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Paul Barrere 10/2019

October 26, 2019 Paul Barrere was born on July 3, 1948, the son of Hollywood actors Paul Bryar and Claudia Bryar. He joined celebrated cult band Little Feat in 1973, before the band recorded their third full-length LP, the gold-certified ‘Dixie Chicken’. For the recording of its fourth album, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974), he wrote the title track. As Barrere stayed with the group, he took, along with keyboard player Bill Payne, an increasing role in singing, playing, and writing, as bandleader/founder Lowell George slowly retreated. When the group fragmented following George’s death in 1979, Paul led the group Chicken Legs.

Barrere then did sessions and recorded solo in the 1980s until the re-formation of Little Feat in 1988.

Barrere contracted Hepatitis C in 1994, but had managed to keep it under control, after he took a brief leave of absence. In 2015, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Earlier this month, Barrere announced he was taking a medical leave of absence, but planned to be back on stage this upcoming January 2020, for the band’s headlining performance at Jamaica’s Ramble on the Island.

In a statement the members of Little feat announced:

It is with great sorrow that Little Feat must announce the passing of our brother guitarist, Paul Barrere, this morning at UCLA Hospital. We ask for your kindest thoughts and best wishes to go out especially to his widow Pam and children Gabriel, Genevieve, and Gillian, and to all the fans who were his extended family.

Paul auditioned for Little Feat as a bassist when it was first being put together—in his words, “as a bassist I make an excellent guitarist”—and three years later joined the band in his proper role on guitar. Forty-seven years later, he was forced to miss the current tour, which will end tomorrow, due to side effects from his ongoing treatment for liver disease.

He promised to follow his doctor’s orders, get back in shape, and rock on the beach at the band’s annual gathering in Jamaica in January 2020. “Until then,” he wrote, “keep your sailin’ shoes close by…if I have my way, you’re going to need them!”

As the song he sang so many times put it, he was always “Willin’,” but it was not meant to be. Paul, sail on to the next place in your journey with our abiding love for a life always dedicated to the muse and the music. We are grateful for the time we have shared.

Yours in music,

Little Feat: Bill Payne, Sam Clayton, Fred Tackett, Kenny Gradney, and Gabe Ford.

Little Feat released 16 studio albums over a span of 41 years, the last being ‘Rooster Rag’, in 2012. Barrere released three solo albums: ‘On My Own Two Feet’ (1983), ‘Real Lies’ (1984) and ‘If the Phone Don’t Ring’ (1986).

He also worked with Robert Palmer, Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, Jack Bruce, Carly Simon and Nicolette Larson. That is his guitar work on Nicolette’s cover of Neil Young’s ‘Lotta Love’.

Barrere was a swing man as a guitarist who played a wide variety of styles of music including blues, rock, jazz, and cajun music and was proficient as a slide guitarist.
Barrere also recorded and toured as an acoustic duo with fellow Little Feat member Fred Tackett.
Barrere played several concerts with Phil Lesh and Friends in October 1999 and from March to June 2000. He also toured with Bob Dylan, and had most recently been writing and recording with Roger Cole.

Paul wrote Little Feat’s ‘Feats Don’t Fail Me Now’, ‘All That You Dream’, ‘Time Loves A Hero’ and ‘Down On The Farm’. He joined the band for their third album ‘Dixie Chicken’ was had been a member ever since.

Little Feat guitarist Paul Barrere passed away at the age of 71 on October 26, 2019

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Ginger Baker 10/2019

Peter ‘Ginger’ Baker – Cream/Blind Faith – was born on 19 August 1939 in Lewisham, South London. His mother, Ruby May worked in a tobacco shop. His father, Frederick Louvain Formidable Baker, was a bricklayer employed by his own father, who owned a construction  business and was a lance corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals in World War II; he died in the 1943 Dodecanese campaign. Baker went to Pope Street School, where he was considered “one of the better players” in the football team, and then to Shooter’s Hill Grammar School. Here he was nicknamed “Ginger” for his shock of flaming red hair.
While at school he joined Squadron 56 of the Air Training Corps, based at Woolwich and stayed with them for two or three years.

Ginger Baker began playing drums at around 15 years of age. In the early 1960s he took lessons from Phil Seamen, one of the leading British jazz drummers of the post-war era.
In the early 1960s he joined Blues Incorporated, where he met bassist Jack Bruce. The two clashed often, but would be rhythm section partners again in the Graham Bond Organization, a rhythm and blues group with strong jazz leanings. Their relationship was so volatile that Baker once attacked Bruce with a knife during a concert. Despite this volatile relationship, Baker and Bruce reunited in 1966 when they formed Cream with guitarist Eric Clapton, which became one of the first Supergroups of the 60s. He was the first guy we saw with two bass drums and the first guy to do an extended drum solo on record.

Cream played a fusion of blues, psychedelic rock and hard rock. The band released four albums in a little over two years before breaking up in late 1968.
“Disraeli Gears” was released in November ’67, the year underground FM radio began to burgeon, with KMPX in San Francisco joining the aforementioned WOR.
And then, during the summer of ’68, “Sunshine Of Your Love” crossed over to AM and the band and the scene exploded.

Now “Fresh Cream”‘s production was credited to Robert Stigwood, it’s unclear who really twisted the dials, who was really responsible for the sound, but it didn’t have the edge of what came after, it was almost like a blanket was thrown over the speakers.
But Felix Pappalardi produced “Disraeli Gears,” and it was a much better representation of the band’s sound. This was back when stereo was stereo, when instruments were in different channels, when we sat in front of the speakers, put on headphones to get the full effect. This was also when there was so much less on the records, you could hear all the instruments. You could hear Jack Bruce’s voice on “Sunshine Of You Love,” but the key to the track’s success, it’s infectiousness, was that guitar. It was the year we saw Jimi Hendrix‘s “Axis: Bold As Love” came out in January of ’68, so Cream was no longer alone, “Purple Haze” sat along “Sunshine Of Your Love” at the apex of riff-rock that started with the Stones’ “I can get no satisfaction. And then came “Piece Of My Heart,” by Big Brother and the Holding Company. Janis Joplin got a lot of ink, she was a dynamic performer, she could not be denied and when people purchased “Cheap Thrills,” with its R. Crumb cover, we were not in Kansas anymore, the screw had turned, it was a whole new world in music.

And “Wheels Of Fire” was released in August of that same year, double albums were not unknown, but this one came in silver foil and the second record was a live one.
The visual energy in Cream all came from the man behind the kit, Ginger Baker. Clapton just stood there being “Slowhand”. As did Jack Bruce, albeit a massive voice. You couldn’t help but focus on the drummer, who seemed on the verge of losing control as he stoked this freight train down the track. The sheer power impacted your gut.

And then “White Room” became a hit and the word got out. Suddenly everybody was talking about Cream. People you thought were decidedly unhip, out of the loop, got the message. And “Wheels Of Fire” started to explode. And on side four, there was a sixteen minute drum solo entitled “Toad.”
Yup, blame “Toad” for that execrable five to twenty minutes in every live show where everybody takes a pee break and the drummer flails on. They were all inspired by Ginger Baker, he was the progenitor, they all wanted to BE Ginger Baker, suddenly the drummer was no longer an afterthought, but a virtuoso who could express himself.
And then the band said it was breaking up and went on a final tour.

