The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (384 page)

A founding member of seminal US psychedelic rockers The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Lee Freeman also died from cancer on St Valentine’s Day.

The group–Freeman (ex-The Victors–rhythm guitar/lead vocals), Ed King (lead guitar), Gary Lovetro (bass), Mark Weitz (keyboards/vocals) and Randy Seol (percussion, replacing Gerry Gunnels)–emerged as ‘Thee Sixpence’ in Glendale, California around 1965. The name change to Strawberry Alarm Clock had been suggested by the group’s record label, Uni Records, who wanted something ‘trippy’ and with a ‘Beatles’ flavour. Their first 45 was the biggest– ‘Incense and Peppermints’ (1967, US number one), a landmark in psychedelia and, with over a million copies sold by the end of the year, unarguably the genre’s biggest hit record. (Oddly, the vocal on this track–which had originally been intended as a b-side anyway–was provided by teenage acquaintance Greg Munford, who wasn’t even a member of the group.) A similarly titled album was hastily recorded with new member George Bunnell (bass/rhythm/songwriting) replacing the bought-out Lovetro. This effort fell one place short of the Top Ten, Freeman taking on much of the vocal work. Despite one further hit (‘Tomorrow’–1968, US Top Forty), Strawberry Alarm Clock failed to retain market appeal (despite some songwriting from Carole King) and disbanded in 1972. After the horrific deaths of his mother and sister that winter, Freeman left music for several years, although in 1975 played harmonica onstage with Ed King’s new band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

During the 1980s, Freeman spotted a small ad boasting a reunion appearance by the band in LA. Believing himself to have been the victim of a snub, Freeman discovered that this was, in fact, a newspaper ruse to get the band to reunite. The trick worked in that Strawberry Alarm Clock–with only Freeman and (briefly) Seol reappearing from the original roster– played a couple of concerts. Various versions of the group reappeared after this (often on package tours with Moby Grape and The Seeds), but after Strawberry Alarm Clock played together at the Portland Fuzzfest in 2007, Freeman was sidelined owing to worsening health. By January of 2010, the band were even cited to have recorded new material with Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan; sadly, Lee Freeman died of cancer at a San Bruno, California hospice before any such product could materialize.

Sunday 28

Tom ‘T-Bone’ Wolk

(Yonkers, New York, 24 December 1951)

Hall & Oates

(Various acts)

Tom Wolk was, for more than two decades, the bassist with Daryl Hall & John Oates, performing with the enormously successful duo from the multiplatinum
Private Eyes-era
(1981) onward. This was the best-recalled of his tenures, but it certainly wasn’t the extent of it.

The journeyman bass-player had played mainly sessions–including the bass lines on Kurtis Blow’s groundbreak-ing rap hit ‘The Breaks’ (1979)–before his major break with Hall & Oates, this gig opening many doors elsewhere. ‘T-Bone’ (as he was widely and affectionately known) also worked with Elvis Costello, Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Jellyfish, Jewel Kilcher and Squeeze among others, and, between 1986 and 1992, was seen by millions every week in his post as a houseband member on NBC television’s
Saturday Night Live.
His later career saw T-Bone produce some of Hall & Oates’s recordings, also working on several records by artists including Willie Nile and Ryan Leslie.

Tom Wolk was in the process of recording a solo album with Daryl Hall when he suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Pawling, New York. He’d been due to play with Hall & Oates on NBC’s
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon
show just two nights later.

MARCH

Thursday 4

Ron Banks

(Redford, Michigan, 10 May 1951)

The Dramatics

(Various acts)

Formed as The Sensations, The Dramatics–also on occasion ‘The Dynamics’ thanks to some poor typing–were seen as Detroit’s answer to the slew of smooth soul groups emerging from Philadelphia during the latter stages of the 1960s. Although he wasn’t often the group’s lead singer, Northern High School grad Ron Banks–a founding member–was looked upon as the natural leader by his band mates. The eventual quintet of Banks (falsetto/keyboards), William ‘Wee Gee’ Howard (lead), Willie Ford (bass), Larry ‘Squirrel’ Demps (yes, another one–tenor) and Elbert Wilkens (baritone) saw little success until signing with Stax in 1968, The Dynamics previously managing just one R & B chart appearance with ‘All Because of You’ (Sport, 1967).

The move to soul’s second-biggest label eventually made a difference. After a few more years of treading the boards, The Dramatics struck gold (literally) with a pair of million-selling pop hits in America, ‘Whatcha See is Whatcha Get’ (1971, US Top Ten; US R & B Top Five) and ‘In the Rain’ (1972, US Top Five; US R & B number one), chasing these up with a Top Twenty album. Perhaps oddly, Banks and the group’s management saw this as the right time to introduce a new lead singer in L J Reynolds, with Lenny Mayes also coming in for Wilkens. (James Mack Brown also relieved Banks of his keyboard duties at this time.) With the nonplussed Howard and Wilkens then fashioning a similarly named ‘splinter’ group, Banks’s name briefly preceded that of The Dramatics.

