The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (394 page)

Minott returned to Jamaica and continued to record, while also working in production with Mikey Dread, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, among many others. Sugar Minott– who is thought to have recorded more than thirty studio albums in his time– died at a Kingston hospital after suffering chest pains. He had suffered a heart condition for some years.

Minott’s producer, the respected Philip ‘Fatis’ Burrell, died at the end of 2011.

Monday 19

Andy Hummel

(Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 26 January 1951)

Big Star

(Ice Water)

Big Star’s Andy Hummel was one of the original line-up of Big Star when the group–Alex Chilton (ex-Box Tops, vocals), Chris Bell (ex-Ice Water, guitars), Hummel (ex-Ice Water, bass) and Jody Stephens (ex-Ice Water, drums)–joined forces in Memphis, Tennessee, during 1971. (Big Star’s name was inspired by a local grocery outlet close to their rehearsal premises.) The band were heavily influenced by The Beatles, and made a critical (if not commercial) impact with their debut album
#1 Record
(Ardent, 1972). Hummel was set in place to record the 1974 follow-up album,
Radio City,
which also failed to be a massive commercial success, but has retained critical acclaim throughout the decades. However, continuing inter-band turmoil resulted in Hummel leaving before the record’s release, the bassist citing that ‘it wouldn’t last’.

Hummel returned to his college studies and Chilton continued with Big Star; the band survived Bell’s tragic death
(
December 1978),
a further breakup, and experienced an unexpected 1993 rebirth. Hummel, meanwhile, secured a post with Lockheed Martin Aeronautical, at which he worked for the remainder of his life. However, following the mercurial singer’s untimely death earlier this year
(
March 2010),
the bassist returned to the stage for a final tribute performance in Memphis. Just four months later, Andy Hummel succumbed to cancer at his Fort Worth home after a two-year battle with the disease.

Wednesday 28

Derf Scratch

(Frederick Charles Milner III-Monmouth, New Jersey, 30 October 1951)

Fear

(Various acts)

‘Derf’ (it’s his first name, reversed) Scratch was the bassist with Los Angeles hardcore fiends Fear, who formed the band in 1977, but didn’t issue a debut album for five years. Fear are best recalled for their appearance in Penelope Spheeris’s punk movie
Decline of Western Civilisation
(1981), a controversial piece that initially received a ban in its native Los Angeles, though garnered quick support from comedian John Belushi. The cult actor and Scratch then became drinking/cocaine buddies– a loose friendship that resulted in Belushi blagging Fear a Halloween slot on
Saturday Night Live
in 1981. This chaotic televised performance has gone down in the annals of light entertainment history.

Scratch and his band responded to the resultant ‘outrage’ by issuing a seminal debut record entitled, yep,
The Record
(Slash, 1982–upon which Scratch also played the saxophone), which was a slab of vinyl cited by several later postpunk musicians as a major influence. One or two of these even found berths within the group itself: Fear’s volatile career has seen many come and go, Scratch himself being replaced by first Chuck Biscuits (later of DOA), then Frank Black (The Pixies/Catholics) and even Flea (Red Hot Chilli Peppers). Scratch, however, wished to concentrate on guitar and saxophone, selling his Fender bass to fellow LA punk Mike Watt, who then used it on The Minutemen’s classic debut album. The former Fear man went on to embrace country music styles in a lower-profile career, among his later bands The Werewolfs [sic] and Derf Scratch & Friends.

Duisberg -24/7/10

A stampede at a German techno/dance festival tragically saw twenty-one attendees crushed to death and five hundred injured in the summer of 2010. The Love Parade–an annual electronic music event founded by DJ Dr Motte–was attended by close to 1.5 million festival goers; the apparent reason behind the catastrophe was the fact that authorities chose to ignore warnings that a single tunnelled entrance would be ‘insufficient’.

In a situation that mirrored both the Hillsborough and Ibrox soccer stadium disasters in Britain (as well as a previous dance-concert catastrophe in Minsk (
May 1999)),
fans at the event in Duisburg were trampled underfoot and crushed behind barriers clearly incapable of supporting such a vast crowd. British DJ Mark Knight–a regular host at the festival–told the BBC that despite the unfolding horror, authorities were ‘adamant that the show had to continue’. Eventually, the city’s mayor, Adolf Sauerland, was removed from office once it had become known that he’d pushed for the event to go ahead despite being made aware of the considerable risks attached.

Remarkably, Scratch had trained as a realtor during his early punk career (presumably under his real name), and occasionally returned to the family business. He maintained his involvement in music, however, marrying his keyboardist, Tammy, in 1996. Derf Scratch passed away in Camarillo, California from liver disease.

AUGUST

Monday 2

Makh Daniels

(California, 30 January 1982)

Early Graves

(Apiary)

Singing with Early Graves was pretty much all Makh Daniels wanted from life–however, doing so was eventually to cost him just that. Daniels co-founded the San Francisco thrash-metallers in 2007, the majority of members formerly having made up the tech-metal act Apiary. With two albums–
We: The Guillotine
(Ironclad, 2008) and
Goner
(2010)–under their belts, there was at last a positive reception for a group that had gone through some dark times; Daniels himself had been treated for depression. The singer was proud of a latest release, which he’d previously described as ‘an exorcism’, and much was expected of his band as they toured the record.

The apparent upward curve came to an abrupt end, however, when the band’s tour van crashed and rolled between Oregon and Nevada. While Daniels was ejected from the vehicle and killed outright, guitarist Tyler Jensen and the vehicle’s driver, Justin Garcia (guitarist with support act The Funeral Pyre) suffered injuries: six other musicians from both groups escaped unhurt. It is believed that Garcia had fallen asleep at the wheel– and that none of the nine passengers had been wearing a seat belt. Early Graves continue, with guitarist Chris Brock taking over vocal duties–but the dark ironies surrounding that name are not lost on many.

Golden Oldies #119

Bobby Hebb

(Nashville, Tennessee, 26 July 1938)