And the victory lap, “Goodbye Cream,” had a bigger impact in the public’s consciousness than anything that came before, it was the zeitgeist, people bought it after the band broke up, lamenting they’d never gotten to see the act. “Goodbye” resurrected “I’m So Glad” from the first LP. “Sitting On Top Of The World” was definitive. And “Badge” was a gift for those who’d been there all along.
It was like not only the band, but its members had died, there were posthumous live records, everybody wanted more of what they could never get again.
But they did get the short-lived “supergroup” Blind Faith, comprising of Eric Clapton, bassist Ric Grech from Family, and Steve Winwood from Traffic on keyboards and vocals and Ginger Baker on drums. They released only one album, Blind Faith, before breaking up.

Blind Faith was the first supergroup. That was the definition back then, they had to coin it for this concoction, an act made up of the stars of other acts, come together to make something new and triumphant.
But of course Blind Faith imploded, but the album gets short shrift, the first side is phenomenal, everyone knows the cuts, from the explosive opener “Had To Cry Today” to Clapton’s first shining solo moment, “Presence Of The Lord” and the cover of Buddy Holly’s “Well All Right” to Winwood’s piece-de-resistance, “Can’t Find My Way Home.”
The second side had Ginger Baker’s fifteen minute opus “Do What You Like.” Filler or a nod to Baker’s genius, who knows?
And when Blind Faith broke up, Winwood tried to go solo but got back together with Traffic. Clapton decided to play small, with Delaney & Bonnie, Ric Grech disappeared, and Ginger Baker formed his Air Force in 1970, yup, he was gonna continue to play for all the marbles.
Baker’s Air Force album sold, but then the act faded away, there was great playing but no songs.

After the demise of both groups Baker built a recording studio in Lagos, Nigeria. Paul McCartney & Wings recorded ‘Band On the Run’ at Baker’s Batakota Studios. The studio went bust not long after and its failure sent Baker to drugs.

Ginger Baker withdrew from the music industry throughout most of the 80s. He had developed a heroin addiction and withdrew to Italy where he lived on an olive farm until he overcame the addiction.

Eventually Baker played with the Masters Of Reality, in the nineties, which seemed a step down, but the truth was there was no band big enough to contain him. He had an edgy personality and still an original. He was the original Keith Richards, nothing could kill him. Everybody knew who Ginger Baker was, it’s just that we didn’t hear his playing that much. He was drunk, he was stoned, he played polo, he was involved in shenanigans, but the legend always exceeded the present.

And yes, there were the Cream reunion shows in 2005. A triumph in London’s Royal Albert Hall, an almost queasy afterthought in New York’s Madison Garden. He was still Ginger Baker, he could still do it, but this was nostalgia.

A decade later, living in South Africa, Baker revealed he had ‘serious heart issues.

Ginger Baker died 6 October, 2019 at the age 80.

But if you talk about legacy…
Ginger Baker is right up there. He was the first. He showed what could be done with the drumkit. He was a trailblazer, a true rocker, one who couldn’t be contained, there was nothing corporate about him. He was a beacon, may he continue to shine.

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Eddy Money 9/2019

Eddie Money was born Edward Joseph Mahoney in Manhattan, New York City on March 21, 1949, to a large family of Irish Catholic descent. His parents were Dorothy Elizabeth (née Keller), a homemaker, and Daniel Patrick Mahoney, a police officer. He grew up in Levittown, New York, but spent some teenage years in Woodhaven, Queens, New York City. Money was a street singer from the age of eleven. As a teenager, he played in rock bands, in part to get dates from cheerleaders. He was thrown out of one high school for forging a report card. In 1967, he graduated from Island Trees High School.

At the age of 18, he tried to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, father, and brother as a New York City Police Department trainee. However, after working as a clerk and typist, he left in 1968 to pursue a career in music, as the police did not allow him to grow his hair long. “I couldn’t see myself in a police uniform for 20 years of my life, with short hair,” he later said. His bandmates also fired him because they did not want a police officer in the group. His father was not happy with his decision to play music and tore Jimi Hendrix posters from his wall. He never lost sight of his blue-collar upbringing however and even at the height of his career with all the celebrity, millions of albums sold, and large sums of money he made, was one of the few artists who never changed. His ego was always in check, he remained a regular guy–someone you’d really have fun hanging out with. And he treated anyone he met, in any walk of life, exactly the same, with big respect.

‘Once he was traveling with a local music rep in New York–they were late for a radio interview and speeding on the Long Island Expressway. They were pulled over by the cops and it turns out one of the policemen was a guy who was a classmate of Eddie’s when they went through the Police Academy together. “Hey Eddie, you knucklehead, what are you doin’?!! Come on, I’ll give you guys a police escort!” That kind of fun luck used to happen a lot for Eddie.’

He began studying saxophone during a brief stint at junior college, inspired by rock musicians like David Bowie and Van Morrison who occasionally used the instrument.

In 1968, Money moved to Berkeley, California. There, he studied with vocal coach Judy Davis, and took on the stage name Eddie Money, dropping two letters from his last name and sarcastically referring to the fact that he was always broke.

Over the course of the next 8 years, Money became a regular performer at clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area. After gaining the attention of Bill Graham, he secured a recording contract with Columbia Records, releasing his debut album in 1977. He charted with singles such as “Baby Hold On” and “Two Tickets to Paradise”, about visiting his girlfriend despite not having money.

In 1978, Money opened for Santana at Boston’s Music Hall. The following year, he sang backing vocals on the bridge section on “I’m Alright”, a song written and performed by Kenny Loggins. In 2014, Money claimed that Loggins never gave him credit for his contribution.

His ascend started with “Baby Hold On.” The lyrics were not intellectual enough for the cognoscenti. But the music was undeniable, you heard it once and got it whereas so much vaunted stuff, then and now, you listen to over and over again and still don’t get.

Then came “Two Tickets To Paradise.”

Now that was a smash right out of the box. Great title, great track, great, emphatic chorus:

“I’ve got two tickets to paradise, Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight”

This was 1978. When airline travel was still expensive. When you didn’t hop on a plane to go to a show or a game, you were stuck at home, dreaming, of what could possibly be, and Eddie Money was opening the top of your brain and filling you with hope

In 1982, Money took advantage of the MTV music video scene with his humorous narrative videos for “Think I’m in Love”, performed at The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, and “Shakin'”. In the early 1980s, he appeared on The Midnight Special, Fridays, and Solid Gold. In 1978 and 1984, he appeared on American Bandstand.

Money’s career slumped temporarily following the commercially unsuccessful 1983 album Where’s the Party?. However, he made a comeback in 1986 with the album Can’t Hold Back, which received a music recording certification of platinum. “Take Me Home Tonight”, a single from the album, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. Money only agreed to perform the song—which included a line from “Be My Baby”, a song Ronnie Spector performed as part of The Ronettes—after Spector agreed to sing the line herself. In 1987, Money was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for “Take Me Home Tonight”. “I Wanna Go Back” and “Endless Nights”—two other singles from the Can’t Hold Back album—peaked at No. 14 and No. 21, respectively.

