The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (368 page)

Renewed European success afforded the not-long-since-bankrupt DeVille a house in his spiritual home of New Orleans and also an elevenacre horse farm in Mississippi with his wife and business manager, Lisa Leggett. However, DeVille was to experience some serious pain in the final decade of his life. He’d been struggling with heroin addiction for some two decades though had kicked the habit when the demise of his marriage culminated in Leggett’s suicide during 2001: having discovered her body at their new home in New Mexico, the musician drove off in desperation, suffering a serious accident that left him crippled for three years. Although he was to remarry, Deville never overcame the pain – which informed much of his
Crow Jane Alley
album (2004).

Willy DeVille once again returned, with his third wife, to New York. The musician – still very physically damaged from the motor crash – was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in early 2009 and finally with pancreatic cancer, which was to cost him his life, just three weeks shy of his 59th birthday. It was a sad, ignominious end to the life of an artist whose colourful
oeuvre
still remains undiscovered by the listening majority.

Eddie Bo - the acclaimed blues singer/guitarist who often worked with Willy DeVille - preceded him in death by five months, whileDeVille’s producer Jim Dickinson passed away just one week after the musician.

Thursday 13

Allan Shellenberger

(Long Beach, California, 15 September 1969)

Lit

Fullerton, Orange County band Lit first formed as metallers Razzle back in 1989, the US rock landscape yet to be bulldozed by grunge. The four-piece were the brainchild of the Popoff brothers, A Jay (vocals) and Jeremy (guitar), who recruited Kevin Baldes (bass) and the distinctively side-boarded Allan Shellenberger (drums). This identity lasted for one demo and one EP, the group reinventing itself as first Stain and by 1996, Lit, as their sound adapted to embrace America’s new rock culture.

The first album-proper emerged on Malicious Vinyl – a collection of Popoff-brothers tunes entitled
Tripping the Light Fantastic
(1997). This set became a major college-circuit hit and was awarded a gold disc two years after its release, by which time Lit had made the breakthrough. Their second record, the platinum, RCA-released
A Place in the Sun
(1999), came in at number thirty-one on Billboard and spawned the international hit ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ (US Modern Rock number one), which became a Top Twenty single in Britain. Meanwhile, Lit played over 250 shows in a year that saw them tour with rock contemporaries Offspring, Garbage and Silverchair. Although they found a Top Forty berth for the follow-up record
Atomic
(2001), Lit were at odds with a record label that didn’t foresee a lot more mileage in their sound, dropping them the following year. A third album,
Lit
(2004), emerged on Nitrus, although its sales performance suggested that RCA might have had a point.

Allen Shellenberger was diagnosed with a malignant glioma brain tumour in 2008, immediately undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Cedars-Sinai. On learning of his condition, a number of other California bands – such as Blink-182 and Sugar Ray – rallied to support a benefit show: the drummer sadly passed away just one month short of his fortieth birthday. Lit continued with a new percussionist, Nathan Walker.

Golden Oldies #97

Les Paul

(Lester William Polsfuss - Waukesha, Wisconsin, 9 June 1915)

Les Paul & Mary Ford

(The Les Paul Trio)

(Various acts)

Les Paul was, of course, the man who pioneered the development of the solidbody electric guitar, thereby making rock ‘n’ roll, well, ‘possible’. Young Lester Polsfuss had begun playing music as an eight-year-old, graduating from harmonica to banjo, to guitar, upon which he became quickly proficient in the country field. By thirteen, the budding musician was playing to appreciative locals at roadhouses. He’d also by now developed the neck-worn harmonica holder - a basic device that is to this day manufactured after his prototype.

However, Paul - as he became known - felt unable to make himself heard sufficiently: therefore, he developed his now-famous ‘log’, a common-or-garden piece of ‘4-by-4’ which he attached to a sawn-off acoustic guitar (an Epiphone). The innovative musician spent many hours in his New York apartment at this time, experimenting with pickups and developing a series of groundbreak-ing sound effects via his enhanced instrument. (In these times of basic facilities, the young inventor also risked electrocution on a daily basis.) The Gibson Guitar Company took a while to back Paul’s designs, but after observing solidbody developments elsewhere (most notably at Fender, where the early Telecaster was in production), they decided to purchase the product in 1950. The design wasn’t to reach the height of its popularity until after Eric Clapton’s endorsement more than fifteen years later. It is, of course, still a market leader today.

