The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (336 page)

Bo Diddley’s first live television experience was on the influential
Ed Sullivan Show
in November 1955 - and it was almost his last. Having overheard the musician humming Merle Travis’s ‘Sixteen Tons’ (then a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford), the stone-faced presenter requested that Diddley play it on the show. However, when it came to the performance, the artist - wishing to re-promote his own recent hit - defied the host by performing ‘Bo Diddley’. An indignant Sullivan then banned the guitarist from ever appearing again.

No matter, the fuse had been lit. Although he wasn’t to enjoy chart success or sales at the level of contemporaries like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and his ‘bompa-bomp’ sound - a kind of mutant offspring of 12-bar blues and the rumba - were already something of a national cultural phenomenon. One contemporary artist quick to pick up on the now-famous ‘Diddley strut’ was Buddy Holly who, in 1956, recorded the man’s theme song (a substantial hit on release after Holly’s death
(
Pre-1965)).
Holly also borrowed that signature beat for several of his own compositions. Further self-aggrandising, though always enjoyable, hits kept Diddley himself in the spotlight for the remainder of the decade: ‘Diddley Daddy’ and ‘Pretty Thing’ (both 1955), ‘I’m Sorry,’ ‘Cracking Up’ and ‘Say Man’ (all 1959 - the latter, an atypical call-and-response with old pal Green, oddly the artist’s only Top Forty pop hit), ‘Roadrunner’ (1960) and the enduring ‘You Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover’ (1962). These all fared well for Bo Diddley on the R & B listings, and most are now recognised as standards in bluesrock.

If Bo Diddley was cutting some serious critical mustard in his homeland, in the UK, he was considered almost God-like by the frontrunners of the British beat explosion. Confessed Diddley-ites, The Stones covered a couple of their hero’s tunes and also gave Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ (1964) the full-on Diddley treatment, while The Yardbirds, Animals and Pretty Things all gladly showed that they’d been paying attention. Indeed, this influence lasted through to the next generation of UK rock outlaws - the protopunk crowd loved Diddley’s apparent DIY ethic. Devotee Joe Strummer even invited the guitarist to open for The Clash on their 1979 American tour. Though significantly less prolific in terms of his output, in the mid-sixties, Diddley seemed perfectly happy to play the occasional tour and reap the rewards of his early songwriting (although, in truth, much of his earnings were withheld at the time, through what the artist described as ‘the racism of the era’). He did intermittently appear on stage with other artists (notably The Grateful Dead and The Stones) and now and again on a television commercial. But Diddley’s creative muse seemed to have been set on auto-pilot long before his death.

In May 2007, following an energetic performance in Iowa that fans felt was more like the old Diddley, the guitarist - who had a history of diabetes and hypertension - suffered his first stroke. With his speech now terminally impaired, a heart attack followed in August. He somehow found it in himself to give one last performance at the unveiling of a plaque in his honour in his birthplace of McComb, Mississippi, some three months later. Bo Diddley died surrounded by his extended family at his home in Archer, Florida, on 2 June 2008. Having remained a God-fearing man since his boyhood chapel days, the musician’s last words were: ‘Wow - I’m going to heaven.’ Bo Diddley’s funeral - or ‘homegoing’ - was apparently a sight to behold. The hundreds in attendance chanted his signature hit, in a gospel arrangement, and the concert that followed featured performances from Eric Burdon, Diddley’s son and daughter, and his longtime bassist and musical director, Debby Hastings. Little Richard, Diddley’s close friend of fifty years, was unable to attend because of concert commitments, but paid tribute by playing an impromptu version of ‘Bo Diddley’ during his own set.

Aside from the many tributes paid by fellow musicians, he also received accolades from then-President George W Bush, the US House of Representatives, plus the University of Florida, who honored Diddley’s memory with a posthumous doctorate in Fine Arts for his unarguable influence on popular music. During his lifetime, Bo Diddley also took his place in both the Rock ‘n’ Roll and Rockabilly Halls of Fame, while his theme song was - rightly - given pride of place at the Grammys.

Revered bluesman Lester ‘Mad Dog Davenport - who played with Bo Diddley in the early days -passed away from prostate cancer nine months later.

‘A wonderful, original musician who was very generous to us in our early years … we will never see his like again.’