In 1988, Money released Nothing to Lose, which featured the Top 10 hit “Walk on Water” and the Top 40 hit “The Love in Your Eyes”.

It was 1992, “Unplugged” was flourishing on the now totally dominant MTV. Not that Eddie Money was cool enough to be featured, but he released his own acoustic live album, that positively ROCKED! “Unplug it in”.

“Gimme Some Water,” the opening cut. This was an album track from Money’s mostly hitless second LP “Life For The Taking.” Oh, “Maybe I’m A Fool” made it to number 22 on the singles chart, but at this point no one was listening to Top Forty, AOR ruled, and you didn’t need a pop hit to go platinum, as “Life For The Taking” did.

Also beginning in 1992, Money opened the summer concert season for the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan where he would return to open the venue for 27 consecutive years. In 1996, he wrote the theme music to Quack Pack, a Disney cartoon.

Money was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2008. In January 2010, he performed a medley of his hit singles during the halftime performance at the Liberty Bowl.

Eddie was a natural frontman and his original guitar player Jimmy Lyon played a role like Ronnie Wood did for Rod Stewart in the Faces – together they killed it onstage. Eddie was a very funny guy with quick wit and often the dumbest jokes.

In the beginning, he was a wild man like many rockers. On his first radio promotional tour he was going to be traveling with Warren Williams, a legendary Columbia rep for the western region. Eddie asked Warren to stop at a local liquor store, “Hey Warren, I just want to run in and get a pack of cigarettes.” About twenty minutes later Eddie emerged with a giant case full of Whiskey, Vodka, Tequila, and Gin – “OK, I’m ready now.”

In later years he toured as a classic rock act with his daughter and other family members in his band. He used to joke–“It’s like the Partridge Family, only with marijuana!”

Money wrote and performed original songs for the films Americathon (1979), Over the Top, Back to the Beach (both 1987), and Kuffs (1992), along with the television series Hardball (1989–1990).

Eddie Money died on Sep. 13, 2019. He was 70 years old.

In the three days following Money’s death, fans streamed “Take Me Home Tonight” more than 3.1 million times, which was an increase of 349 percent compared to the previous three-day period. Fans also streamed his other songs by 931 percent more than the three previous days.

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Robert Hunter 9/2019

Robert Hunter (78) – the Grateful Dead – was born on June 23, 1941 in Arroyo Grande CA. Hunter’s father was an alcoholic, who deserted the family when Hunter was seven, according to Grateful Dead chronicler Dennis McNally. Hunter spent the next few years in foster homes before returning to live with his mother. These experiences drove him to seek refuge in books, and he wrote a 50-page fairy tale before he was 11. His mother married again, to Norman Hunter, whose last name Robert took. The elder Hunter was a publisher, who gave Robert lessons in writing. Hunter attended high school in Palo Alto, learning to play several instruments as a teenager. His family moved to Connecticut, where he attended the University of Connecticut. He played trumpet in a band called the Crescents. Hunter left the university after a year, and returned to Palo Alto. He enlisted in the National Guard, and spent six months training, before doing a six-month tour of duty.

Upon his return to Palo Alto, in 1961 he was introduced to Jerry Garcia by Garcia’s then-girlfriend, who had previously been in a relationship with Hunter. Garcia was 18 and Hunter 19. The duo began to perform together, spending their time in “what passed for Palo Alto’s 1961 bohemian community”, including a bookstore run by Roy Kepler. They formed a short-lived duo called “Bob and Jerry” that debuted at the graduation ceremony of the Quaker Peninsula School on May 5, 1961.

According to McNally, the group did not last because of “Hunter’s limits as a guitarist and Garcia’s ravenous drive to get better,” but the two remained friendly. Garcia became involved with bluegrass groups in the area such as the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers and the Wildwood Boys; Hunter sometimes played the mandolin with these groups, but was more interested in writing. By 1962, he had written a book, The Silver Snarling Trumpet, described by McNally as a roman à clef. McNally writes that it shows Hunter’s “skill at storytelling and his fantastic ear for dialogue”. Recordings of folk and bluegrass bands that included Hunter and Garcia were later released on two albums – Folk Time (2016) and Before the Dead (2018).

Though he’d never play onstage with the Grateful Dead, he became not only a genuine band member but its secret Ace in the hole. Most of the band’s early verbal efforts would not count or stand the test of time; it was Hunter’s work that would elevate their songs from ditties to rich, complete stories set to song.

Try explicating some of Hunter’s early lyrics for the songs he wrote with Jerry Garcia, and pretty soon into your exegesis you’re going to fall back on a sort of “you had to be there” argument. Explaining “China Cat Sunflower” or “Dark Star” was like explaining an acid trip to someone who’s never taken acid. No surprise to learn that Hunter wrote a lot of those early lyrics while he was tripping. 

Of course, if you can write a song, any song, while you’re tripping, that puts you way out in front of most everyone else. In this respect, it helps to know that Hunter was not just some hippy-dippy poet (although he was reportedly the great-great-grandson of Robert Burns). He was also an actual musician—he partnered with Garcia long before the formation of the Dead, when both were part of California’s bluegrass/coffee house scene, and what he didn’t know about how songs worked, Garcia was there to teach him. He was a fast learner. 

Even before the Dead entered their folky/country phase with Workingman’s Dead, Hunter was writing songs that drew on traditional music in the best way. “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” does not flat out copy songs like “Frankie and Johnny,” but Hunter had plainly put in his time absorbing old blues and folk songs that told stories about thieves, jellyroll, wayward lovers, and betrayal. In the same way, “Mountains of the Moon,” which is simply one of the most haunting, mysterious songs written in the last century, tipped its hat to old English balladry and then went its own way. Hunter plainly loved traditions, but he wasn’t bound by them.

Probably the best example of this is “Cumberland Blues,” off Workingman’s Dead. The story has circulated for years about the kid who played the song for his grandfather, who didn’t give a hoot for rock and roll but said that old traditional bluegrass song the Dead played was the real deal, having no idea that the tune was a Hunter/Garcia original. (Extra bonus [no lyrical content]: listen to how the song begins played on electric instruments and morphs into an acoustic version by song’s end.)
Hunter, so far as I know, never appeared on stage with the Dead, but his lyrics are as much a part of their identity as anything actually played by the other musicians. His words, which managed to be both concrete and elliptical, force a listener to become part collaborator: you finish what he started in your head. Your version is your own, and yet you are part of something larger. Robert Hunter was the master when it came to creating songs that are intensely personal and communal. 

When the Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Hunter was included as a band member, the only non-performer to ever be so honored.
After Garcia died in 1995, Hunter went on to collaborate with any number of other songwriters, but none as famous as Bob Dylan, who respected Hunter so much that he was the one writing partner who Dylan allowed to change things. “He’s got a way with words and I do too,” Dylan told Rolling Stone. “We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting.” Indeed.

