The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (51 page)

This apparent ‘curse of T Rex’ does not even end there: Bolan’s first wife, June Child, died of a heart attack in 1994 during a trip to Turkey funded by selling some of his unreleased music, while Secunda’s widow, Chelita - who developed Bolan’s glitter look - died in 2000. Muriel Young, who produced his television show, and musician Richard Jones - the first to come to Bolan’s aid - both passed away the following year.

Bolan is survived by his and Jones’s son, Rolan, who, less than two years old at the time, has no significant memories of his father. In 2002, he unveiled a twenty-fifth anniversary plaque to commemorate Bolan at the site. Jones and her son went to the US to recover and have her jaw reset, after Howard finally broke the news of her common-law husband’s death to her in hospital four days after the event. All parties having drunk ‘moderately’ on the fateful night, Jones faced charges of dangerous driving but somehow avoided trial, perhaps because the car had been inefficiently serviced shortly before, some of its wheel nuts reportedly not even finger-tight. Bolan’s funeral at Golders Green crematorium inevitably resembled a
Who’s Who
of UK pop music. Among those in attendance were Rod Stewart, Elton John, Steve Harley, Alvin Stardust and David Bowie, the latter of whom was particularly distraught, having worked with Bolan so soon before. Wreaths were forwarded by other stars, and Bolan’s management arranged a floral white swan as a tribute.

Despite his achievements, Bolan’s affairs were anything but straightforward following the accident. Within hours of his death, not only had fans allegedly taken valuable letters and receipts from Bolan’s flat but taxmen had made a demand for some £3 million in unpaid contributions – as a final insult, Bolan’s parents were invited to ‘make an offer’ on his bloodstained clothes.

By putting his will into the hands of his then-management in 1973, Bolan had inadvertently signed away much of his earnings before his death. Most of Bolan’s royalties were tied up in a series of ‘tax efficient’ companies (named Wizard) set up outside the UK. No one, however, had a clue where any of these were, bar a surviving outlet in the Bahamas, which declined to comment on money it now considered its own. Sorting the mess out now is more problematic because virtually
all
noteworthy members of the various incarnations of T Rex have since died
(
Dead Interesting!).
In 2006, the only notable musician still living to have played with Bolan was drummer Bill Legend – who has not seen a penny of the star’s estate.

Friday 30

Mary Ford

(Iris Colleen Summers - Pasadena, California 7 July 1928)

Les Paul & Mary Ford

Discovered by her better-known husband, celebrated guitarist Les Paul, Mary Ford saw much pre-rock ‘n’ roll success with hits like ‘How High the Moon’ (1951). In 1948 – at the very start of their personal and professional partnership – the couple had survived a terrifying crash when their car skidded off the road, plummeting twenty feet into a frozen Oklahoma creek. As Paul convalesced, his close friend Bing Crosby presented him with an Ampex recorder as a get-well gift, on which he made some of Ford’s earliest recordings.

After being in a diabetic coma for nearly two months, Mary Ford eventually yielded to the cancer that had brought an early end to her professional career. It was to prove a particularly difficult year for Les Paul, who also lost his manager, two members of the original Les Paul Trio and, of course, Crosby.

See also
Les Paul (
Golden Oldies #95)

OCTOBER

Thursday 13

Shirley Brickley

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 9 December 1944)

The Orlons

Shirley Brickley – initially alongside her two younger sisters, Audrey and Jean – formed the Philadelphia all-girl vocal group, Audrey & The Teenetts with friends Rosetta Hightower and Marlena Davis (who died in 1993). When her sisters were pulled out of the group by their mother, Brickley, Hightower and Davis continued as The Orlons, singing at Philadelphia schools with baritone Stephen Caldwell. The hits came when Cameo Parkway Records signed them in 1961 – the best known is probably the 1962 US number-two single ‘The Wah Watusi’. The Orlons consolidated their success (and royalties) by singing back-up with Bobby Rydell and Dee Dee Sharp’s bands. However, once the British invasion had taken hold by the mid sixties, The Orlons disbanded, Shirley Brickley struggling to find anything other than menial or bartending work.