MickJagger

7 June 2008

Two quite separate, yet remarkably similar stories of tragedy emerged on 7 June 2008–the deaths of young British rock musicians Adam Lloyd Thomas (22, from Maesteg, South Wales) and Ross Kinnear (20, from Salisbury, England).

Thomas–a singer, guitarist and drummer with Welsh rock band The Big Shiny Cave–had been vacationing near Marmaris, Turkey, with his girlfriend, Leah Powell. The couple had been on a Jeep safari and were completing the evening with friends at a bar and a nightclub. It’s thought that Thomas had consumed up to ten bottles of beer before the couple returned to their hotel room. At 3 am, his partner was awoken by staff informing her that Thomas had ventured onto the balcony, suffered a minor fall and been hospitalized. Powell only learned of his extensive head injuries after she rose later that morning. The musician passed away that afternoon; the verdict, accidental death.

At the same time, Kinnear was in Berlin taking a German-language course when a night of partying led to some foolhardy behaviour. The popular bassist with up-and-coming Wiltshire group Go Vegas had also been drinking excessively before making his way onto the semi-completed roof of an uninhabited house in Kreuzberg with a nineteen-year-old companion. As the pair continued to drink, they fell asleep: while his friend came to no harm, Kinnear is believed to have rolled over and fallen off the roof without even waking up. Doctors fought in vain to save the musician, who died from massive head and internal injuries.

During a grim period for such occurrences in the UK, guitarist Dean Clark, formerly of Portsmouth rockers The Fret, died under similar circumstances at the end of June. Then, in August, guitarist Alex McCulloch died after falling fifty feet from a luxury apartment block; his highly rated Preston band Me Vs Hero had recently released their first album. One month later, Dave Winter–-popular singer with Sussex metallers Krittical Mass–also fell to his death.

Sunday 8

Nick Sanderson

(Sheffield, Yorkshire, 22 April 1961)

Clock DVA

The Gun Club

World Of Twist

Earl Brutus

The Jesus & Mary Chain

(Freeheat)

Although he died prematurely, Nick Sanderson’s had been a familiar face in and around the alternative rock scene for some three decades.

A native of Sheffield, Sanderson in the early eighties found himself in the middle of a fertile pop/electronica scene that gave the world groundbreak-ing local bands like The Human League (and offshoots Heaven 17/BEF), ABC, Cabaret Voltaire and the lesser-known enterprise Clock DVA – for whom he became drummer. Although recently signed to Polydor and experimenting with a more commercial jazz-funk sound, the Adi Newton-fronted band seemed to be in a permanent state of flux. They eventually split in 1983. Sanderson then teamed up with legendary punk-blues singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce (of dormant Los Angeles band The Gun Club) for a tour behind his solo album
Wildweed
(1985). When The Gun Club reformed for the critically acclaimed comeback album
Mother Juno
(1987), he stayed on as drummer and even met his future wife, the band’s Japanese bassist Romi Mori.

After two further recordings with Pierce, journeyman Sanderson left in 1991 to concentrate on working with Manchester psychedelic pop outlaws World Of Twist – a band briefly expected to join their kinfolk The Stone Roses at British pop’s top tier. Then, when this collapsed, there was ‘situationist’ band Earl Brutus – a nineties hybrid of glam, postpunk and art-rock that appeared to pull together all Sanderson’s previous musical experiences and spew them back out via highly commended albums
Your Majesty … We Are Here
(1996) and
Tonight You Are the Special One
(1998).

But, aside from media plaudits, the common thread running through all of Sanderson’s musical contributions was the lack of a major hit record. This was (only just) remedied by a fleeting stint drumming for The Jesus & Mary Chain, with whom Sanderson worked on their final album
Munki
(1998) and a couple of minor Top Forty singles. When later J&MC offshoot Freeheat similarly failed to catch fire, Sanderson – now a father to Mori’s son – made a living as a train driver on the Brighton to London line.

Like his beloved Manchester United, Nick Sanderson was seldom defeated by much in his varied life, however he succumbed following a brief battle with lung cancer, having married his long-term partner just months before passing.

See also
Rob Graves (
January 1991); Nigel Preston (
May 1992); Jeffrey Lee Pierce (
March 1996). Erstwhile World Of Twist drummer Tony Ogden passed away in 2006.