Although the group managed ten further Billboard entries as well as regular R & B-chart forays into the 1980s, none of these made the top end of the pop listings and Banks was soon on his way. The singer enjoyed some success as a solo artist, occasionally touring with his brother Bryan’s funk outfit Five Special who had minor success at the turn of the eighties.

Ron Banks in his later days rejoined surviving members of The Dramatics for the inevitable nostalgia circuit tours. The singer died in Detroit from a heart attack, making him the third member to pass on in such a way following the demises of singers Elbert Wilkins (1992) and William Howard (2000). He was also preceded in death by Mayes, who died of cancer in 2004, and Brown, who passed away suddenly at the end of 2008.

The Dramatics also had some close brushes with violent crime, having been present at the Algiers Motel on the night of an alleged police triple-murder that fueled the racially driven Detroit Riots of 1967: thirteen years later, the group’s chief songwriter and producer Tony Hester was around thirty years old when robbed and shot dead in the same city.

Saturday 6

Mark Linkous

(Arlington, Virginia, 9 September 1962)

Sparklehorse

(The Dancing Hoods)

(The Johnson Family)

Although likely destined to remain a name unfamiliar to many music buffs, Mark Linkous was undoubtedly one of rock’s most gifted singer-songwriters of the past two decades. Yet during the artist’s teens, there was little evidence of the fractured, tender observations of his later recorded work: the young Linkous was–by his own admission–a tearaway, a dropout who preferred to drink, smoke weed and hang with the motorbike gangs than to concentrate on studies. Thus, after his parents separated, the young miscreant was sent to live with his grandparents, the experience giving him time to reflect and start picking out his thoughts on a guitar.

The Dancing Hoods were a postpunk unit formed by the relocated Linkous (vocals/guitar) with New York pals Bob Bortnick (guitar), Eric Williams (bass) and Don Short (drums). The band issued two albums in
12 Jealous Roses
(Relativity, 1984) and
Hallelujah Anyway
(Combat, 1988), both of which gained notice within altrock circles, but without finding The Hoods a major-label deal. (A single from the latter, ‘Baby’s Got Rockets’, managed a few plays on MTV, however.) On return to Virginia, the partially disillusioned Linkous formed The Johnson Family (later Salt Chunk Mary), a shortlived exercise in mastering traditional Irish shanties that was to teach the musician a very different way of crafting songs.

It was Sparklehorse–a direct result of this newfound knowledge–that were to prove the real revelation. This ‘band’ (initially Linkous only) was given a kickstart by the borrowing of an eight-track recorder from former Camper Van Beethoven-leader David Lowery, his current band Cracker having recorded Linkous’s ‘Sick of Goodbyes’ on their
Kerosene Hat
album (1993). The eighteen months that Linkous loaned the recorder were the key to his success. An exquisite single ‘Spirit Ditch’ emerged in 1994 on Slow River, the debut album
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
(Capitol, 1995) arriving to sluggish but, eventually, considerable critical approval. A remarkable anthology of touchingly bleak melody (‘Homecoming Queen’) and rough-hewn riff (‘Someday I Will Treat You Good’), the record seemed to be a collation of Linkous’s own recent past experiences and his preferred diet of traditional country, British bluesrock and Tom Waits. And it was all recorded in a little room at Linkous’s Virginia farmhouse, with some assistance from ‘David Charles’ (ie, Lowery).

‘It was this vortex I couldn’t climb out of. I think a little confidence helped– and that confidence was music.’

Mark Linkous talks to the
LA Times
about depression, 2007

Thus began the intermittently brilliant career of Sparklehorse, the follow-up
Good Morning Spider
(1998, UK Top Thirty) documenting Linkous’s recovery from a bizarre (and near-fatal) accident while on tour supporting Radiohead in 1996. The musician had unintentionally overdosed on heroin, valium and antidepressants at a London hotel, his legs crushed beneath him for some fourteen hours before his discovery, preventing blood circulation: Linkous survived, although not without extensive hospital treatment which included six operations. The song ‘Saint Mary’ was a direct tribute to staff that had helped him pull through this ordeal, meanwhile the rerecorded ‘Sick of Goodbyes’ became the closest thing to a hit single that Linkous–who often performed from a wheelchair at this time–was to know.

But if
Good Morning Spider
was to represent the commercial zenith,
It’s a Wonderful Life
(2001) was, for their growing fanbase, Sparklehorse’s crowning moment, a near-seamless multi-collaborative work that won many year-end polls. This record finally saw Linkous work with his spiritual guide Waits (the former apparently requiring six shots of whisky before he could call the latter), plus a plethora of other talents including P J Harvey and John Parish. By contrast,
Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
(2006) was almost ignored–perhaps unfairly. Although it presaged an interesting period working with producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton, best known for his work with MF Doom and Gnarls Barkley), some critics and fans felt that the record relied too much on rehashes, which, in their opinion, wasn’t something an artist of Linkous’s stature should need to be doing. It became apparent in interview, though, that the Sparklehorse front man was still struggling with the depression that had dogged his earlier life–although perhaps not to the extent that was to become apparent a while later …