The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (424 page)

Golden Oldies #154

Bob Brunning

(Bournemouth, England, 29 June 1943)

Fleetwood Mac

Savoy Brown

(Various acts)

Bespectacled British bass-player Bob Brunning was an original member of Fleetwood Mac - but one who apparently held the wrong surname to continue.

Brunning had joined the band at the behest of guitarist Peter Green (ex-Bluesbreakers), who had - unusually - already named the group after his rhythm-section ‘wish-list’. Drummer Mick Fleetwood fulfilled his part of the deal straight away (along with slide-guitarist Jeremy Spencer), however without the ‘Mac’ present, it was left to Brunning to fill in on the group’s first, eponymous album. The temporary bassist only played on one song - ‘Long Grey Mare’ - before the former Bluesbreakers bassist John McVie became available, and in turn ousted Brunning from the band.

Brunning dutifully moved aside, playing instead with Savoy Brown and Tramp. The latter act released two decent albums,
Tramp
(1970) and
Put a
Record On
(1974), but was very much a transient project as the name suggests. Bob Brunning authored several books on his favoured subject, including three on the band with whom he
almost
made a name. The musician also enjoyed a career teaching music, which lasted three decades, until he died from a heart attack at his London home on 18 October 2011.

NOVEMBER

Golden Oldies #155

Andrea True

(Andrea Truden - Nashville, Tennessee, 26 July 1943)

Andrea True Connection

Andrea True’s plethora of stage names - including Inger Kissen and Sandra Lips - give some indication to her main profession, but her inclusion here is largely due to one 1976 disco classic. The future star initially attempted a career as a mainstream film actress, but when this failed to ignite, she built the foundation for a solid career in the adult movie industry.

Expanding her artistic portfolio to include music, former Catholic-schoolgirl True developed a useful friendship with producer Gregg Diamond, who, in 1975, assisted her in the creation of the swirling dance track ‘More, More, More’, which was released the following spring under the group name, Andrea True Connection. The result was a worldwide dancefloor smash that made Canada number one and the Top Five in both the US and UK - and is to this day used in commercial campaigns on an annual basis. The cut then spawned a moderately successful album. Although generally viewed as a one-hit wonder, True also charted with ‘Party Line’ (1976, US Hot 100), ‘NY You Got Me Dancing’ (1977, US Top Forty) and ‘What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number?’ (1978, US Hot 100; UK Top Forty).

After the failure of a third album, however, health issues prevented True from recording again (although she somehow sustained her porn work before a brief career as a psychic). Andrea True died from heart failure in Kingston, New York, on 7 November 2011.

Tuesday 8

Heavy D

(Dwight Arrington Myers - Mandeville, Jamaica, 24 May 1967)

Heavy D & The Boyz

New York-adoptee Heavy D was one of the East Coast’s most popular – and certainly most imposing – hip-hop artists of his generation. The genial Jamaican-born rapper made his name as giant front man to smooth Mount Vernon rap act Heavy D & The Boyz, who were also popular among the early nineties New Jack Swing crowd. Heavy D broke through in the late 1980s, and it soon became apparent where his act’s gimmick was to lie. With a debut record
Living Large
(1987) faring well, Myers and his posse then crashed the Billboard Top Twenty with follow-up
Big Tyme
(1989), this record making it all the way to the top in the R & B listings.

Heavy D & The Boyz – just ahead of major success – were to meet with tragedy in 1990 when group member Trouble T-Roy (Troy Dixon) died from a fall following some post-gig horseplay
(
July 1990).
Heavy D then scored a huge smash backing Janet Jackson on ‘Alright’ (1990, US Top Five), and worked with Michael Jackson on the hit ‘Jam’ (1992). His group’s biggest international song was, by some measure, their cover of Third World’s ‘Now That We Found Love’ (1991, US Top Twenty; UK number two). Heavy D continued this success as a solo artist, scoring a Top Ten album with
WaterbedHev
(1997), plus a clutch of further hit singles: his last recorded efforts were the surprising, reggae-infused
Vibes
(2008) and
Love Opus
(2011), the latter emerging just six weeks before the star’s passing.

Despite persistent and concerted efforts to style himself as a ladykiller, Heavy D was a big man, at his heaviest tipping the scales at somewhere under the 300 lb-mark. His death from respiratory distress at just forty-four years old was sad, but perhaps not entirely unexpected for a man of this physique. Heavy D – who collapsed outside his Beverly Hills home – had recently completed shooting of his role in the movie
Tower Heist.
He was known also to be suffering deep-vein thrombosis and heart disease.

Monday 14

Laura Kennedy

(Cleveland, Ohio, 20 May 1963)

The Bush Tetras

Laura Kennedy was a founding bassist of US postpunk quartet The Bush Tetras and a leading light of the New York subgenre that became known as ‘No Wave’. In truth, her band’s dissonant style had more in common with a British scene that had produced acts such as The Slits and The Au Pairs.

No matter, the slashing, jagged guitar/bass of The Bush Tetras contrasted well with other New York bands like Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, The Shirts and The Contortions, whose guitarist Pat Place was eventually to join Kennedy, Cynthia Sley (vocals) and Dee Pop (drums) in the band during 1979. Although the The Bush Tetras weren’t around for long, it was largely owing to Kennedy’s alluring funk basslines that they managed a brace of hits on the US Dance listings in the group’s best-recalled song ‘Too Many Creeps’ (1981) and ‘Can’t Be Funky/Cowboys in Africa’ (1982). The band went their separate ways in 1983, most of them finding new berths in other postpunk groups: Kennedy chose to pursue a career in real estate. She did, however, rejoin The Bush Tetras when the band reunited for their first record on a major label,
Beauty Lies
(PolyGram, 1997).

‘She was the coolest … ever.’

Thurston Moore, on Laura Kennedy

Having contracted Hepatitis C some two decades previously, Laura Kennedy underwent a liver transplant in November 2008, the surgery funded by a host of New York alt-music illuminati including David Thomas of Pere Ubu. At the end of 2011, the former bassist – who had been living in Minneapolis since the late nineties – succumbed bravely to what she herself described as ‘a scourge of an illness’.

Jackie Leven

(Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, 18 June 1950)

Doll By Doll

(Various acts)

On the same day, his many fans said goodbye to journeyman folk/rock musician and songwriter Jackie Leven. Born into a Romany family, Leven began his career as John St Field, issuing a long-forgotten debut album back in 1973. His next move was to gain Leven a little more notice: as founder and lead singer/guitarist with London-based rock band Doll By Doll, Leven issued four albums in four years –
Remember
(1979),
Gypsy Blood
(1979) on Automatic, then
Doll By Doll
(1980) and
Grand Passion
(1982) on Magnet. However, despite touring with then-fashionable bands like Ultravox, Leven’s band were considered too highly strung for the newwave market that they wished to infiltrate. Theirs and songwriter Leven’s emotion was perhaps too ‘genuine’ for the new-romantics.