The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (53 page)

4 ‘Angel Of Death’

Slayer (1986)

Musically powerful, perhaps - but what was the California speed-metallers’ message here? This ‘tribute’ concerned Josef Mengele - the deeply disturbed Nazi physician whose experiments on children rank among the most appalling atrocities of the twentieth century. Slayer are by no means the only band to exploit this subject area and, perhaps sensibly, they’ve remained tight-lipped about the track since its appearance on the album
Reign in Blood
over twenty-five years ago.

5 ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’

Boom town Rats (1979)

In the UK, punters and programmers didn’t seem terribly bothered that the basis for ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ was the genuine (and very recent) story of Californian schoolgirl Brenda Spencer, who arrived at school one morning with a bad mood and a loaded pistol - killing two and injuring many more; by contrast, US radio stations weren’t exactly tripping over themselves to playlist the former British chart-topper. (What price The Arctic Monkeys writing the modern-day equivalent about Columbine? Well, quite.)

6 ‘No One is Innocent’

Sex Pistols (1978)

The Pistols - but without Johnny. Not content with offering lead vocals to exiled train robber Ronald Biggs, Paul Cook and Steve Jones amused themselves with trite lyrics about Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, while claiming that the Nazis were simply ‘having fun’. Original titles ‘Cosh the Driver’ and ‘The Biggest Blow’ were considered a bridge too far, even by Sex Pistols standards. The record, already censored by the BBC, also received a possibly unique onair ban from ITV.

7 ‘Tube Disasters’

Flux of Pink Indians (1980)

Songwriter Colin Birkett was at great pains to explain that his apparently distasteful lyric pertaining to the infamous 1975 Moorgate underground rail crash that left forty-three dead was intended as an ironic sneer at the media’s lurid coverage of same. It was all the more difficult for the anarchist/pacifist/vegetarian given that his previous band, The Epileptics, had, unsurprisingly, come under fire for their choice of group moniker. Great record, though.

8 ‘Marie Provost’

Nick Lowe (1977)

On the other hand, of what was the genial king of pub rock thinking when he penned this wicked ditty? ‘Marie Provost’ told the macabre story of the fallen US silent movie actress who died alone and was eaten by her own pet dachshund. For lyrics rhyming ‘winner’ with ‘doggie’s dinner’, Lowe received one fat slap on the wrist from Provost’s fan club. The rest of us could only smirk.

9 ‘Psycho’

Leon Payne (1974)

More US firearms madness here, in the shape of ex-marine Charles Whitman, who in August 1966 chose to gun down fifteen at the University of Texas. Payne’s bizarre, restless and largely spoken attention to detail is what makes this such a disquieting listen - and was what saw a universal media ban slapped on the track. (Oddly, Elvis Costello chose to cover the song during his 1981 ‘country’ phase.)

10 ‘Midnight Rambler’

The Rolling Stones (1969)

Yes, even Jagger gets in on the act with this disturbing ditty about Alberto DeSalvo - the notorious Boston Strangler. The studio version of ‘Midnight Rambler’ was little more than incidental music under recordings of DeSalvo’s confessions to the Boston police, but live performances had sick audiences joining in with wails and screams. Well, those
were
less-enlightened times, I suppose.

1978

JANUARY

Monday 23

Terry Kath

(Chicago, Illinois, 31 January 1946)

Chicago

(Various acts)

‘Don’t worry -
it’s not loaded, see?’

Famous last words from Terry Kath

He’s the contributor of one of pop history’s most-referred-to deaths by misadventure, but it should first be remembered that Terry Kath was an accomplished guitarist, even prompting praise from Jimi Hendrix, who, when his band invited Chicago Transit Authority (as Chicago then were) to join him on a European tour in 1968, confessed he felt Kath was the better guitarist.

He’d had a good start, learning Beach Boys tunes on his brother’s drums and his mother’s banjo during his teens. But Kath’s extraordinary ability to sound as though he were playing both lead and rhythm guitar at the same time most likely came out of the lessons he took from a jazzplayer before hitting the rock trail with first The Missing Links, then The Big Thing – who became CTA. Kath was very much the leader of the new band, adding vocals as well as his trademark playing, a role later shared with Peter Cetera. As Chicago – the abbreviation came about when the
real
Chicago Transit Authority threatened legal action (beware, Mull Historical Society) – the band were an enormous smash, sliding effortlessly from horny jazz rock into the laid-back afterglow of stadium AOR. Their numbered eponymous albums built a loyal fanbase over the years, while hits arrived with the regularity of Chicago buses: ‘Make Me Smile’ and ‘25 or 6 to 4’ were the first of twenty Top Ten singles for the band over the next couple of decades. Their commercial zenith was reached in the autumn of 1976, when ‘If You Leave Me Now’ went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic.