The Dead never entirely escaped their Haight Ashbury, hippie origins, but anyone who’s ever listened closely knows that’s merely where they started. There was always more to the music, some solid core that bespeaks joy, intelligence, and a full-throated love of rock and roll, and no one had more to do with that than Hunter. There was nothing sentimental or mushwitted about anything he wrote “New Speedway Boogie’s” conjuring of Altamont and its fallout is as dark as songs get. At his best, and he was at his best more often than not, he and Garcia wrote songs that sound as old as time and shone as bright as a new dime. They stick in your head in the best way possible: you can’t forget them and you wouldn’t want to—they’ll see you through life.

Robert Hunter, the principal lyricist for the Grateful Dead died on Sept. 23, 2019 at the age of 78, in his own bed, surrounded by family, who have not released a cause of death. So, peaceful, but with a little unresolved mystery, exactly like a Hunter lyric in other words.

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Ric Ocasek 9/2019

Ric Ocasek (75) – The Cars – was born in Baltimore on March 23, 1944. His paternal side was of Czech descent. When he was 16 years old, his father moved the family back to the Otcasek hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a systems analyst with NASA at the Lewis Research Center. Ocasek graduated from Maple Heights High School in 1963. He briefly attended Antioch College and Bowling Green State University, but dropped out to pursue a career in music.

Ocasek met future Cars bassist Benjamin Orr in Cleveland in 1965 after Ocasek saw Orr performing with his band the Grasshoppers on the Big 5 Show, a local musical variety program.

After performing in various bands in Columbus and Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ocasek and Orr relocated to Boston in the early 1970s. There they formed a Crosby, Stills and Nash-style folk rock band called Milkwood. They released one album, How’s the Weather,  in early 1973 but it failed to chart. Future Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes played on Milkwood’s album. After Milkwood, Ocasek formed the group Richard and the Rabbits, which included Orr and Hawkes. Ocasek and Orr also performed as an acoustic duo during this period. Some of the songs they played became early Cars songs. Later, Ocasek and Orr teamed up with guitarist Elliot Easton in the band Cap’n Swing. Cap’n Swing soon came to the attention of WBCN disc jockey Maxanne Sartori, who began playing songs from their demo tape on her show. After Cap’n Swing was rejected by several record labels, Ocasek got rid of the bass player and drummer and decided to form a band that better fit his style of writing. Orr took over on bass and David Robinson, best known for his career with the Modern Lovers, became the drummer. Hawkes returned to play keyboards and the band became “the Cars” in late 1976 with their first official live gig on New Year’s Eve of that year.

The concept behind the band’s name was born out of a modern search for keywords.

“Shortly after I joined,” drummer David Robinson told the Wall Street Journal, “Ric wanted to change the band’s name,” because “Cap’n Swing sounded like the name of a bar band.” So, the musicians sat around and devised a list of possible band names. It was Robinson who mentioned the Cars, the entry that everybody seemed to like. “It was easy to remember and it wasn’t pegged to a specific decade or sound,” Robinson said. “The name was meaningless and conjured up nothing, which was perfect.” Furthermore, Ocasek liked the Cars because it fell at the beginning of the alphabet, which would earn the band good placement in record stores, and also that it was easy to spell.

1977  was the year of earning their stripes as they gigged all over the Northeast. The repeated return of their demo songs on local radio finally convinced record company Elektra to offer the band a contract that worked for both and resulted in a partnership that produced 6 platinum and/or golden albums, selling more than 23 million copies in the US alone.

In 1978, the Cars self-titled debut album reached nr. 18 on the Billboard 200 chart and three singles reached the top 40 – including “Just What I needed”, sung by Ben Orr, which became #4 in Billboard’s records of the year. Their next album Candy-O went to #3 in the Billboard 200 and successive singles hit high on the Hot 100. The band cut 4 more albums with Elektra in the next 8  years, 3 platinum and 1 gold, while over time the band members started going solo. One of the reasons for the band to ultimately break up in 1988 was Ric’s distaste for touring and being on the road. In his own words he said:

I guess you could blame it on me. I toured a lot in the early years when we were the Cars, the five of us. I saw the world. I’ve always been more of a songwriter than a performer. I produce and I love the studio. I’ve always not so much liked touring. That’s kind of the reason. Also, I didn’t want to do things like, “Hey, let’s do some casinos and some boats.” I didn’t want to get into that. That’s just a different reason to do it. That’s really just being mechanical and playing your songs for whatever it is.

Ric’s first solo project was the album Beatitude in January 1983, which features a more minimal and sparse interpretation of the Cars’ new wave rock sound. On some tracks Ocasek played all of the instruments. A more synthesizer-heavy follow-up, This Side of Paradise, was released in 1986; and featured Greg Hawkes, Elliot Easton and Benjamin Orr. Hit single, “Emotion in Motion” accompanied the album.

Now the strange thing is if you play the Cars’ records today in the 2020s…you’re shocked, too much old stuff you have to apologize for, you wonder why you once liked it, but not this music, it sounds as fresh as ’78, ’84, as a matter of fact it sounds even better. Radio always muffled the lyrics, now lyrics stand out and their wisdom and insight and humor stick out. But even better is that sound, an amalgamation of the old and new filtered through a hit record sensibility, the Cars didn’t want to stretch out and noodle, they wanted to get it right, in a compact fashion, anything unnecessary was excised.

The Cars disbanded in 1988, and Ocasek disappeared from the public eye for a couple of years. His 25 year close friendship with Benjamin Orr estranged until shortly before Orr’s death in 2000. His 17 year old marriage to second wife Suzanne ended, no doubt as the result of his growing relation with supermodel Paulina Porizkova, whom he married in August 1989. He resurfaced in 1990 with his own album, Fireball Zone. One track, “Rockaway”, enjoyed a brief stay on the charts, but his solo albums realized disappointing sales, especially compared to his success with the Cars. He subsequently released other solo works during the decade.  In the 1990s and 2000s he was very active as producer, writer and occasional movie performer. For many years Ocasek also had a hobby of making drawings, photo collages, and mixed-media art works which, in 2009, were shown at a gallery in Columbus, Ohio, as an exhibition called “Teahead Scraps”.

In 2010, Ocasek reunited with the surviving original members of the Cars to record their first album in 24 years. The album, entitled Move Like This, was released on May 10, 2011. Not long after the album’s release and its 2 week supporting tour in May, with a final show at Lollapaloosa in August, the Cars resumed their hiatus, and reunited once again in April 2018 for a performance at the ceremony of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Ric Ocasek wasn’t friends with everybody, he wasn’t the life of the party, he suffered no fools, he spoke through his music, that was enough, it was less emotion than intellect, the tracks were all you got, the band members were not individual stars, all you got was this vision, unique in the landscape, direct and oftentimes ironic, it kept you guessing, but the music did not. His relationship carried this reservation, whether it’d be towards wives, partners or children. It must have been a lonely life, as possibly witnessed by the fact that he died alone during the night of September 15, 2019, to be found by his ex-wife, who later learned that she and her children with him had been written out of his last will.

Sometimes life seems just a cruel confirmation of misplacing arrogance for talent.