Les Paul somehow also found time to perform. Having recorded his first sides before he was drafted, Paul had played behind the admiring Nat ‘King’ Cole toward the end of World War II. He had also become a firm friend of Bing Crosby, the singer recording the 1945 charttopping ‘It’s Been a Long, Long Time’ with the second incarnation of The Les Paul Trio. The world’s biggest entertainment star - whose vocal prowess was all but shown up by Paul’s guitar ability -was thereafter happy to endorse the musician’s products publicly. Paul was prolific in the studio, issuing a number of solo outings; however, he experienced greater success with his partner, singer Mary Ford (Colleen Summers). The husband-and-wife duo recorded jazz/pop standards such as ‘How High the Moon’ (1951 - two months at US number one) and ‘Vaya Con Dios’ (1953 - eleven weeks at US number one). With Ford’s voice, Paul was able to work on cutting-edge studio techniques utilising one of his fabled Ampex reel-to-reel recorders. The original model had been presented to him by Crosby following his and Ford’s near-fatal car accident in 1948 - and it was the crooner that also recommended that Paul construct a home multi-track studio to achieve the sound he required. Paul and Ford, along with rhythm guitarist Eddie Stapleton, presented several NBC radio broadcasts from the studio
(The Les Paul Show),
showcasing songs they’d developed there. A revised version of the show later earned them a television franchise.

The couple divorced in 1962, but they were still inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after Ford’s death
(
October 1977)
- one of dozens of honours bestowed upon Les Paul during his lifetime. Although the pioneering musician went into semi-retirement in 1965, he was simply unable to stop recording and playing live dates - this occurred until well into his eighties. Paul died on 13 August 2009 from complications exacerbated by pneumonia.

A little-known fact about the guitar giant is that he was also godfather and original tutor to rock star Steve Miller.

Golden Oldies #98

Larry Knechtel

(Bell, California, 4 August 1940)

Bread

Duane Eddy & The Rebels

(Many various acts)

To list the credits of Larry Knechtel would be an extensive task: the pianist/keyboardist and bassist had played on some fifty-or-so recordings by the time he pitched up with Bread, the band with whom he is most associated.

Knechtel started out with Los Angeles rockabilly also-rans Kip Tyler & The Flips - most of the other members leaving this band in 1958 in order to hook up with guitar heavyweight Duane Eddy and join his band, The Rebels. Like many, the musician tired of the constant treadmill of touring, and thus found a more stable environment within the studio, where he set out his stall as a much sought-after session man in 1962. As one of the famous ‘Wrecking Crew’, Knechtel played on a number of Phil Spector productions during the early sixties, his foray into more mainstream pop culminating with credits on charttopping records by The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Mamas & The Papas and The Monkees. Perhaps Knechtel’s most sublime moment, however, was his piano arrangement for Simon & Garfunkel’s timeless ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (1970), which caught the attention of a musician seeking to replenish his popular band.

David Gates approached Knechtel after hearing this Grammy-winning performance, and Knechtel was happy to join like-minded musicians in Bread (replacing Robb Royer). Knechtel was in place by the soft-rockers’ third album, the Billboard Top Five
Baby I’m-a Want You
(1972), gaining a co-writing credit for the track ‘Nobody Like You’. He remained with the group for further gold success with the records
Guitar Man
(1972) and, following Bread’s mid-seventies sabbatical,
Lost Without Your Love
(1977). Knechtel also joined Gates and selected musicians for reunion tours in the eighties and mid-nineties.

Larry Knechtel lived in semi-retirement for the remainder of his life, though he still found time to work with a variety of artists including Neil Diamond, Elvis Costello, The Dixie Chicks and his son, bassist and sax player Lonnie Knechtel. The respected musician died in Yakima Valley, Washington on 20 August 2009, following a heart attack.