The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (109 page)

Saturday 15

Alec Murphy

(Boston, Massachusetts,
c
1958)

Vivabeat

Human Sexual Response (Audio-Vidiot)

Though much touted by British musicians, US band Vivabeat’s history is littered with tragedy and misfortune – yet the story could have been so different. Despite receiving a fair amount of attention when they came to the UK in the early eighties, Boston’s Human Sexual Response were eventually considered little more than an interesting name. The band’s protagonist, guitarist Alec Murphy, had already jumped ship to form Vivabeat a year or so before (via the very shortlived US/German outfit Audio-Vidiot). Vivabeat, a newwave/synth outfit in the style of early Roxy Music/Human League was completed by Murphy’s old HSR bandmate Mick Muhlfriedel (bass), Buick heiress Consuelo de Silva (synthesizer), Marina del Ray (keyboards), Doug Orilio (drums) and British vocalist Terrance Robay. With assistance from early fan Peter Gabriel, Vivabeat were the first American band signed to London’s Charisma Records. The group’s 1980 debut featured the nag-gingly infectious ‘The Man from China’ – a song about a heroin dealer and the nearest they would ever get to a hit.

The label was (wrongly, in the end) keen to keep the band a well-kept secret until the album had picked up media interest. When this didn’t happen, Murphy spent much of the downtime as a face on the LA punk circuit, producing some of the acts while sharing some of their habits. Legend has it that the guitarist (like the character in his song) was the dealer who sold Darby Crash of The Germs his fatal dose of heroin
(
December
1980). With other band members also falling foul of the scene, Charisma dropped them soon after. Murphy and de Silva were both sacked, Orilio was paralysed in a 1982 car accident, and the band fell apart.

Alec Murphy was the first of no fewer than three former Vivabeat members to die from AIDS in under a decade – de Silva and Robay followed suit in 1991 and 1994 respectively Marina del Ray says: ‘That whole circle of people who were close to us is dead. The tragic thing is that by the time they died Connie and Alec had cleaned up and were finally getting their lives together.’

DECEMBER

Monday 1

Lee Dorsey

(Irving Lee Dorsey - New Orleans, Louisiana, 24 December 1924)

One of many future music stars with boxing ambitions, mechanic-by-day Lee Dorsey fought for light-heavyweight titles under the name Kid Chocolate into his thirties. A promising rock ‘n’ roll singer with a soulful R & B side, Dorsey was signed by Allen Toussaint to Fury Records in 1960, hitting almost immediately with the slight but catchy ‘Ya Ya’ the following year. This Billboard smash was followed by a series of further US chart entries, the biggest being ‘Working in a Coalmine’ (1966), which he co-wrote for the Amy label. By this time the singer had strong backing from The Meters. (In Britain, Dorsey also placed ‘Holy Cow’ in the Top Ten that year.)

Contributing to a recording by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, Lee Dorsey enjoyed a resurgence of interest during the late seventies – which even included opening for longtime fans The Clash. He contracted emphysema, from which he died in New Orleans at the age of sixty-one.

Monday 8

Hollywood Fats

(Michael Mann - Los Angeles, California, 17 March 1954)

The Hollywood Fats Band

The James Harmon Band

The Blasters

(Various acts)

Revered by his friend and bandmate Larry Taylor as ‘the greatest electric-blues guitarist ever’, Hollywood Fats played alongside many blues greats as a young man. Fats’s understanding mother drove the guitarist to blues joints when he was just thirteen, ensuring the young prodigy received an apprenticeship from the likes of Magic Sam and Buddy Guy (who gave Fats his nickname). During the seventies, Fats lit up the work of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Canned Heat and Albert King (the last of whom sacked him for ‘receiving too much attention’) with his dazzling riffs. His own Hollywood Fats Band (formed in 1978) was a very much onoff affair, and perhaps his best work was with guitarist Kid Ramos in blistering Orange County blues act The James Harmon Band. Despite enormous accolades from the blues fraternity, though, Hollywood Fats was destined not to gain wider recognition until he had passed on.

Joining The Blasters in 1985, Fats was recording an album with the California retro-rock band when he suffered a heart attack – apparently brought on by excessive heroin use – and died in a Santa Monica hospital.

Wednesday 24

Tommy Kiefer

(Switzerland, 21 August 1957)

Krokus

Krokus emerged as Switzerland’s leading hard-rock exponents in 1974, finding a sizeable fanbase in both the UK and US by the turn of the eighties. The band’s original line-up was Tommy Kiefer (vocals/guitar), Chris von Rohr (vocals/keys), Fernando von Arb (guitar), Jurg Naegeli (bass) and Freddy Steady (drums). A popular festival draw – particularly with the addition of Maltese singer Marc Storace – Krokus were to sell steadily with a series of albums that moved from the progressive to the generically metal during the early years of their career: titles included the 1976 debut
Krokus, Painkiller
(1978) and
Metal Rendezvous
(1980). By 1981’s
Hardware,
however, Kiefer had become yet another of rock’s heroin victims, and was kicked out of the band when his habit became detrimental to Krokus; he was replaced by roadie Mark Kohler.

Learning that he was dying from AIDS, Kiefer became depressed and withdrawn; his suicide by hanging, though a horrific shock, was understood by his friends and former band colleagues. The band, with their ever-familiar logo adorning every sleeve, continue to release albums into the new millennium.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1986:

Everett Barksdale
(US member of seminal vocal group The Ink Spots; born 28/4/1907; unknown, 8/1)

Linda Creed
(top US songwriter who penned many hits for The Spinners and The Stylistics and ‘Greatest Love of All’, a hit for George Benson and Whitney Houston; born Philadelphia, 1948; breast cancer, 10/4)

Todd Crew
(US bassist with California hard-rock acts The Drunk Fux and Jetboy, and friend of the young Axl Rose - which must have helped his cause no end; heroin overdose)

James Darroch
(Australian punk singer/songwriter/bassist with The Celibate Rifles and Eastern Dark; born Sydney,
c
1960; negotiating the ‘deadly’ Hume Highway, he died in a tour-van crash, 3/1986)

Coke Escovedo
(US Latin/rock/funk percussionist with Santana and Azteca with his brother Pete - uncle of Sheila E; born Thomas Escovedo, California, 30/4/1941; unknown, 13/7)

Monk Higgins
(US soul/blues musician who recorded solo, worked with Etta James and produced Blood, Sweat & Tears; born Milton Bland, Menifee, Arizona, 3/10/1936; respiratory disease, 3/7)

Dick James
(UK music publisher, who was the first to sign The Beatles - also worked with Elton John, Billy J Kramer and Gerry Marsden; born Reginald Leon Vapnick, 1921; heart attack, ½)

Cliff Leeman
(US rock ‘n’ roll drummer who played sessions for The Comets; born Maine; unknown)

Charles Moffitt
(US bass with doo-wop group The Velours; born New York,
c
1932; murdered in an attack, 12/1986)

Paul O’Halloran
(US garagerock bassist with The Dogmatics; born Boston, Massachusetts; hit by a car while pushing his motorbike, 23/10)

Dick Rowe
(UK A & R man who famously turned down The Beatles while at Decca - though redeemed himself later by nabbing The Stones; born 1925; diabetes, 6/6)