The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (359 page)

MAY

Saturday 2

Kiyoshiro Imawano

(Kiyoshiro Kurihawa - Nakano, Tokyo, Japan, 2 April 1951)

RC Succession

Dubbed ‘Japan’s King of Rock’, Kiyoshiro Imawano was actually a versatile guitarist and songwriter who embraced many styles of music during his career. With school pal, guitarist Kenchi Haren, Imawano formed The Clover as a teenager during 1966, and when this inevitably faltered, it encouraged him and bass-player Wassho Rinko (Kazuo Kobayashi) to restart as RC Succession.

Although Reichi Nakaido replaced Haren in 1978, Imawano’s band became one of the most influential in Japanese pop/rock, particularly during the eighties when fourteen albums of studio, live and compiled product were made available by RC Succession to their adoring audience. This culminated in the Oricon charttopping
Covers
(Kitty, 1988), which – despite containing no original material – was helped somewhat by a wave of media publicity over its political content. RC Succession’s final concert was at the Budokan on Christmas Day, 1990.

Despite the band’s breakup, Imawano’s reputation soon spread as far as Tennessee, where the musician formed an unlikely partnership with R & B legends Booker T & The MG’s. This resulted in the guitarist’s album
Memphis
(1992), his honorary citizenship of the city in question, and a well-received tour of Japan with The MG’s to support the record.

In 2006, Kiyoshiro Imawano learned of his diagnosis of lymphatic cancer, which, in spite of rigorous treatment, brought an abrupt end to his performing career. The artist – who had played with other revered Japanese musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto and had also found work as an actor – died at the age of fifty-eight, his passing mourned by thousands of fans across the continent. Fellow artists, too, joined in homage, Booker T Jones and Steve Cropper among the many who remembered Imawano in a July tribute at the annual Fuji Rock concert in Niigata.

Wednesday 6

Ean Evans

(Donald Wayne Evans - Atlanta, Georgia, 16 September 1960)

Lynyrd Skynyrd

The Outlaws

(Five Miles High)

(Various acts)

Over thirty years after the heart of the band had been ripped away in a Mississippi forest (
October 1977),
bass player Ean Evans became the latest – and ninth – member of Lynyrd Skynyrd to slip on through to the darker side of the swamp.

Evans already had an extensive background in rock ‘n’ roll before he joined Skynyrd. Having been brought up in Atlanta, the bassist formed his first band in the area around 1980: Five Miles High – completed by Reuben Lace and Del Stockstill (guitars), Carl Brown (keys) and Mike Reynolds (drums) – were a talented bunch of musicians that had gained a regional reputation, but could not make a national breakthrough, disbanding in 1985. Evans had, however, by now developed an impressive ability on his instrument, and formed another band, Cupid’s Arrow. During this time, his manager J J French put him into the studio where the bassist was in demand as a session man. His skills impressed Hughie Thomasson, lead singer and guitarist of hoary Southern rockers The Outlaws, and Evans joined him and this touring combo for a series of dates during 1988 and 1989 (and again, briefly, in 1992). After forming yet another band, Noon, with harder guitarist Rick Craig (also of Detroit metallers, Halloween), Evans settled once again into studio work.

By the summer of 2001, Lynyrd Skynyrd had become so adept at dealing with tragedy that little time was wasted in seeking a replacement for recently deceased bass-player Leon Wilkeson (
July 2001).
Once again, it was Thomasson who recommended Evans to the band, the musician– having previously taken lessons from Wilkeson – knowing what was expected of him. But, despite the bassist’s clear virtuosity, there were still a good number of ‘Wilkesonians’ who held reservations about the sudden changes in style. Nevertheless, Evans applied himself manfully to winning them over via his excellent contributions to the albums
Vicious Cycle
(2003) and
God and Guns
(2009)– an album that not only contained the final compositions of Thomasson
(
September 2007
), but was also the last to feature the playing of long-term Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell
(
January 2009
). As it transpired, this was also to prove the final recording by Evans himself.

Having fought courageously against a particularly aggressive form of cancer for nine months, Ean Evans – who had recently become involved in another side project with Bobby Capps of .38 Special – died at his home in Columbus, Mississippi. The bassist had made his last appearance with Skynyrd from a chair just three weeks beforehand.

See also
Allen Collins (
January 1990)

Golden Oldies #92

Viola Wills

(Viola Wilkerson - Watts, Los Angeles, 30 December 1939)

During the same afternoon, pop and soul singer Viola Wills also passed away from cancer. Unlike most performers - who might choose to retire from music
before
raising a family - Wilkerson (as was) had married and given birth six times before she was twenty-one. Living in near-destitution, she decided to resurrect her immaculate singing voice, kept locked away since it had won her a scholarship to the LA Conservatory of Music when she was just a child.

Young upwardly mobile producer Barry White saw a huge amount of promise in the singer he renamed ‘Wills’, signing her to the Bronco/Mustang label where he intended to record her solo and use her as a session vocalist. In theory, this was a good idea, however, none of Wills’s early recordings impacted. (The closest was the debut release, ‘Lost Without the Love of My Guy’ (1966), which made some inroads in and around Los Angeles.) With White’s career continuing at a faster pace than her own, Wills chose to pursue session singing: better fortune then found the singer on
Soul Train
thanks to some help from R & B songwriter James Gadson. The next move was to London, and an eventual slot as one of Joe Cocker’s ‘Sanctified Sisters’. The Sheffield vocalist’s session players returned the favour by backing Wills on her debut long-player
Soft Centers
(Goodear, 1974).