
to avoid embarrassment for his ‘society’ parents. He died from AIDS during the nineties – just one of a host of tragedies to afflict the Berry family. In 1973, the singer’s younger brother Bruce fatally overdosed at a party while acting as a roadie for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; even more tragically, their infant sister Carol had drowned in the family’s pool many years earlier.)

‘Jan wasn’t a very nice or gracious person, but he did it first. He succeeded in putting a pretty face on LA ghetto doo-wop music.’

Kim Fowley, rock producer and high-school colleague of Jan Berry

Berry began harmonizing with Dean Torrence alongside ‘lost’ third man Arnie Ginsberg as The Barons (formerly The Internationals). But with Torrence about to serve his country in the Reserves, it was Jan & Arnie who were signed up first: Berry’s garage was the venue for the recording of first hit ‘Jennie Lee’ (1958) – a simple melody, on the unlikely subject of a burlesque performer, which stunned the pair by reaching US number eight that summer. Ginsberg then joined the navy, making way for the returning Torrence – who rerecorded what was to become a second chart entry, ‘Baby Talk’ (1959) – now Berry’s permanent partner as the hits arrived as regularly as California rollers. ‘Surf music’ was all the rage – and to prove everybody was your friend at the beach, Brian Wilson even helped out with the lyrics to ‘Surf City’ (1963) to give Jan & Dean their only chart-topper, which infuriated his manager father. Indeed, there are still many who think of it as a Beach Boys hit – though Wilson has been quick to point out that Berry always impressed
him
in terms of his stage presence and studio skills.

Like the Wilsons, Berry and Torrence also had an obsession with automobiles that was to inform much of their output. This culminated with the near-prescient ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ (1964), a heavily produced melodrama that spoke – in so many words – of the dangers of high-speed dragster racing. Two years on, this song was set to resonate eerily: preoccupied with his own imminent draft, a medical-school examination (yes, he studied by day and recorded all night), plus a heartbreak-ing split with songwriter girlfriend Jill Gibson (later of The Mamas & The Papas), Berry was involved in a near-fatal car crash. As he took his brand-new Corvette Stingray for a spin along LA’s Whittier Boulevard on 12 April 1966, Berry lost control, hitting the kerb and slamming into the back of a stationary gardener’s truck. Paramedics arriving on the scene believed he was already dead – until they detected breathing. His brain partially exposed by the impact, Berry underwent emergency surgery at UCLA Hospital, remaining in a coma for days – and in a state of paralysis for several months. It would take the singer a decade to regain full speech and the ability to sing. In an extraordinarily eventful and mishap-ridden year, Berry had already escaped having his leg amputated after an accident on a movie set, and had also testified in court following the attempted abduction of Frank Sinatra Jr. (Three years earlier, Berry had lent his best friend Barry Keenan $500 to carry out the abduction, assuming his pal to be broke and/or joking – only to discover twenty-four hours later that Keenan had indeed carried out his plan. The latter – who was jailed along with two accomplices – then went on to become a property millionaire.) Shortly after the car crash, Torrence issued an ill-advised crypto-’Jan & Dean’ album. Columbia Records refused to support
Save It for a Rainy Day,
and dropped the act soon after. (Torrence then wisely moved into record-sleeve design.)

With questionable taste and logic, CBS television welcomed the phoenix-like duo back in 1977 with the lurid biopic
Dead Man’s Curve,
which included many of Berry and Torrence’s friends (including one or two Beach Boys) in its cast. Jan Berry was, of course, to be admired for his refusal to succumb to his disabilities: he married in 1991 (with Torrence as best man), the pair continuing to record as Jan & Dean, although their appeal was now restricted to the fans that had grown up with the band in the first place. Berry finally passed away in the spring of 2004, just a week ahead of his sixty-third birthday, the seizure that finally claimed his life a direct result of the car accident almost forty years earlier. A man who had once boasted an IQ of 185, Berry had specified that his body be donated to science before cremation.

APRIL

Thursday 1

Paul Atkinson

(Cuffley, Hertfordshire, 19 March 1946)

The Zombies

It was cancer that felled original Zombies guitarist Paul Atkinson, a lesser-vaunted member of the band who nonetheless went on to develop his own identity in his later music career. With British guitar bands absolutely cleaning up across the pond, The Zombies – Atkinson, Colin Blunstone (vocals), Rod Argent (keyboards), Chris White (bass) and Hugh Grundy (bass) – had far greater success in America than in their native Britain. Their timeless first hit ‘She’s Not There’ (1964 – only kept from number one by Bobby Vinton’s insipid ‘Mr Lonely’) was followed by further big sellers in ‘Tell Her No’ (1965) and the reissued ‘Time of the Season’ (1969). While Blunstone, White and, particularly, Argent went on to further successes, Atkinson moved behind the scenes and built up a solid reputation as a CBS record executive, signing a wide variety of rock/pop acts, among them Abba, Bruce Hornsby and Judas Priest. Paul Atkinson had moved to Los Angeles in the eighties, reuniting with Argent and Blunstone on stage just weeks before his death from kidney and liver problems.

Golden Oldies #18

Niki Sullivan

(South Gate, California, 23 June 1937)

Buddy Holly & The Crickets

(Various acts)

A distant cousin of Buddy Holly, Niki Sullivan played rhythm and sang backing vocals as part of the classic Crickets line-up with Holly, Joe Mauldin (bass) and Jerry Allison (drums) - contributing to more than twenty of the group’s groundbreak-ing songs. His own ambition fired by working with an innovator of the stature of Holly - alongside the feeling that the latter didn’t really need a second guitarist - Sullivan left The Crickets at the end of 1957 while the group were still on the crest of a wave. Although Sullivan was to find little success with his own bands The Plainsmen and The Hollyhawks, at least he wasn’t on the flight that ended his former leader’s life
(
Pre-1965).
Instead Niki Sullivan died from a heart attack in his sleep on 6 April 2004.

Monday 26

Scott Williams

(James Scott Williams - New Orleans, Louisiana, 1965)