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Ian Gibbons – 8/2019

Ian Gibbons (67) – the Kinks – was born on18 July 1952 

Gibbons began playing the accordion at the age of nine, playing in the school band, and solo at music festivals, competitions and charity events. At the age of 14, he started a school rock band, playing guitar and singing. He changed to organ after leaving school and played in local and resident bands until 1972, when he joined Moonstone, which released three singles. He was a founder member of what was known in London as the  ‘Southend Musical Mafia’ which contained a great many talented musicians who were born in sight of Southend Pier. In time he played for Moonshine, the Feelgoods, Maggie Bell, the Love Affair, the Kursaal Flyers, the Nashville Teens, Samson, Ian Hunter, Suzie Quattro, Andy Scot, Chris Farlow, Roger Chapman and, rumor has it, Martha and the Vandellas to name but a few.

When Punk and new wave came along Gibbons worked with rock based and new wave bands until an audition for the Kinks in 1979.

Of that audition Kinks Co-founder Ray Davies said:

“When he auditioned for the band, he only played a few chords before I knew he was the right guy to have on keyboard, he seemed to know the right voicing to musically slot in between the other members of the band. And with the Kinks, that took some doing!” 

He was asked to join, and stayed with them during the band’s late-career resurgence, playing on such popular tunes as “Come Dancing,” “Better Things,” “Destroyer,” “Don’t Forget to Dance,” “State of Confusion” and “Do It Again.” until 1989. It’s possibly a measure of the esteem Ian Gibbons was held in by fellow musicians that he rejoiced (?) in the nicknames Stubz, Stubzie, Gibbo and even Little legs! In the Kinks though he was one of two diminutive people known collectively, and with great affection as the two little sods!

Gibbons worked with Love Affair and the Nashville Teens, whilst also working with Dr. Feelgood, the Kursaal Flyers, Ken Hensley, Mike Vernon, Samson, Randy California and others, mainly recording. Other artists he worked with were Roger Chapman, the Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Ian Hunter. He rejoined the Kinks again in 1993, staying with them until their break-up in 1997.

He continued to record and perform with Chapman and Hunter, along with Chris Farlowe, Maggie Bell, Andy Scott, the Chicago Blues Brothers and on Ray Davies choir and and contributed to some solo projects by guitarist Dave Davies. He was also an actor and writer, known for Halloween: The Night He Came Back (2010), Return to Waterloo (1984) and The Kinks: Don’t Forget to Dance (1983).

In 2008, Gibbons joined The Kast Off Kinks, a band that has featured various former Kinks members, including original drummer Mick Avory, keyboardist John Gosling and bassists John Dalton and Jim Rodford. Rodford died in January 2018 at age 76.

Ian Gibbons died from bladder cancer at home, on 1 August 2019, at the age of 67

Kinks guitarist Dave Davies issued a statement regarding Gibbons’ death that reads, “It was a great shock to hear about Ian Gibbons passing. He worked with the Kinks throughout the ’80s. He was always such a positive and optimistic guy. He was the perfect professional. I never had any problems with him and we got on really well. My heart goes out to his family and friends at this difficult time. He added a lot of color to the Kinks music. I’m devastated and he’ll be badly missed.”

Co-founder Ray Davies said: ‘On the road, he could always be guaranteed to give a smile of encouragement from his side of the stage and buy a round in the bar after the show so we could have a party in Ian’s noisy room,’ the frontman added. ‘Being in a band is like being in a family and today it is as though we have lost family member.’ ‘He was also was a brilliant accordion player and, apparently, a bit of a childhood prodigy on that instrument. In the studio, he would willingly try out the most random musical idea I would throw at him.’

The Kinks music with songs like Waterloo Sunset, You Really Got Me, Sunny Afternoon, See My Friend, a.o. has gone down as one of the defining sounds of the flower power generation, and has since been made into a musical, Sunny Afternoon, by the Davies brothers.

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Art Neville 7/2019

art neville, keyboard in the neville brothersJuly 22, 2019 – Art Neville was born on 17 December 1937 the oldest son in the famous New Orleans blues/funk family that created the Neville Bothers. Art was born in New Orleans to Arthur Neville and his wife, Amelia (nee Landry). His father was a station porter fond of singing tunes by Nat King Cole and the Texan bluesman Charles Brown. His mother was part of a dance act with her brother, George “Big Chief Jolly” Landry.

The oldest of four brothers, his interest in playing keyboards was triggered at the age of three, when his grandmother took him to a New Orleans church where he spotted the organ. “I turned the little switch and hit one of the low keys,” he recalled. “It scared the daylights out of me, but that was the first keyboard I played.”
He later began playing the piano and performing with his brothers, and in high school joined (and subsequently led) his first band, the Hawketts. He was the lead singer on their version of Mardi Gras Mambo, a regional hit in 1954. It became a regular fixture at New Orleans’s annual Mardi Gras celebrations.
In 1958 he joined the US Navy, emerging in 1962 to continue his musical career. He formed Art Neville and the Neville Sounds, which included Aaron and Cyril before they quit to form their own group. Now a four-piece completed by guitarist Leo Nocentelli, bass player George Porter Jr and drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, they played regularly at New Orleans clubs, backing artists such as the Pointer Sisters and Lee Dorsey.

The Meters Era

In 1965 he was a founder not only of the Meters, whose music in the late 1960s and early 70s helped to define the genre of New Orleans funk, but of the Neville Brothers, who were masters of various soul, blues and gospel styles and were distinguished by their intricate vocal harmonies.
The Meters provided the musical backup for innumerable soul and funk artists, including on big-selling classics such as Lee Dorsey’s Working in the Coal Mine (1966) and Labelle’s Lady Marmalade (1974). But they also had hits in their own right, notably in 1969 with Cissy Strut (1969) and Look-Ka Py Py.

The Meters refined the loping, syncopated rhythm called the “second line” which became emblematic of New Orleans funk. Prime examples included the group’s hits Cissy Strut, Look-Ka Py Py, Chicken Strut (1970) and Hey Pocky A-Way (1974). Cissy Strut, which reached No 23 on the mainstream Billboard chart, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2011.
The Meters made countless recordings as the house band for the songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint, with highlights including Working in the Coal Mine, which reached No 8 in the UK and the US, Dr John’s album In the Right Place (1973), and Labelle’s US chart-topper Lady Marmalade, a song about a prostitute in the French quarter of New Orleans with the famous line “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”
In 1974 the Meters backed Robert Palmer on his album Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley, and in 1975 Paul McCartney invited them aboard the Queen Mary ocean liner in Long Beach, California, to play at the launch party of the Wings album Venus and Mars. Also present was Mick Jagger, who invited the Meters to support the Rolling Stones on their tours of the US and Europe in 1975-76. The group now included Cyril, who joined for their album Fire on the Bayou (1975).

Forming the Neville Brothers

Art and Cyril quit the Meters in 1977 and formed the Neville Brothers with Aaron and Charles. The brothers had already gathered the previous year to back their uncle George Landry on the album The Wild Tchoupitoulas. At first the Neville Brothers were slow to gain recognition. Art recalled how when they used to play at Tipitina’s in New Orleans “you could have blown it up and not hurt anyone but the Neville Brothers”. Though Keith Richards hailed their 1981 album Fiyo on the Bayou as the finest of the year, sales were poor. They failed to release another studio album until Uptown (1987), a conscious effort to find a more mainstream sound (with Richards and Carlos Santana guesting) that prompted accusations of a sellout.