It is assumed that she was the unlucky victim of a failed house robbery, because – aged just thirty-two -Brickley was murdered by an intruder’s gunshot in her Philadelphia home. No arrest was ever made.

Thursday 20

Cassie Gaines

(Miami, Oklahoma, 9 January 1948)

Steve Gaines

(Miami, Oklahoma, 14 September 1949)

Ronnie Van Zant

(Jacksonville, Florida, 15 January 1948)

Lynyrd Skynyrd

In the autumn of 1977, Florida giants Lynyrd Skynyrd were poised to promote their latest album,
Street Survivors.
With its strong line-up of Southern rock workouts such as death-ditty ‘That Smell’ – and a (soon to be pulled) lurid cover illustration depicting the band engulfed in flames – the record was set to launch them into rock’s upper echelon. The appalling quirk of fate that then befell Skynyrd as they began the fifty-date ‘Tour of the Survivors’ resounds to this day.

Charismatic singer Ronnie Van Zant met the band in 1965, joining guitarist school-friends Allen Collins and Gary Rossington in My Backyard. By the seventies they had emerged as Lynyrd Skynyrd (a mutation of ‘Leonard Skinner’, the name of an unpopular gym teacher who’d disapproved of the length of their hair) and had signed with MCA. The first pair of albums produced the standards ‘Freebird’ (1973, dedicated to the late Duane Allman (
October 1971))
and US Top Ten hit ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ (1974). Numerous augmentations to the line-up of this sprawling combo followed, with brother/sister duo guitarist Steve Gaines and vocalist Cassie (as one of Skynyrd’s female singers, The Honkettes) in place by the end of 1976. On the back of a couple of less-well-received albums, this latest upgrade ensured that the new set,
Street Survivors,
was a serious return to form for Lynyrd Skynyrd.

On 19 October 1977, Skynyrd’s 1948 Convair 240 aircraft had had a small fire in its engine which sent a 20-foot jet of flame shooting into the air behind it. Cassie Gaines – never the best of flyers anyway – vowed not to set foot on that plane again. However, after much ribbing by (and persuasion from) her band colleagues, the vocalist agreed to cancel a commercial flight she had booked to continue the band’s tour to Florida using the Convair. Just before 4 pm the following afternoon, Houston air traffic control received a distress call from a private aircraft in the vicinity which was low on fuel. Within minutes of the call, the craft – carrying band members Van Zant, Gaines and Gaines, Rossington, Collins, Billy Powell (keys), Artimus Pyle (drums) and Leon Wilkeson (bass) – pitched into woodland in Gillburg, Mississippi, both engines having died.

Survivor Powell takes up the harrowing story: ‘Our co-pilot, John Gray, had been drinking the night before and, for all I know, may still have been drunk. He told me they were transferring oil from one wing to another … We hit the trees at approximately ninety miles per hour. The tail section broke off, the cockpit broke off and buckled underneath, and both wings broke off. The fuselage turned sideways and everybody was hurled forward. That’s how Ronnie died: he was catapulted at about eighty miles per hour into a tree – died instantly of a massive head injury. I started walking around in a daze: I saw John Gray hanging from a tree, decapitated. Then I saw Cassie, who was cut from ear to ear. She bled to death right in front of me.’ Powell, Collins and Pyle – the last with three ribs sticking through his chest – somehow managed to summon help from local farmers. Had they not done so, the body count may have been higher than three band members, two pilots and road manager Dean Kilpatrick. Even so, rumour suggests backwood scavengers arrived at the scene long before the paramedics, looting anything that bore the band’s name (or indeed any valuables at all) from the dead and survivors alike. During that long night, it is believed that as many as 3,000 people visited the crash site. By morning the carcass was all but picked clean. (Similarly, during 2000, Van Zant’s and Steve Gaines’s remains were reportedly desecrated by ‘curious’ fans.)