The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (317 page)

Don Arden passed away on 21 July 2007, after some years fighting Alzheimer’s disease, the final years of his care subsidised by Sharon Osbourne. A plaque dedicated to his work was unveiled on London’s Carnaby Street shortly after his death.

See also
Gene Vincent (
October 1971)

AUGUST

Golden Oldies #53

Lee Hazlewood

(Barton Lee Hazlewood - Mannford, Oklahoma, 9 July 1929)

Instantly recognisable by his distinctive moustache, singer, songwriter and arranger/producer Lee Hazlewood was among the most respected pop/country artists of his generation. Hazlewood - an Oklahoma Dust Bowl-refugee brought up on bluegrass music - had originally planned to study medicine before conscription saw him have a change of heart. Instead, he found a footing in music via a local radio slot, making the unusual leap from producing to performing (rather than vice versa); his first studio efforts saw the light of day in the mid-fifties. Hazlewood was quickly teamed with Tucson guitarist Duane Eddy, for whom he co-wrote and/or produced such instrumental classics as ‘Rebel Rouser’ (1958), ‘Peter Gunn’ (1960) and ‘Dance with the Guitar Man’ (1962). (Rumour has it that Hazlewood’s innovative recording techniques were to influence the visiting Phil Spector.)

Hazlewood’s best-known composition is undoubtedly Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 transatlantic number one, ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’, a song that he also produced - as he did her other number one, ‘Somethin’ Stupid’ (1967, with father Frank). Hazlewood and Sinatra also went on to record frequently as a high-class duet, scoring Top Twenty hits with ‘Jackson’ and ‘Lady Bird’ that year, and almost making the top in the UK with 1971’s ‘Did You Ever?’. (The pairing also earned a gold disc for the album
Nancy and Lee
in 1968.) Hazlewood didn’t enjoy the same level of success as a solo artist, hopping labels during the sixties and seventies; however his pleasing baritone was always a popular draw in concert, particularly in Europe.

As is often the case with sixties crossover artists, Lee Hazlewood found a whole new audience among the alternative set during the nineties, many of his early albums seeing reissues through Smells Like records. This prompted him to record new material for the first time in two decades. In 2006, Hazlewood released his last album,
Cake Or Death,
via Sony. It proved fatalistic and prophetic: on 4 August 2007, he was dead from renal cancer.

Saturday 4

Keith Shirasawa

(Santa Monica, California, 31 July 1954)

(Various acts)

Japanese-American Keith ‘Ketman’ Shirasawa wasn’t a well-known rock musician, but he was undoubtedly an expert on the guitar, and locally respected by those who visited the Gelb Music store in California’s Redwood City – and the many that saw him perform with the bands You People, Along For the Ride and Roadkill Cafe. He is also the first
Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars
artist to die as a result of a rollercoaster accident.

Shirasawa – a fan of amusement parks – made the trip to Coney Island, New York, with his girlfriend Linda Walker, the couple planning to celebrate his 53
^rd
birthday with some thrills. However, unable to persuade Linda to join him on the world-famous (and eighty-year-old) Cyclone rollercoaster, Shirasawa rode alone: on exit, he complained to his partner that he’d lost the feeling in his fingers. When this spread to his legs, authorities were alerted. The guitarist received surgery on the fracture of three vertebrae in his neck, which was believed to have been successful. Tragically, he passed away suddenly two days later.

When the case came to court, it transpired that other riders had complained of the effects of whiplash – and that the rollercoaster had indeed been faulty, the cars making the first eighty-five-foot drop at too great a speed. Shirasawa’s death merited a paragraph in
Vintage Guitar
magazine, though at the time of publishing no award had been made to his bereft family.

Friday 10

Tony Wilson

(Anthony Howard Wilson - Salford, Lancashire, 20 February 1950)

When British music needed someone to care, Tony Wilson was that man – the first to give groundbreak-ing bands a home on television, and usually in the front line to sign them to his label. Wilson had graduated from trainee reporter to senior presenter on Manchester’s Granada television channel in under a decade, at just 26, the switched-on (if longhaired) host of arts and music showcase
So It Goes
between 1976 and 1977. At this time, the UK music scene was experiencing a punk overhaul and Wilson’s programmes reflected this – ditto the following year’s
Granada Reports,
the first show to host Joy Division, the band that had become Wilson’s ‘project’.

Wilson managed several Manchester bands, including The Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio; these along with OMD (from Liverpool), James and Joy Division all signed with Factory, the label he co-founded and managed with Alan Erasmus. But if Factory was a triumph artistically, financially it was a disaster: despite success, Factory’s leading early nineties bands, Happy Mondays and post-Joy Division survivors New Order, both ran up huge arrears making albums – and this eventually capsized the business. (Similarly, the Hacienda nightclub managed by Wilson closed amid spiralling debt.)

A politically motivated man – he was an avowed socialist and regionalist – Wilson returned to broadcasting, hosting late-night talk shows and debates, as well as fronting further music and quiz hours on British television, until he fell ill during 2006.

With little money having been made from the music side of his business interests, Wilson thus struggled when advised he’d need to find over £3,000 a month to pay for his medication: in the event, a number of industry friends formed a fund to provide financial help. But, despite the removal of a kidney, the cancer in his body was not allayed – and Tony Wilson died from a heart attack at Manchester’s Christie Hospital.

In recognition of a man who did much to heighten the city’s cultural profile, the town hall flag was lowered to half-mast, while in keeping with Factory’s tradition of the artefact, Wilson’s headstone was designed by artist Peter Saville, and his coffin given a catalogue number – FAC 501.

‘I can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS–but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It’s a scandal.’

Tony Wilson, in 2006

See also
Ian Curtis (
May 1980); Martin Hannett (
April 1991); Dave Rowbotham (
November 1991); Rob Gretton (
May 1999)