The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (86 page)

But none of this could prevent Billy Fury from declaring bankruptcy by the mid seventies, and the former heart-throb eventually retired to a farm in Wales. In 1982, with TV appearances and a potential comeback tour likely, Fury collapsed again from his heart condition, this time exacerbated by kidney problems. Fury – now partially blind and paralysed – was recording a new album when he was found unconscious by his housekeeper; he died later that day at St Mary’s Hospital, London, and was buried a few days later in Paddington Cemetery.

See also
Larry Parnes (
August 1989).
Tony Dangerfield, who later played bass behind Fury, has since died, as has the star’s younger brother Albie Wycherley, also a rock ‘n’ roll singer.

FEBRUARY

Friday 4

Karen Carpenter

(New Haven, Connecticut, 2 March 1950)

The Carpenters

In 1971, a large sector of the rock community was dismissing The Carpenters as lightweight, inconsequential, even ‘muzak’: to some, their music was a trite trinket box younger sisters or parents might be fooled into parting with money for once in a while. But the truth is that Karen Carpenter possessed one of the finest female voices pop music has ever heard, a lithe tenor that rolled across her brother’s, and many others’, words and melodies. So while it’s true to say that the world’s most successful family duo had descended into music barely worthy of their name by the late seventies, those early albums will always stand up to any amount of airplay. More sobering, though, is the fact that Carpenter’s myth is augmented by her sudden death from a previously unrecognized eating disorder.

Richard Carpenter was the apparent musician of the family, but tomboy Karen became fascinated by rhythm while playing glockenspiel in the school band to avoid geometry classes. The family had moved to the sunnier climes of Downey, California, and somehow ‘KC’ (as she was widely called) persuaded her parents to invest in a drum kit, her attempts to learn the flute falling by the wayside. In the autumn of 1964, with her brother at California State University majoring in music, Karen, on drums, joined him and bass-/tuba-player Wes Jacobs in The Richard Carpenter Trio. This group placed in the Hollywood Bowl Battle of the Bands, winning a contract with RCA – but all their tracks were rejected and the trio had disbanded by 1966, when Karen herself cut solo records for Joe Osborn’s Magic Lamp label, even trying out (unsuccessfully) for Kenny Rogers’s First Edition. Here that unique voice was first revealed, suggesting to many that the ‘group’ concept wasn’t one to which Karen and Richard Carpenter were especially inclined. They finally persuaded Herb Alpert to allow them to cut their own multi-tracked vocals and instrumentation: the A&M founder agreed that this might just work.

The Carpenters’ first release was a ballad version of The Beatles’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ – an atypical debut that nonetheless airplayed them to Billboard fifty-four in May 1970. But what followed was spectacular. Two months later, ‘(They Long to be) Close to You’ – a Bacharach/David composition that had flopped for Dionne Warwick some years before – shot to number one in America, followed by the similarly titled second album, which blueprinted the style that was to make The Carpenters a household name around the world. Further hits followed: ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ (1970, US number two), ‘For All We Know’ (1971, number three and winner of a soundtrack Oscar), ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’, ‘Superstar’, ‘Hurting Each Other’ (1971–2, all number two) and so it continued. Overjoyed at their success, the US’s hottest brother-and-sister duo purchased twin condominiums in Downey that they (perhaps a little tritely) named after their first pair of hits. Snatching a host of Grammys, The Carpenters – considered square by the rock and hippy fraternities – were, between 1970 and 1980, the country’s biggest-selling group.

But though ‘Top of the World’ returned her to the top of the chart in October 1973, Karen Carpenter was far from feeling the sentiment in her own life. Maintaining a smile for the cameras, she confided to her friend Olivia Newton-John that what she really wanted was something a little more humble: a house behind a white picket fence, a loving relationship, children – sadly, she was never to achieve any of this. Sales showed little sign of diminishing and The Carpenters were now in demand as a live act, their Vegas-style show a massive commitment. Although a 1976 tour of Japan was the largest-grossing of its kind in history, six solid years in the studio and on the road left their mark on both Carpenters: Richard took a year off after developing an addiction to Quaaludes and methamphetamine which temporarily damaged his concentration; Karen’s problems were more sinister still. By 1978 her weight had dropped to below 80 lbs – she was slowly starving herself to death.

