The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (392 page)

As plain ol’ Robin Peter Smith, this budding British singer stood anonymously at the fore of a series of shortlived bands, beginning with the equally ordinary Beat Formula Three at the start of the sixties. However, there were those who felt he had ‘something’– in particular, Decca Records, who snapped Smith up as a solo artist in 1965. The label then applied the more flamboyant pseudonym of Crispian St Peters and the singer experienced the striking success that he craved. However, he was to discover that fame could be both fleeting and cruel.

Despite two initial flop singles, the label’s hard-sell reaped reward the following year as St Peters, having already released an album, hit the upper reaches of the charts with two tunes–’You Were On My Mind’ (1966, UK number two; 1967, US Top Forty) and ‘The Pied Piper’ (1966, UK/US Top Five). The failure of his subsequent career (both in the UK and US) was blamed on St Peters’s negligible public image and somewhat tiresome boasting in the music press. On one occasion, the singer–who’d already rated himself as ‘sexier’ than Elvis or Tom Jones–claimed to have eighty songs better than those of The Beatles. It was a gimmick that backfired badly: St Peters’ later attempts to qualify the statements were met by an unamused audience who promptly ignored his following records. By 1970, St Peters was dropped by Decca. He signed to the unfortunately named Square Records, but despite the issue of a second album–and a change in style to country– further hits proved increasingly resistant. All that was left for the singer by now were the inevitable nostalgia tours.

After suffering a stroke during the nineties, Crispian St Peters finally retired from the music industry: he died on 8 June 2010, following a lengthy illness.

Tuesday 15

Jānis Grodums

(Latvia, 10 June 1958)

LIvi

Known as ‘The Dinosaur of Rock’, bass player/singer Janis Grodums was one of the founder members of LIvi, a band considered key in the development of hard rock in Latvia. But his melodic-metal group certainly had to earn their place in the pantheon …

LIvi were formed in the old Soviet Union during 1978, but experienced a turbulent history, with a number of core members coming and going before the band could issue its long-awaited first EP,
Aprlla Pilieni
(1985). After this apparent change in fortune, matters then took a turn for the worse the following year, with the death of singer/guitarist Eriks Kigelis in a car crash following a live performance. This devastating event was, astonishingly, to be echoed eighteen years later, when drummer Dainis Virga and sound engineer Juris Jakovlevs died in a further road accident–once again, after a concert.

Despite these enormous setbacks, LIvi somehow steadied themselves to issue ten studio albums between 1986 and 2005. The nature of Janis Grodums’s death was kept from fans for some time, although since his passing it has become known that he was receiving treatment for hepatitis.

Wednesday 16

Garry Shider

(Plainfield, New Jersey, 24 July 1953)

The P-Funk All Stars

(United Soul)

(Various acts)

As a ten-year-old, Garry Shider was already moving with the right crowd. The burgeoning singer/guitarist was part of a large gospel-singing family that occasionally performed behind major vocal acts such as The Mighty Clouds of Joy and The Five Blind Boys. This frequently put him into contact with George Clinton, the latter having overseen The Parliaments–the barbershop vocal unit that was to provide a nucleus of P-Funk.

As a teenager, Shider and Cordell ‘Boogie’ Mosson (vocals) formed the noted band United Soul, which once again caught the attention of Clinton. The P-Funk main-man was impressed with Shider’s act, producing their single ‘I Miss My Baby’ (Westbound, 1971) and enough music for an album, released in 2009 as
U.S. Music with Funkadelic.
This was followed by a full invitation from Clinton to Shider and Mosson to join the growing Parliament/Funkadelic network.

For ten years, Shider was a significant and ubiquitous figure within P-Funk, and not just for his musicianship: often appearing on stage in a diaper or loincloth, Shider’s performances lit up cracking tunes such as Funkadelic’s ‘Cosmic Slop’ and the international hit, ‘One Nation Under a Groove’ (1978, US Top Forty; 1979, UK Top Ten). Shider also earned himself the position of musical director/arranger to The P-Funk All Stars, many of his compositions finding homes on Funkadelic albums and beyond. (A pair of archived United Soul tunes also made their way onto later recordings.) His considerable success with P-Funk continued into the nineties, with multiple television appearances, an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1997) and two Grammy nominations (1998). Shider also recorded with other artists, such as Atlanta rockers The Black Crowes.

Early in 2010, it was announced that the musician was suffering brain and lung cancer; Gary Shider passed away just months later from complications of the disease at his home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Just two months later, another P-Funk mainstay, guitarist Phelps ‘Catfish’ Collins (Bootsy’s brother), also fell to cancer. The pair join former cohorts Glen Goins
(
July 1978
), ‘Tiki’ Fulwood
(
November 1979
), Eddie Hazel
(
December 19922)
and Raymond Davis (
Golden Oldies #27)
in the great funky beyond.

Golden Oldies #116

Pete Quaife

(Devon, England, 31 December 1943)

The Kinks

(Mapleoak)

Devon-born Pete Quaife was the founding bass player of The Kinks (originally The Ravens), a band so classically English that they unwittingly pioneered a lineage that was to continue through bands like The Jam, Madness and The Smiths during the seventies and eighties.

Quaife was instrumental (in every sense) to the group’s development, playing on all of their early records and often stepping forward as spokesman when it came to those treacherous press interviews. As The Kinks subsequently came to be regarded as one of the UK’s top groups, however, the Davies brothers clearly became the focal point. During Quaife’s tenure, the songwriting genius of Ray Davies (vocals/rhythm guitar) resulted in the group scoring a dozen UK Top Ten hits, including three number ones, ‘You Really Got Me’ (1964, US Top Ten), ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ (1965, US Top Ten) and ‘Sunny Afternoon’ (1966, US Top Twenty; Canada/Netherlands number one), plus other classics such as ‘Waterloo Sunset’ (1967, UK number two). Quaife was often to bemoan the fact that he and drummer Mick Avory felt like session players to the main man and his brother Dave Davies (lead guitar), with whom Quaife had begun the band some years before.