The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (258 page)

Sunday 20

Adam Cox

(Portland, Oregon, 1980)

Matthew Fitzgerald

(Portland, Oregon, 1983)

Jeremy Gage

(Portland, Oregon, 1981)

The Exploding Hearts

US indie rock had mourned the lost lives of members of For Squirrels (
September 1995)
and Compromise (
July 2002)
in highway crashes, before another such incident took place in Oregon in July 2003. The details were depressingly similar. Garage punks The Exploding Hearts were buzzing from the great reception to their first record,
Guitar Romantic
(2002) – described by
Rolling Stone
as ‘a cross between The Ramones and Big Star’ – when the band met their untimely end on Interstate 5 near Eugene, Oregon. The Exploding Hearts had spent the weekend partying in San Francisco after two triumphant headlining gigs, but late that Sunday it was clear that bassist Matthew ‘Matt Lock’ Fitzgerald was overtired and in no state to drive as the band made its way back home through the night. Over-compensating after the van drifted from the road, Fitzgerald caused the vehicle to hit a kerb and flip over. As it rolled, he, singer/guitarist Adam ‘Baby’ Cox and drummer Jeremy ‘Kid Killer’ Gage were thrown out and killed by the impact. A fourth member, Terry Six, aged twenty-one, escaped with minor scratches, as did 35-year-old manager Rachelle ‘Ratch Aronica’ Ramos – the only passenger wearing a seatbelt.

Friday 25

Erik Braunn (Brann)

(Erik Keith Braunn - Pekin, Illinois, 11 August 1950)

Iron Butterfly

Guitarist Erik Braunn wasn’t in the original line-up of San Diego’s most outlandish psychedelic-progsters, but he could easily have been. Only a teenager when he was snapped up by Iron Butterfly, he was already an experienced musician, having played the violin since he was just four. In 1966, Braunn (or Brann, as he was sometimes known) completed the classic Butterfly roster of Doug Ingle (vocals/keyboards), Lee Dorman (bass) and Ron Bushey (drums). The band had toured with major names like The Doors and Jefferson Airplane before they unleashed a debut record,
Heavy,
and the extraordinary seventeen-minute epic ‘In-a-Gadda-da-Vida’ (both 1968), the latter selling millions of copies in various formats over the years. Braunn left Iron Butterfly after the next album,
Ball
(1969), to be replaced by Mike Pinera of Blues Image, but he was to make frequent returns to the group which, despite folding in 1971, seemed to maintain a fanbase regardless. Braunn stayed in music, working as a session musician and producer until shortly before his death from a cardiac arrest.

See also
Philip ‘Taylor’ Kramer (
February 1995). Early member Darryl DeLoachpassed away just nine months before Braunn.

Sam Phillips at the cutting edge of recording technology

Eric Braunn of Iron Butterfly: A metal mother?

Golden Oldies #15

Sam Phillips

(Florence, Alabama, 5 January 1923)

Just two days before his twenty-seventh birthday, producer Sam Phillips opened the door to what was to be rock ‘n’ roll’s first real home - 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, better known as Sun Records. Recording mainly black artists for the first five years or so, Sun welcomed names like Jackie Brenston, B B King and Rufus Thomas into its studios, before Elvis Presley walked in and changed the face of popular music for ever. Then, to stave off a debt, Phillips offloaded his biggest asset to RCA for just $35K. Nevertheless, for his shrewd scouting of these great musicians, plus the likes of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, Phillips was rightly one of the first names inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. He died from respiratory failure on 30 July 2003.

AUGUST

Monday 18

Tony Jackson

(Liverpool, 16 July 1938)

The Searchers

(The Vibrations)

Famously drunk when the band auditioned for an unimpressed Brian Epstein, Tony Jackson nonetheless fronted The Searchers as they rose to become one of the most significant bands of the Merseybeat explosion. The Searchers were just a duo – singer/guitarists John McNally and Mike Pender – when Jackson signed up, the line-up completed by drummer Chris Curtis. Like fellow upstarts The Beatles, the group trod the usual round of Liverpool nightclubs, even emulating them by playing Hamburg in 1962. The Searchers were quick to follow The Fab Four to number one with ‘Sweets for My Sweet’ (1963), almost turning the trick again with the similar-sounding follow-up ‘Sugar Spice’. By the time of the group’s biggest seller, ‘Needles and Pins’ (1964), Jackson had been removed from his post as singer, though he continued as bassist for a third number one, ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’ (1964). Unhappy with the move towards soft rock (as opposed to ‘beat’), Jackson left The Searchers that July, after which the band’s sales dipped significantly.