Outside the Neville Brothers Art began playing concerts with his former Meters bandmates, following a reunion at the 1989 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival.
They subsequently formed a new version of the band called the Funky Meters, and Art continued to perform with both outfits.
A change of fortune came with Yellow Moon, sympathetically produced by Daniel Lanois, which successfully moulded the group’s collective skills into a coherent whole. In that year the group won a Grammy for best pop instrumental performance for the Yellow Moon track Healing Chant, while the album also contained several landmark tracks including the title song, a version of Dylan’s With God on Our Side, and Sister Rosa, their ode to the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. 

Art won another Grammy in 1996 with various artists for best rock instrumental performance for SRV Shuffle, a tribute to the guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. Their musical groove influenced artists as varied as Little Feat, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Public Enemy and the Grateful Dead.
Art Neville, who was nicknamed Poppa Funk, toured as part of the Neville Brothers and the Meters with major artists, including the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Tina Turner, and were traditionally the closing act on the final Sunday night of New Orleans’s annual Jazz & Heritage festival.

The Neville Brothers disbanded in 2012, but reunited for a farewell concert in New Orleans in 2015. Three years after Art announced his retirement after more than six decades in the music business.

Art Neville crossed the rainbow to rock and roll paradise on July 22, 2019 at the age of 81.

 

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Dr. John 6/2019

June 6, 2019 – Dr. John was born Malcolm John Rebennack in New Orleans on November 20, 1941, and early on got the nickname “Mac.”

When he was about 13 years old, Rebennack met blues pianist Professor Longhair (Roy Byrd) and soon began performing with him. At age 16, Rebennack quit high school to focus on playing music. He performed with several local New Orleans bands including Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners, Frankie Ford and the Thunderbirds, and Jerry Byrne and the Loafers. He had a regional hit with a Bo Diddley-influenced instrumental called “Storm Warning” on Rex Records in 1959.

Rebennack became involved in illegal activities in New Orleans in the early sixties, using and selling narcotics and running a brothel. He was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to two years in a federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas. When his sentence ended in 1965, he moved to Los Angeles, adopted the stage name of Dr. John, and collaborated with other New Orleans transplants. He became a “Wrecking Crew” session piano player appearing on works for a variety of artists including Sonny & Cher, Canned Heat on their albums Living the Blues (1968) and Future Blues (1970), and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on Freak Out! (1966).

Dr. John solo recordings include his debut LP, Gris-Gris (1968), Babylon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon, and Herbs (1971) and Gumbo (1972). His 1973 release, In the Right Place, produced by Allen Toussaint, included his Top Ten hit “Right Place, Wrong Time.”

For the next three decades, Mac, as friends called him, collaborated with about everyone in rock and blues. Jagger and Richards, Springsteen, John Fogerty, Doc Pomus, Jason Isbell, Irma Thomas and so many more.

In the Movies, Dr. John appears in the Band’s opus, The Last Waltz and the sequel Blues Brothers 2000. Dr. John appears as himself in the second season of NCIS: New Orleans, playing his hit “Right Place, Wrong Time”.

He was the inspiration for Jim Henson’s Muppet character, Dr. Teeth and won 6 Grammy Awards and became a member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

Dr. John, legendary New Orleans musician, died from a heart attack on June 6, 2019 at age 77.

 

 

 

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Gary Duncan 6/2019

Gary Duncan (72) – Quicksilver Messenger Service – was born on 4 September 1946 in San Diego, California as Eugene Duncan, Jr., but adopted at birth and named Gary Ray Grubb.

He grew up in Ceres, California, where (as Gary Grubb) he played guitar for the Ratz until they finished their performance itinerary as an opening act for the Byrds and the Rolling Stones at the War Memorial Auditorium in San Jose, California. It was in 1965 when, as Gary Cole, he joined the Brogues, in Merced, California, and met future Quicksilver Messenger Service drummer Greg Elmore. It was with the Brogues that he adopted the stage name Gary Duncan. He stayed with them until they broke up later that year.

In late 1965 Duncan received a call from John Cipollina offering an audition for himself and fellow Brogues member Greg Elmore to join Quicksilver Messenger Service. The group first performed in December 1965 at The Matrix. The complex guitar interplay between Duncan and John Cipollina had a big influence on the sound of psychedelic rock. In early 1969, after recording two albums “Quicksilver Messenger Service” and “Happy Trails”, Duncan left Quicksilver and as he describes it, “I left for a year and rode motorcycles and lived in New York City and Los Angeles and just kind of went crazy for about a year.” Continue reading Gary Duncan 6/2019

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Bernie Tormé 3/19

Bernie Tormé - guitaristMarch 17, 2019 – Bernie Tormé (guitarist for Ozzy, Gillan, Dee Snider and others) was born in Dublin on March 18, 1952, where he learned to play guitar. In 1974 he moved to London, joining bassist John McCoy in heavy rockers Scrapyard. After forming the Bernie Tormé Band two years later, he re-joined McCoy as a member of former Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan’s new solo project, playing on four Gillan albums: Mr. Universe, Glory Road, Future Shock and Double Trouble.

In 1981 Tormé left Gillan, and joined Atomic Rooster as a session guitarist. The following year briefly joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band, stepping in for Randy Rhoads in the aftermath of the guitarist’s tragic death. Ozzy Osbourne told Total Guitar that if it wasn’t for Bernie Tormé he “might never have got back on a stage”.

He then formed Bernie Tormé And The Electric Gypsies, and in 1988 joined Desperado, the band formed by Dee Snider after Twisted Sister were disbanded, playing on their only album, Bloodied, but Unbowed.

Tormé later later reunited with ex-Gillan colleague, John McCoy and drummer Robin Guy in GMT, and returned to solo work in 2013, releasing three acclaimed albums; Flowers & Dirt (2014), Blackheart (2015) and the 3CD set Dublin Cowboy. All three were successfully crowd-funded releases.

Tormé released his latest studio album Shadowland in November last year, but his family reported that PledgeMusic – who say they’re working on a solution to address late payments to artists – still owed the guitarist £16,000, which was due to be sent to him in December. 

Bernie Tormé passed away peacefully on March 17, 2019 , one day short of his 67th birthday, surrounded by his family. He had been on life support for the previous four weeks at a London hospital following post-flu complications and suffering from virulent pneumonia in both lungs. 

Snider tweeted, “Woke up to find out my friend Bernie Tormé has died. He was a guitar god who played with OzzyOsbourne & Ian Gillan. We worked together for 3 years, writing over 100 songs for the ill-fated Desperado. I loved that man & today my heart is broken. RIP Bernie. Your guitar weeps.”

 

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Scott Walker 3/2019

Scott Walker of the Walker BothersMarch 22, 2019 – Scott Walker (the Walker Brothers) was born January 9, 1943 in Hamilton, Ohio, despite the fact that he was perceived as British. One of the more enigmatic figures in rock history, Scott Walker was known as Scotty Engel when he cut obscure flop records in the late ’50s and early ’60s in the teen idol vein.