Little was known about the insidious disease anorexia nervosa before the eighties, but experts believed that few who had suffered for five years or more could make a full recovery. So it proved for America’s purest songstress. Carpenter – who had had weight problems since she was seventeen – seemed to be on the mend. She took time out to make a solo album in 1979 (which, largely due to her brother’s reaction to the project, remained unreleased until thirteen years after her death), then married property developer Tom Burris the year after. It was a false dawn: in 1982, her marriage already on the slopes, Karen sank into depression, and finally admitted herself to hospital in her temporary home, New York.

Karen Carpenter: She’d only just begun …

On 3 February 1983, Karen Carpenter had intended to meet Newton-John for a session of chat and retail therapy, but this plan was vetoed by her concerned mother, who insisted the singer spend a long weekend away from the city at the family home. Her daughter reluctantly obliged, driving from yet another home, her condo in Century City, LA, to Downey. That evening, as the clan dined at Bob’s Big Boy, she proudly announced that she had gained 15 lbs. But Karen’s large portion of prawns, Caesar salad and tacos cut little ice with a gathering who could see little real light within her sunken eyes. The following morning, she rose, put on a red jogging suit (later reported to have contained five different types of prescription drugs in its pockets) and, as her mother had requested, went to her old walkin closet to sort out her clothes. Hearing a thump from the room above her, Agnes Carpenter discovered her daughter slumped in the closet. The autopsy released later that year stated that Karen Carpenter had died of pulmonary oedema and cardiotoxicity exacerbated by anorexia nervosa and cachexia (abnormal weight loss). On 8 February, some 500 mourners attended her funeral at Downey Methodist Church, Alpert, Bacharach and Newton-John all acting as honorary pallbearers. Five hundred more waited outside. Karen Carpenter’s body was interred at Forest Lawn, Cypress, California, and moved by her brother, twenty years later, to the family plot at Westlake Village.

‘You win - I gain.’

Karen Carpenter’s cryptic crochet message above her New York hospital bed, 1982

APRIL

Tuesday 5

Danny Rapp

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 10 May 1941)

Danny & The Juniors

In the wake of ‘street corner’ vocal groups like Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, The Four Lads and Dion & The Belmonts came Danny & The Juniors, a quartet formed at John Bartram High School as The Juvenairs. Comprising Rapp (lead), founder Dave White (aka Tricker, first tenor), Frank Maffei (second tenor) and Joe Terry (aka Terranova, baritone) – the group are better remembered for one phenomenal hit record than for their vocal virtuosity. The Juvenairs pestered producer John Madara until he took them to Singular Records label heads Larry Brown and Artie Singer, who in turn contacted Dick Clark (of
American Bandstand)
in order that he should hear the renamed Danny & The Juniors perform. Clark liked one particular track, ‘At the Hop’ (written by themselves as ‘Do the Bop’). In December 1957, the group appeared on the show as a last-minute replacement for Little Anthony & The Imperials: within a month the record – issued by ABC-Paramount – spent the first of an extraordinary seven weeks atop the US charts. Radio fervently played the follow-up ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Stay’ (1958, a virtual rewrite of the debut), but the song only briefly scraped into the Top Twenty Although Danny & The Juniors avoided the stigma of the one-hit wonder, their only boast from hereon was that single number five, ‘Somehow I Can’t Forget’ (1959), was the first stereo 45. The game was pretty much up: Rapp and Terry found respite in their own New Jersey radio show in the early seventies, but the great days had gone for ever.

Rapp moved into more conventional employment thereafter, becoming the assistant manager of an Arizona toy factory, though he did lead one of two touring groups under the band name. Prone to occasional binge drinking, Danny Rapp had been in a belligerent mood before a performance at Phoenix’s Pointe Tapatio Resort and was later found in his room at a Quartzsite motel, having apparently shot himself.

Thursday 14

Pete Farndon

(Hereford, England, 12 June 1952)

The Pretenders

(The Bushwackers)