The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (425 page)

Leven thereafter moved on to folkier styles and a solo career – this almost didn’t happen, as he was the innocent victim of a 1984 street assault that left him unable to speak for nearly two years. During this time the musician became addicted to heroin, which was eventually overcome by his much-publicised use of holistics. While recovering, Leven became a prolific songwriter and performer, his first album-proper,
The Mystery of Love Is Greater Than the Mystery of Death
(Cooking Vinyl, 1994), later ranked by
Q
magazine as one of their 100 Best Albums of All Time. This was followed by fourteen further studio recordings, as well as a series of compilations detailing his extraordinary life of travel and frequent homelessness.

Despite never really break-ing free of cult status, Leven was a prolific and challenging artist who, it could be said, lived a full and varied life. Ahead of his remarkable career in music, he had been a school friend of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; was alleged the first Scottish schoolboy busted for drugs; and reportedly lost a girlfriend to the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard. What’s more, he knew how to keep his fans on their toes, in later years, releasing material under the pseudonym Sir Vincent Lone. Jackie Leven passed away following a two-year battle with cancer.

Tuesday 15

Moogy Klingman

(Mark Klingman - Great Neck, New York, 7 September 1950)

Utopia

Jimmy James & The Blue Flames

(Various acts)

Few musicians could claim to have rubbed shoulders with such a variety of major names as has keyboardist/songwriter Mark ‘Moogy’ Klingman throughout his long career. A life-changing experience for the young artist had been meeting Bob Dylan as a teenager – before and after the folk giant had ‘plugged in’ for the very first time at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. Klingman didn’t look back, trumping even this moment by playing alongside Jimi Hendrix that year as a part of the shortlived Jimmy James & The Blue Flames – which also of course featured future Spirit leader, Randy California. (That Klingman was simultaneously playing in a jug band with pal and later comedy legend Andy Kaufman barely seems worth mentioning – however, it resulted in both of their expulsions from high school.) The musician’s first signed act was Glitterhouse, a band whose producer, Bob Crewe, managed to place their songs into the cult Jane Fonda movie
Barbarella.
With a hit album on his hands – 1973’s
Transformer
– Lou Reed then asked the band to back him on tour, even though the keyboardist and his associates hadn’t played on the recording.

For many music followers, Klingman’s most ready association will be with respected musician Todd Rundgren in Utopia – a group formed from the core of Moogy’s latest band, The Rhythm Kings. Starting with
Something/Anything?
(1972) and
A Wizard, A True Star
(1973), the keyboardist and synth player recorded ten albums with Rundgren, and shared studio and live space with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, The Allman Brothers and Bette Midler (for whom he acted as musical director for some while). Klingman also found time to record a pair of reasonable solo albums.

Moogy Klingman – whose songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Johnny Winter, Barry Manilow and Guns n’ Roses – was diagnosed with bladder cancer early in 2010. Rundgren then rallied to offset his friend’s spiralling medical fees by organising a benefit concert, which occurred just months before Klingman’s passing.

See also
Jimi Hendrix (
September 1970), Randy California (
January 1997), Bo Diddley (
Golden Oldies #68). Andy Kaufman is believed to have died from cancer in 1984.

Thursday 17

Gary Garcia

(Akron, Ohio, 28 July 1948)

Buckner & Garcia

(Willis ‘The Guard’ & Vigorish)

The unlikely pairing of Gary Garcia and Jerry Buckner first came into being at their junior high school in the early sixties – the former shortly after became a singer/guitarist and the latter a pianist. With their composing style veering away from conventional pop to novelty and parody tunes, the duo recorded as the curious Willis ‘The Guard’ & Vigorish – under which name they managed a Billboard Hot 100 hit with 1980’s ‘Merry Xmas in the NFL’ – before they moved to Atlanta and found a studio to produce their music. This move resulted in ‘Pac-Man Fever’ (1982, US Top Ten) – a send-up of Ted Nugent’s ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ that became a million-selling hit on the back of the arcade-game craze.

Although Buckner & Garcia earned appearances on television showcases like
American Bandstand,
attempts to follow this with such delights as ‘Do the Donkey Kong’ (1983, US number 103) and ‘ET I Love You’ (recorded 1982 – unreleased until 1999) unsurprisingly fared less well. Despite this, the duo was still recording together until just a few months before Gary Garcia’s sudden passing at his home in Englewood, Florida, following a brief illness.

Wednesday 23

Barry Llewellyn

(Barrington Llewellyn - Trenchtown, Jamaica, 25 December 1947)

The Heptones

The ‘Hep Ones’ were an early ska/rocksteady band formed in 1965 by singers Earl Morgan and Barry Llewellyn. The latter pairing had been friends while attending Kingston Senior School, where their classmates also included other future success stories, Carl Dawkins and Marcia Griffiths (Bob & Marcia/The I Threes). With the addition of a fine lead singer/bassist in Leroy Sibbles (replacing Glen Adams, who joined The Upsetters), The Heptones – as they became known – were on their way to stardom.

The Heptones found a natural recording home at Studio One, rattling off a number of Jamaican chart hits, including ‘Fattie Fattie’ (1966) – which suffered from a radio ban for its somewhat lascivious lyric – plus a cover of the doo-wop standard, ‘Sea of Love’. The biggest indigenous song, however, was 1973’s ‘Book of Rules’, which this time featured the distinctive lead vocals of Llewellyn. By the mid-seventies, The Heptones had signed with Island Records and became the latest Jamaican act to find an audience in the UK; they toured with Toots & The Maytals. Then, in 1975, the group began work with producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, issuing the albums
Night Food
(1976) and
Party Time
(1977). Upon Sibbles leaving for a solo career, the compelling former lead was replaced by the more conscience-oriented Dolphin ‘Naggo’ Morris; yet the band’s popularity was still on the wane. After a sabbatical, however, the classic Heptones trio returned in 1995 with the Tappa Zukie-produced
Pressure!.

Barry Llewellyn passed away in a St Andrew hospital, having complained of stomach pains just one day before.

Golden Oldies#156

Keef Hartley

(Keith Hartley - Preston, England, 8 April 1944)

The Keef Hartley (Big) Band

Rory Storm & The Hurricanes

John Mayall

(Various acts)