He initially found work in Los Angeles as a bass player, but rose to fame in the United Kingdom, after he hooked up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to form the Walker Brothers. They weren’t named Walker, they weren’t brothers, and they weren’t English, but they nevertheless became a part of the British Invasion after moving to the U.K. in 1965. They enjoyed a couple of years of massive success there (and a couple of hits in the U.S.) The Walker Brothers was a well-groomed trio famous for their British Invasion renditions of Brill Building pop. With the help of Scott Walker’s booming baritone, the act topped the British charts with covers of “Make It Easy On Yourself” (1965) and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)” (1966), but in the US, the trio never achieved the superstardom that they enjoyed overseas. As their full-throated lead singer and principal songwriter, Walker was the dominant artistic force in the group, who split in 1967. 

While remaining virtually unknown in his homeland, Walker launched a hugely successful solo career in Britain with a unique blend of orchestrated, almost MOR arrangements with idiosyncratic and morose lyrics. At the height of psychedelia, Walker openly looked to crooners like Sinatra, Jack Jones, and Tony Bennett for inspiration, and to Jacques Brel for much of his material. None of those balladeers, however, would have sung about the oddball subjects — prostitutes, transvestites, suicidal brooders, plagues, and Joseph Stalin — that populated Walker’s songs. His first four albums hit the Top Ten in the U.K. — his second, in fact, reached number one in 1968, in the midst of the hippie era. By the time of 1969’s Scott 4, the singer was writing all of his material. Although this was perhaps his finest album, it was a commercial disappointment, and unfortunately discouraged him from relying entirely upon his own material on subsequent releases.

The ’70s were a frustrating period for Walker, pocked with increasingly sporadic releases and a largely unsuccessful reunion with his “brothers” in the middle of the decade. His work on the Walkers’ final album in 1978 prompted admiration from David Bowie and Brian Eno. After a long period of hibernation, he emerged in 1984 with an album, Climate of Hunter, that drew critical raves for a minimalist, trance-like ambience that showed him keeping abreast of cutting-edge ’80s rock trends.

It would 11 more years before Walker completed his metamorphosis from pop crooner to avant-garde godfather. That would come on 1995’s Tilt, a shocking post-apocalyptic work of art that matched dark, enigmatic songwriting and dissonant orchestral production. Tying it all together was Walker’s inimitable voice, which he pushed to awkward, operatic heights. Tilt was a harrowing listen, but its uncompromising singularity attracted experimental music fans of all types.

Again, it would be 11 years before Walker would release new music, but this time the lag was to no one’s surprise. He had developed a reputation as a perfectionist who operated on his own schedule. When 2006’s The Drift was released on 4AD, Walker again sent shockwaves through the avant-garde community. While Tilt was, in part, adored for its misdirection, The Drift was celebrated for its execution. As the second part of Walker’s late-career trilogy, it took his ornate orchestration to new depths; every second of its nearly 70-minute runtime felt intentional and intricate.

During the next several years, he contributed to soundtracks (To Have and to Hold, The World Is Not Enough, Pola X) and assisted with recordings by Ute Lemper and Pulp. He didn’t release another album until 2006. That year, Walker also contributed the track “Darkness” to Plague Songs for the Margate Exodus project, curated by the British arts organization Artangel. The concept centered around the retelling of the ten plagues of Egypt as recorded in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament. In early 2007, the documentary film Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, premiered. Later that year, Walker released the limited-edition EP And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball? Commissioned as a work for ballet by the Candoco Dance Company, it was comprised of a single piece of instrumental music, 24 minutes in length, performed by the London Sinfonietta and cellist Philip Sheppard.

In November of 2008, the musical theater work Drifting and Tilting: The Songs of Scott Walker was staged at London’s Barbican over three evenings. It was comprised of songs from Tilt and The Drift. Walker did not perform, but directed the work from conception to execution including staging, lighting, and orchestra. The vocals were performed by various singers, including Damon Albarn, Dot Allison, and Jarvis Cocker. In 2009, the album Music Inspired by Scott Walker: 30 Century Man appeared, featuring songs inspired by the film sung by Laurie Anderson and other female Walker devotees. Also in 2009, Walker dueted with British singer Natasha Khan on her Bat for Lashes album Two Suns. In 2012, he released Bish Bosch. He regarded it as the third and final part of the trilogy that began with Tilt and continued on The Drift and then surprised many fans with Soused, a collaboration with doom-metal droners Sunn O))), in 2014. The last recording released during his lifetime was the 2018 score to the Brady Corbet-directed film Vox Lux.

Scott Walker died from cancer at age 76 on March 22, 2019. He influenced everyone from Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) to Thom Yorke (Radiohead), and even newer artists like Bat for Lashes. 

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Dick Dale 3/2019

Dick Dale, king of the surf guitarMarch 16, 2019 – Dick Dale was born Richard Monsour in Boston on May 4, 1937 1937; his father was Lebanese, his mother Polish. As a child, he was exposed to folk music from both cultures, which had an impact on his sense of melody and the ways string instruments could be picked. He also heard lots of big band swing, and found his first musical hero in drummer Gene Krupa, who later wound up influencing a percussive approach to guitar so intense that Dale regularly broke the heaviest-gauge strings available and ground his picks down to nothing several times in the same song.

He taught himself to play country songs on the ukulele, and soon graduated to guitar, where he was also self-taught. His father encouraged him and offered career guidance, and in 1954, the family moved to Southern California.
At the suggestion of a country DJ, Monsour adopted the stage name Dick Dale, and he began performing in local talent shows, where his budding interest in rockabilly made him a popular act. He recorded a demo song, “Ooh-Whee Marie,” for the local Del-Fi label, which was later released as a single on his father’s new Deltone imprint and distributed locally. During the late ’50s, Dale also became an avid surfer, and soon set about finding ways to mimic the surging sounds and feelings of the sport and the ocean on his guitar. He quickly developed a highly distinctive instrumental sound and found an enthusiastic, ready-made audience in his surfer friends. Dale began playing regular gigs at the Rendezvous Ballroom, a once-defunct concert venue near Newport Beach, with his backing band the Del-Tones; as word spread and gigs at other local halls followed, Dale became a wildly popular attraction, drawing thousands of fans to every performance. In September 1961, Deltone released Dale’s single “Let’s Go Trippin’,” which is generally acknowledged to be the very first recorded surf instrumental.

In the space of a few short years, the Boston-born, Southern California transplant had merged the laid-back, sun-blasted lifestyle of the surf scene with a blistering rhythm of rockabilly and early rock-and-roll. As the mad scientist behind what was dubbed surf rock, Dale was, in the words of a 1963 Life magazine profile, a thumping teenage idol who is part evangelist, part Pied Piper and all success. The music Dale and his band the Del-Tones made poured out of radios, sound-tracked popular beach movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and lit inspirational fires in other musicians like the Beach Boys. Fans crowned him The King of the Surf Guitar.
Dick Dale wasn’t nicknamed “King of the Surf Guitar” for nothing: he pretty much invented the style single-handedly, and no matter who copied or expanded upon his blueprint, he remained the fieriest, most technically gifted musician the genre ever produced. Dale’s pioneering use of Middle Eastern and Eastern European melodies (learned organically through his familial heritage) was among the first in any genre of American popular music, and predated the teaching of such “exotic” scales in guitar-shredder academies by two decades. The breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique was unrivaled until it entered the repertoires of metal virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, and his wild showmanship made an enormous impression on the young Jimi Hendrix. But those aren’t the only reasons Dale was once called the father of heavy metal. Working closely with the Fender company, Dale continually pushed the limits of electric amplification technology, helping to develop new equipment that was capable of producing the thick, clearly defined tones he heard in his head, at the previously undreamed-of volumes he demanded. He also pioneered the use of portable reverb effects, creating a signature sonic texture for surf instrumentals. And, if all that weren’t enough, Dale managed to redefine his instrument while essentially playing it upside-down and backwards — he switched sides in order to play left-handed, but without re-stringing it (as Hendrix later did).
“I once made a million dollars a year with my career,” Dale reminisced to the Los Angeles Times magazine in 2001. “I made $10,000 for three minutes work on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1963.”