The second phase of Chicago’s success, though, occurred without Terry Kath. One week before his thirty-second birthday, the musician and his actress wife, Camelia, now living in Malibu, California, attended a party at the house of Chicago crew member Donnie Johnson, in nearby Woodland Hills. Kath and Johnson chugged a few beers and supped a few bourbons, the conversation turning – as often it would – to the subject of firearms. Casual gun-owner Johnson was not in the same league as Kath: Chicago’s guitarist was an avid firearms collector, more often than not travelling armed. Seemingly, the musician was such a lover of weaponry that once the party started to break up, he took it upon himself to clean Johnson’s .38 revolver. Kath’s behaviour got more out of order, and Johnson’s annoyance turned to extreme concern, as the clearly ‘juiced’ musician put the .38 to his head and pulled the trigger – the chamber was empty. What to onlookers represented plain stupidity was to Kath clearly a sign he knew what he was doing: the singer believed himself no slouch when it came to party tricks and, producing his own 9-mm pistol from nowhere, he attempted the same trick. With the immortal words recalled above, Kath once again squeezed the trigger; the gunman had forgotten (or was too inebriated to remember) that an automatic chambers a bullet, uh, automatically – ie, it does not require the magazine to remain inserted.

A verdict of accidental death under the influence of alcohol and drugs was passed, as was Kath, into pop-music folklore. Some 400 attended his interment in Forest Lawn, Glendale, including members of Chicago, who continued successfully into the 1980s – though many fans believe the band died with Terry Kath.

Vic Ames

(Victor Urick - Maiden, Massachusetts, 20 May 1926)

The Ames Brothers

At pretty much the same time as Terry Kath was playing with his piece, Vic Ames, first tenor with one of America’s first commercially successful white vocal bands, The Ames Brothers, came unstuck on a Tennessee road.

The Ames Brothers were Ed, Vic, Gene (who died in 1997) and Joe, the four oldest of nine musical siblings, who became one of Boston’s most popular tight harmony units by the early fifties. Signing first with Coral, then with RCA, The Ames Brothers enjoyed national hit status in 1950 with their platinum ‘Rag Mop’, and 1954’s ‘Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ became a huge international hit. The group were also among the first to develop specific characters, Vic Ames being very much the band ‘clown’, his original desire to become a serious actor having been scuppered by a performance back in 1940 that left his audience helpless with mirth. Ames’s comic persona proved popular as the brothers fronted their own network television series in 1955.

After the group split in 1961, Vic Ames fronted his own Arkansas TV talk show. Later, the former singer moved to Nashville to work as a country-music agent. It was here that he lost his life when his car skidded on pack ice and slammed into a streetlamp.

Tuesday 31

Greg Herbert

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19 May 1947)

Blood, Sweat & Tears

(Miles Davis Group)

(Woody Herman Orchestra)

(Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra)

It was clearly all too exciting for Gregory Herbert. He’d been a professional alto saxophonist since the age of sixteen (playing with Duke Ellington, no less), but it nonetheless took him until he was nearly thirty to find a niche in the rock end of the jazz market. Blood, Sweat & Tears were already several years past their commercial peak by the time Herbert was drafted in as replacement for Bill Tillman, who already felt like the umpteenth BST saxophonist. An impressive stylist and improviser, Herbert shared sax duties on the Blood, Sweat & Tears album
Brand New Day
(1977), which diehard fans believed to be something of a return to form.

January 1978 saw a European tour for Blood, Sweat & Tears to try and reignite interest there. All seemed to be going according to plan when, after a concert in Amsterdam, Greg Herbert took an overdose of cocaine – and died in his hotel room. The remaining band members terminated the tour there and then, returning to the States, where they went their separate ways.

MARCH

Saturday 11

Claude François

(Ismaïlia, Egypt, 1 February 1939)