The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (140 page)

Just as plans were being made to re-team with Nolan, Johnny Thunders was found dead at a New Orleans boarding house, his system reportedly wracked with cocaine and methadone (he’d been undergoing rehabilitation). A post mortem revealed that the guitarist had also been suffering from lymphatic leukaemia, of which he was probably aware. A distraught Nolan played in tribute to his departed stooge shortly after the event – unaware that within months he would be the next Doll back in the box
(
January 1992).

See also
Arthur ‘Killed Kane (
July 2004). Later Thunders collaborator Paulie Rocco (guitarist with The Chesterfield Kings) died in March 2009.

MAY

Close!

Bushwick Bill

(The Geto Boys)

Well, as far as methods for promoting your group’s album go, this one was a bit special. Texan rap act The Geto Boys had already been carpeted by the Geffen label for lyrics of extreme, over-the-top violence when psychotic 24-year-old frontman Bushwick Bill (Richard Shaw) decided to up the ante for their 1991 album
We Can’t Be Stopped.

On 10 May that year, the apparently suicidal dwarf rapper fell into an argument with his girlfriend, during which he ‘begged her to shoot him in the head’ (allegedly to secure insurance money for his mother). When she refused to comply, Bill took the gun and fired it himself. In what must surely be the closest call in music history, the rapper survived but lost an eye - a photograph of bandmates Scarface and Willie D assisting their injured buddy then found its way on to the record’s cover.

Thursday 23

Will Sin

(Will Sinnott - Glasgow, 23 December 1960)

The Shamen

Before the addition of techno-boffin Will Sinnott, Aberdeen guitar band The Shamen – fronted by his friend Colin Angus – had been a fairly hit-or-miss psychedelic revivalist combo, with a couple of decent singles and a patchy debut album
Drop
(1987) to their name. Angus and Sinnott had met as trainee psychiatric nurses, which may or may not have influenced the group’s subject matter or apparent obsession with drugs (admission of the latter did The Shamen out of a very lucrative McEwan’s beer commercial). For the band’s second album,
In Gorbachev We Trust
(1988), the renamed Sin’s influence was apparent – the stop-start cod psychedelia was now replaced with synths, samples and tiffing. By the third album,
En-Tact
(1990), the group had also recruited the rather-tiresome rapper Mr C, having fully embraced the rave culture of the era. Sin was now organizing a hectic tour schedule for the unit under the name ‘Synergy’. A single from
En-Tact,
‘Pro-Gen’ was remixed as ‘Move Any Mountain’ and considered a likely breakthrough hit for The Shamen, who began to draw serious attention in 1991. With this in mind, Angus and Sin departed to the Canary Islands to shoot a suitable promo for the group – an environment that couldn’t have been more different from the overcast settings of their first recordings. With the film in the can, Angus returned to the UK without Sin, who fancied a few more days in the sun. An enthusiastic swimmer, Sin went diving off the island of Gomera; unaware of the water’s strong currents, he was pulled under and drowned. The ever-subtle
NME
carried the story under a banner headline: ‘Last Will and Testament’.

Encouraged by the musician’s bereft family, Angus continued with The Shamen, and the band went on to clean up with a string of major UK hits. Indeed, ‘Move Any Mountain’ stormed into the Top Five that July, offering television audiences the sobering sight of a content Will Sin on location in Tenerife, captured just days before his untimely death.

Friday 24

Gene Clark

(Harold Eugene Clark - Bonner Springs, Kansas, 17 November 1944)

The Byrds

New Christy Minstrels

(Joe Meyers & The Sharks)

The son of an amateur musician, Gene Clark was raised in Tipton, Missouri, on country and bluegrass, aping Hank Williams’s playing at just nine years old. Clearly set to become a significant talent, Clark played with many local bands and cut his first record at thirteen (with Joe Meyers & The Sharks), attracting the attention of Randy Sparks, whose popular folkies, New Christy Minstrels, he would join for a couple of albums in 1963. This only served to reveal to Clark that touting somebody else’s material on the road was not for him – and meeting singer/guitarists Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and David Crosby at LA’s Troubadour Club, they instantly formed a sympathetic trio. The addition of bass guitarist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke finally gave the world the first incarnation of the band that influenced two generations of folk and rock musicians, from The Beatles via Bob Dylan to REM: The Byrds. With McGuinn’s twelve-string Rickenbacker taking precedence, Clark was by no means the foremost musician in the band but he swiftly took the singing and songwriting reins, penning timeless numbers like ‘I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better’ and ‘The World Turns All around Her’ for the band’s critically acclaimed debut album for CBS. Despite this, their biggest early hits were interpretations of the songs of others – a couple of Dylan numbers, ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ (a US number one in 1965) and ‘All I Really Want to Do’, plus Pete Seeger’s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ (both also 1965).

One of his finest co-written Byrds tunes, ‘Eight Miles High’ – amusingly banned by authorities for a supposed drug connotation, became a hit after Clark left the band in March 1966 (ironically, ‘fear of flying’ was the main reason he cited). Solo attempts met with muted success, though albums with The Gosdin Brothers and Doug Dillard received a warm critical reception. The Byrds themselves entered a psychedelic countrified phase with the departure of David Crosby and the recruitment of Gram Parsons and Clarence White in 1968, but the line-up was inconsistent thereafter. Clark would rejoin various incarnations of The Byrds in the years to come, but his numerous solo outings were very much sidelined by the band’s fans; in 1979, the imaginatively named McGuinn, Clark & Hillman earned a Top Ten album for Capitol (which nonetheless was followed by legal wrangles over use of The Byrds’ name between Clark and McGuinn). The Byrds were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame just months before Gene Clark’s death at home in Sherman Oaks, California, from natural causes after a stomach operation following years of drinking.

See also
Clarence White (
July 1973); Gram Parsons (
September 1973); Michael Clarke (
December 1993). Short-term drummer Kevin Kelley died in
2002.