The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (33 page)

MAY

Thursday 10

Mike Furber

(London, 26 September 1948)

The Bowery Boys

Singer Mike Furber formed The Bowery Boys in 1965 with Robbie van Delft (guitar), Paul Wade (bass), Greg Walker (rhythm guitar) and Nevile Peard (drums), in Brisbane, Australia, where his family had moved when he was small. Furber, equally blessed and cursed by his limited but resonant voice and babyface looks, was to be mauled in the jaws of a pop industry desperate for new idols. The group were very popular on the Sydney music scene, beginning strongly enough with a series of punchy singles including ‘That’s When the Happiness Began’ (1966), but manager Ivan Dayman’s promotion of Furber over the other Bowery Boys led quickly to disharmony and conflict. By August 1966 a band expected to clean up internationally had already split.

Although he began working solo (even once opening for The Four Tops), Furber’s career was scuppered when he was conscripted in the early seventies, an experience that left him high, dry and very depressed. Following his sacking from the musical
Nuclear
– in which he had pretty much invested all hope – Furber hanged himself at a garage near his apartment in Sydney.

Closer!

Don Powell

(Slade)

Slade had just become the first ever UK pop act to send two consecutive singles straight to number one when founder Powell’s car turned over in July 1973. The drummer of Britain’s favourite superyobs just about escaped with his neck in the motorway car smash that killed his fiancée, Angela Morris. As the band kept vigil at his bedside, singer Noddy Holder uttered: ‘No Don, no more Slade - end of story.’ Despite surgeons drilling into his skull, Powell went on to make a remarkable recovery - though his memory loss meant that it has never been ascertained whether he or his partner was behind the wheel that day.

CLOSE…

Robert Wyatt

(Soft Machine/Matching Mole)

Drummer Robert Wyatt had long been part of the music scene in Canterbury, England, where he had made his name with the prog/jazz Soft Machine before embarking on his own project, Matching Mole. On 1 June 1973, just after cutting a debut album, Wyatt made a drainpipe exit from a drunken party, fell four storeys from the London hotel window and broke his spine in two places. Paralysed from the waist down and wheelchair-bound, Wyatt turned to singing, enjoying critical acclaim that continues to this day.

JULY

Saturday 14

Clarence White

(Lewiston, Maine, 7 June 1944)

The Byrds

(Nashville West)

(The Kentucky Colonels)

(Muleskinner)

During a traumatic year for ex-Byrds, pioneering country-rock guitarist Clarence White died just ahead of the legendary Gram Parsons (
September 1973)
and three months after Scotty Stoneman, a colleague in White’s early bluegrass band The Kentucky Colonels. White – born into a musical family – joined the latter aged just ten; the group, first known as The Country Boys, had been started by White’s older brother Roland in 1962. After a solo spell – during which time he cut an album on Bakersfield – and a stint with the influential Nashville West, White and his Fender were invited by Roger McGuinn to join The Byrds to replace the departed Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, playing on the untitled album of 1968. The Byrds were not, however, the force they had been in their previous incarnation and, as the group began to wind down, White worked with Randy Newman and Joe Cocker. McGuinn disbanded The Byrds three years later, after seismic line-up changes.

Continuing his session work into the seventies, the tireless White (spoken of in some quarters in the hushed tones normally reserved for Jimi Hendrix) formed the ‘supergroup’ Muleskinner, rejoined The Kentucky Colonels and, in 1973, was working on another solo album. After a performance in Lancaster, California, White was stacking equipment into his van when he was hit by the truck of a drunk female driver; he died later from a stomach haemorrhage. White was buried in California’s Joshua Memorial Park on 19 July; Gram Parsons and others sang an impromptu rendition of ‘Farther Along’ – a favourite country-gospel standard recorded twice by White – at his graveside.

See also
Gene Clark (
May 1991); Michael Clarke (
December 1993)

Byrds clustered (without White): Hillman, Crosby, Clarke and McGuinn

Friday 2 7

Roger Durham

(Kansas City, Missouri, 14 February 1946)

Bloodstone

In 1973, Bloodstone looked to be R & B’s new sensation with the single ‘Natural High’ shooting into the US Top Ten that June, but, with the record still high in the charts, the band was shattered by a pair of unrelated tragedies. Bloodstone had begun in 1962, formed after a talent show at Kansas City’s Central High School. By the end of the sixties the group (then a doo-wop outfit known as The Sinceres) had taken themselves off to the brighter lights of Los Angeles, where a change of style and identity invited improved fortunes. Roger Durham proved a soulful lead singer, so much so that Al Green invited the band to support him on his 1972 European tour – a lucrative deal with Decca and a subsequent hit single and album resulted.

Durham became a big fan of the UK, returning to London several times. On his last trip, though, he was thrown by an untrained horse while riding in the country. Durham’s internal injuries were so extensive that he died later in hospital. A matter of months later, drummer Melvin Webb – who had shunned the tour to be with his ailing mother – also died, from diabetic complications, while founding singer/guitarist Willis Draffen Jr died in 2002.

AUGUST

Friday 17

Paul Williams

(Birmingham, Alabama, 2 July 1939)

The Temptations