The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (44 page)

1976

JANUARY

Sunday 4

Mal Evans

(Malcolm Evans - Liverpool, 27 May 1937)

A long-time friend of The Beatles, Mal Evans became the Fab Four’s driver, then roadie and even contributed to many legendary recordings. His vocals can be heard on ‘Yellow Submarine’ (1966) and he also played on ‘You Won’t See Me’ (1965), ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’, ‘A Day in the Life’ (both 1967), ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Dear Prudence’ (both 1968). He also discovered Badfinger, among the first acts to be recorded by Apple Records.

By the mid seventies, Evans was living in Los Angeles and working on a book of his memoirs, entitled
Living with the Beatles’ Legend.
His life was far from stable, though: he’d become estranged from his wife, Lili, with messy divorce proceedings pending, and appeared to be sliding into depression. On the night of 4 January, Evans’s new girlfriend, Fran Hughes, returned to the apartment they shared at 8122 West 4th to find her lover very inebriated, loaded up on valium and threatening to put a 30.30 rifle in his mouth. Desperate to get him under some sort of control, Hughes called John Hoernle (his collaborator on the book) for help, but Evans became violent when Hoernle tried to remove the rifle from his clutches. Picking up the phone a second time, Hughes dialled 911. Within a short time, two officers arrived at the apartment to confront a now-calmer Mal Evans, but he panicked on seeing them, and refused to relinquish his gun, waving the weapon in their faces – at which point the officers fired at him six times. Four bullets hit the former roadie and he fell dead at their feet. As the officers had acted in self-defence, authorities declared that there was no case to answer.

John Lennon reportedly wept when he heard of the shooting and friend Harry Nilsson took responsibility for Evans’s funeral arrangements and paid for his ashes to arrive back in Britain in an urn rather than in a cardboard container. Although he was uncredited at the time, a lump sum for Evans’s musical contributions was paid to his estate by former Beatles during the nineties.

See also
John Lennon (
December 1980); Harry Nilsson (
January 1994)

FEBRUARY

Thursday 5

Rudy Pompilli

(Rudolph Pompilli - Chester, Pennsylvania,

16 April 1924)

Bill Haley & His Comets

Rudy Pompilli was, for twenty years, the right-hand man of rock ‘n’ roll’s first international star, Bill Haley, replacing original sax-player Joey d’Ambrosio in 1955. Despite the death of Danny Cedrone the previous summer (
Pre-1965),
The Comets were enjoying their highest ever profile with the million-selling ‘Rock around the Clock’ still high in the charts. ‘Rude the Dude’ was a self-taught musician who had found some local fame with Ralph Martieri’s jazz orchestra, and met Haley before his sudden success when the kiss-curled rocker was a radio manager in Chester. Haley wanted Pompilli for The Comets; he offered them fresh style, co-writing a number of tracks – not least his own ‘Rudy’s Rock’, which graced the soundtrack to the
Rock around the Clock
movie. This creative input accompanied his onstage image of a clowning virtuoso who could play on his back, on the hop – you name it.

But The Comets’ star began to fade; they split for the first time in 1962, before Pompilli took it upon himself to reorganize the band in the mid sixties for reunion dates. The sax-player then fell ill with what he thought was influenza during a 1974 tour in the wake of a successful British reissue of ‘Rock around the Clock’. Upon his return to the States, Pompilli learned that he had lung cancer; he succumbed to the disease two years later. Haley – who was far less visible in the band at this time – was devastated by the loss of his close friend and sidekick.

See also
Bill Haley (
February 1981) plus the accompanying ‘Dead Interesting!’ for a complete list of fallen Comets.

Thursday 12

Sal Mineo

(Salvatore Mineo Jr - The Bronx, New York, 10 January 1939)

Given that his upbringing was spent in and out of two-bit New York gangs, it’s perhaps not surprising that actor and singer Sal Mineo – known in the movie press as ‘The Switchblade Kid’ – spent his last moments on the street.

A troubled child, he was arrested for robbery at the age of ten (although his family now insists that this was merely media publicity), but choosing drama and dance classes over institutionalization calmed Mineo – though it alienated him from his tough buddies. Within two years he starred opposite Yul Brynner in
The King and
I, and four years later played the young, sexually ambiguous foil to James Dean’s rebellious leads in both
Rebel without a Cause
and
Giant,
securing a host of other impressive movie billings. Sal Mineo’s recording career was far briefer: an obvious pin-up idol, he hit the US Top Ten with ‘Start Movin’ in My Direction’ (1957), but, with a number of ‘proper’ rock ‘n’ roll icons emerging – and much speculation about his sexuality – Mineo disappeared after just one more hit. His screen career was to last another decade, but by 1972 work was proving harder to come by for a child star who had, unfortunately, grown up. As the sixties progressed, increased sexual freedom meant that Mineo could edge further out of the closet (one liaison was with Rock Hudson), but though his social world was flourishing, his finances were not. By 1976 he was close to broke. Then, suddenly, a well-received role in the off-Broadway play
PS Your Cat is Dead
seemed to reverse his fortunes.

Sal Mineo’s life, however, was ended senselessly in the car park of his rented West Hollywood apartment. Back from rehearsal, the actor emerged from his car and was confronted by a man wielding a hunting knife. Mineo was stabbed once – fatally – in the heart, his assailant fleeing without carrying out his intended robbery. Three years later, 21-year-old habitual criminal Lionel Williams (who, despite denying his crime in public, boasted of it while jailed on a felony charge) was convicted of second-degree murder, though many – including Mineo’s friend John Lennon – still felt there might be a conspiracy surrounding his killing. An admirer of Mineo for his often-uncompromising work, Lennon, in 1980, demanded the case be reopened; just days later, he himself was murdered in New York
(
December 1980).