The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (82 page)

An immense presence in every sense, Rusty Day was a white soul singer with a blistering vocal style who tipped the scales at around 350 lbs – when he was around, audiences pretty much took notice. With his backing band, The Midnighters, Day became something of a legend on the Detroit live circuit during the sixties, while a single, ‘I Gotta Move #1’ (1966), edged its way on to Michigan radio playlists. His reputation as a lover of wild living and the rawest whiskey – not to mention a fondness for recreational drugs – also caught fire at this time. Three years on, Day was selected to front The Amboy Dukes, Motor City’s brashest new R & B band, recording with them on their third album,
Migrations.
But Day had competition in terms of personality: the band had been founded by no-nonsense guitarist Ted Nugent, a controlling leader who was vehemently anti-drugs. The probability is that Day, quite apart from his party-animal tendencies, was deflecting too much attention from self-styled ‘wild man’ Nugent – thus, after one further album, the aptly titled
Marriage on the Rocks
(1970), The Amboy Dukes were history as far as Day was concerned. He reemerged with Cactus and later Detroit Wheels (taking over the helm from Mitch Ryder), but these spells would not capture the imagination in quite the same way.

Following the untimely death of AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott (
February 1980),
it seemed probable that Day – with his appropriately raucous voice – might take his place as frontman for the good-time Aussie rockers. When this did not come to pass, Rusty Day relocated to Florida. Here, his hardcore lifestyle saw him shockingly murdered by heroin dealers when a transaction went badly wrong. Day was shot three times and died at the scene.

Thursday 10

Addie ‘Micki’ Harris

(Michelle Harris - Passaic, New Jersey, 22 January 1940)

The Shirelles

A founding member of one of the great girl groups, ‘older sister’ Micki Harris joined teenage schoolfriends – lead singer Shirley Owens, Beverley Lee and Doris Coley – to form The Poquellos in 1958. As luck would have it, another schoolfriend, Mary Jane, was the daughter of Tiara label-owner Florence Greenberg – who was sufficiently impressed with the quartet that she signed them immediately. With the group renamed The Shirelles, their own composition, the impressive ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’, was considered good enough for distribution by Decca – which put Harris and her colleagues into the R & B Top Fifty. It was obvious The Shirelles were set to be a major influence: with their marriage of doo-wop and upbeat pop, the group enjoyed an impressive string of hits, becoming the top act of Greenberg’s new Sceptre label. Six of their records made the US Top Ten, with two – Goffin and King’s ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ (1960) and ‘Soldier Boy’ (1962) – making it all the way to number one. A significant number of Shirelles songs were also covered by other groups: Manfred Mann took ‘Sha La La’ into the UK charts in 1964, while The Beatles’ early sets included versions of ‘Boys’ and ‘Baby It’s You’; indeed, John Lennon professed them his favourite group in the early days of Beatlemania.

The British invasion took its inevitable toll on The Shirelles (as it did on so many acts), but the girls remained a popular draw on the oldies circuit during the seventies. In 1982, the group were again in the studio, backup for the resurgent Dionne Warwick (who had occasionally sung with the group in her early career), but, tragically, Micki Harris collapsed and died from heart failure following a performance in Atlanta, Georgia. Juggling various line-up changes, The Shirelles continued into the new millennium, and were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

See also
Doris Coley (
February 2000)

Wednesday 16

James Honeyman-Scott

(Hereford, England, 4 November 1956)

The Pretenders

(Cheeks)

At just twenty-five one of the most versatile guitarists of his era, ‘Jimmy’ Honeyman-Scott’s meaningless death seems no less of a waste two and a half decades on. He was another prodigy, playing with fully fledged rock musicians as a teenager. Like a lot of young boys, he’d been a fan of Eric Clapton and Hank Marvin, and he had mastered many of their tricks while his friends were still completing their railway layouts. Progressing to The Beach Boys, Honeyman-Scott found he was able to cope with the intricate fretwork here as well. While a member of Cheeks (alongside former Mott the Hoople keyboardist Verden Allen), Honeyman-Scott befriended local Hereford musicians Pete Farndon (bass) and Martin Chambers (drums), thereby sowing the earliest seeds of The Pretenders. The band was completed with the addition of Ohio-born singer Chrissie Hynde – in the UK pursuing a career as a music journalist. Any doubts Honeyman-Scott may have had were wiped out when Farndon and Hynde lined up one of his heroes, Nick Lowe, to produce a single for the group. The band, with no name yet, cut a cool version of The Kinks’ ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ (arguably better than the original) at Regent’s Park Studio in July 1978. Issued on the small imprint Real, this record put The Pretenders (as Hynde had now called them) into the Top Forty and on to
Top of the Pops
in January 1979. This was followed by the fabulous ‘Kid’, a self-penned item that showed the group’s complete mastery of sixties hooks with sharp, confident newwave leanings. The band – particularly Hynde and Honeyman-Scott, who had co-written it – were less keen on ‘Brass In Pocket’, but for once, label pressure proved decisive as this third single became the UK’s first new number one of the eighties. The Pretenders were now one of the hottest acts in Britain – emphasized by a charttopping debut album that went platinum around the world.

The classic Pretenders line-up: Perhaps Chambers
(far left)
and Hynde knew what was to befall Farndon and Honeyman-Scott?

The depths to which The Pretenders were to plummet in the next eighteen months were truly disturbing. Things began well enough for Honeyman-Scott, who married Peggy Sue Fender (a US model well-named for a guitarist), but Farndon and Hynde split after a two-year relationship (she took up with The Kinks’ Ray Davies), which caused tensions, and Farndon spent increasing amounts of time and money on hard drugs. After the critically snubbed
Pretenders II
– a record, in retrospect, dismissed very unfairly – Hynde and Honeyman-Scott both agreed that it was in the best interests of the band that Farndon should leave, setting a deadline of the return from an early 1982 world tour for his dismissal. After well-received shows in the Far East, Honeyman-Scott dashed off to the US with his wife to fulfil the dream of a lifetime by playing a series of shows with The Beach Boys – and returned buoyant, seemingly also having put paid to his own sporadic amphetamine use.

On 14 June, Hynde and Honeyman-Scott broke the news to Farndon that his escalating heroin use was no longer compatible with the band’s plans. Relieved at having told the bassist of the decision, Honeyman-Scott spent the night of the 16th at a friend’s London party, but the following morning, he was unrousable: with terrible irony, it was Honeyman-Scott who was dead from heart failure brought on by snorting cocaine. It seemed that having recently undergone detoxification, his body was no longer tolerant of the drug. Too devastated to attend Honeyman-Scott’s Hereford funeral, Hynde took herself off to America to be with Davies, while the quietest Pretender, Martin Chambers, was left to contemplate the future. As for Farndon, he was living on borrowed time: he died following excessive drug use just ten months after Honeyman-Scott
(
April 1983).