Dale’s signature guitar style was the result of a happy accident. Most guitars are strung for a right-handed player. Dale, a lefty, originally picked up the guitar upside down so he could play naturally without restringing the instrument, leaving the thicker strings on the bottom of the fret board. “Nobody told me I was holding it wrong,” Dale explained to the Orange County Register in 2009. “I just taught myself to play it like that. It was hard at first.”

“Let’s Go Trippin'” was a huge local hit, and even charted nationally. Dale released a few more local singles, including “Jungle Fever,” “Miserlou,” and “Surf Beat,” and in 1962 issued his (and surf music’s) first album, the groundbreaking Surfer’s Choice, on Deltone. Surfer’s Choice sold like hotcakes around Southern California, which earned Dale a contract with Capitol Records and national distribution for the album. Dale was featured in Life magazine in 1963, which led to appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Frankie/Annette film Beach Party. Surf music became a national fad, with groups like the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean offering a vocal variant to complement the wave of instrumental groups, all of which were indebted in some way to Dale, who released the follow-up LP King of the Surf Guitar and went on to issue three more albums on Capitol through 1965.  But the British Invasion began to steal much of surf’s thunder, and soon Dale was dropped by Capitol in 1965. He remained a wildly popular local act, but in that same year he was diagnosed with rectal cancer, which forced him to temporarily retire from music.

Doctors told the guitarist that without aggressive surgery, he could be dead in a matter of months. He survived, but the cancer bout whittled Dale from 158 pounds to 98 pounds, and also drained his bank account of his pop star proceeds. He moved to Hawaii and stayed away from music for a number of years. He beat the disease, however, and soon began pursuing other interests: owning and caring for a variety of endangered animals, studying martial arts, designing his parents’ dream house, and learning to pilot planes. In 1979, a puncture wound suffered while surfing off Newport Beach led to a pollution-related infection that nearly cost him his leg; Dick Dale soon added environmental activist to his resume. In addition to all of that, he performed occasionally around Southern California throughout the ’70s and ’80s.
In 1986, Dale attempted to mount a comeback. He first recorded a benefit single for the UC-Irvine Medical Center’s burn unit (which had helped him recuperate from potentially serious injuries), and the following year appeared in the beach movie Back to the Beach. The soundtrack featured a duet between Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan on, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. In 1991, Dale did a guest spot on an album by the San Francisco-based Psychefunkapus, and a successful Bay Area gig got him signed with Hightone Records.

The album Tribal Thunder was released in 1993, but Dale’s comeback didn’t get into full swing until “Miserlou” was chosen as the opening theme to Quentin Tarantino’s blockbuster 1994 film ‘Pulp Fiction’. “Miserlou” became synonymous with Pulp Fiction’s ultra-hip sense of style, and was soon licensed in countless commercials (as were several other Daletracks). As a result, Tribal Thunder and its 1994 follow-up, Unknown Territory, attracted lots of attention, earning positive reviews and surprisingly strong sales. In 1996, he supported the Beggars Banquet album Calling Up Spirits by joining the normally punk- and ska-oriented Warped Tour.
Adding his wife and young drum-playing son to his band, Dale refocused on touring over the next few years. He finally returned with a new CD in 2001,’ Spacial Disorientation’, issued on the small Sin-Drome label. Dale stepped away from his recording career after that release, but he continued to play out frequently, even as he struggled with myriad health problems, including diabetes, rectal cancer, and heart and kidney disease. Dale still had a busy schedule of concert dates on his schedule when he died on March 16, 2019, at the age of 81.

Tributes have begun popping up online, with many celebrating his distinctive sound. But the musician’s life story was also a constant struggle against health problems — and to pay medical bills. After his first cancer diagnosis in 1965, Dale continued to battle the disease. Up until the end of his life, Dale was explicit that he toured to fund his treatment.

“I can’t stop touring because I will die. Physically and literally, I will die,” he told the Pittsburgh City Paper in 2015. “Sure, I’d love to stay home and build ships in a bottle and spend time with my wife in Hawaii, but I have to perform to save my life.”

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Peter Tork 2/2019

Peter Tork, bass player for the Monkees

Peter Tork, bass player for the MonkeesPeter Tork (The Monkees) was born Peter Halsten Thorkelson on February 13, 1942 in Washington DC. His father John taught economics at the University of Connecticut. He began studying piano at the age of nine, showing an aptitude for music by learning to play several different instruments, including the banjo, French horn and both acoustic bass and guitars. Tork attended Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut, and was a member of the first graduating class at E. O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota but, after flunking out, moved to New York City, where he became part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village and with his guitar and five-string banjo he began playing small folk clubs. He billed himself as Tork, a nickname handed down by his father, and reportedly played with members of the soon-to-be formed band Lovin’ Spoonful (Summer in the City). While there, he befriended other up-and-coming musicians such as Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills Nash and Young).When Tork “failed to break open the folk circuit,” as he later phrased it, he moved to Long Beach, California in mid-1965. Later that summer, he fielded two calls from his friend Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), who had auditioned with more than 400 others for the Monkees. Stills urged Tork to try out. “They told Steve, ‘Your hair and teeth aren’t photogenic, but do you know anyone who looks like you that can sing?’ And Steve told them about me,” Tork told the Washington Post in 1983.

Continue reading Peter Tork 2/2019

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Reggie Young 1/2017

Reggie Young (82) was born on Dec. 12, 1936, in Caruthersville, Missouri and raised in Osceola, Arkansas. Young first picked up a guitar in the 1950s. From the start, he never wanted to be a frontman. “I was a little shy,” he said prior to the release of his solo album. He discovered that he could make himself useful by fitting into virtually any music situation that came his way and joined a rockabilly band called Eddie Bond and the Stompers, who cut a single in Memphis in 1956 called “Rockin’ Daddy.” Released on the Mercury label, it became a regional hit.

Toward the end of the 1950s, Young became the go-to guitarist for Elvis Presley’s former bassist Bill Black in the latter’s own group, Bill Black’s Combo. Just as they scored their first big hit—“Smokie—Part 2,” on Memphis’ Hi Records, in late ’59—with stardom looming, Young was drafted into the Army and stationed in Ethiopia, far from the rock and roll revolution back home. When he came home he joined up with the Combo again, in time for the group to open for the Beatles on their first American tour in 1964. Continue reading Reggie Young 1/2017