The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (161 page)

Ray Williams
(UK bassist with Welsh rockers Man; born Merthyr Tydfil, 1943; lengthy illness, 12/1993)

… and another who didn’t

Hewhocannotbenamed,
US guitarist with East Coast punks The Dwarves. Angered that the band had circulated an ‘April fool’ rumour that the musician (aka Peter Konik, proving that he
can
be named) had been stabbed to death in Philadelphia, their label - the increasingly influential Sub Pop - gave the band its marching orders.

1994

JANUARY

Saturday 15

Harry Nilsson

(Harry Edward Nelson III - Brooklyn, New York, 15 June 1941)

Wishing to follow in the footsteps of his mother, Harry Nilsson was principally a songwriter at the beginning of his career, working at a bank and submitting material to the likes of The Monkees, Ronettes and Yardbirds (who cut his ‘Ten Little Indians’). Back then, Nilsson’s three-octave range was undiscovered, until a spate of commercial jingles gave the singer wide exposure and won him a contract with RCA in 1967. His debut album, the curiously titled
Pandemonium Shadow Show,
was no commercial giant, but – largely because of a Beatles medley, ‘You Can’t Do That’ – drew the attention of The Fab Four, of whom John Lennon would become a close friend. By 1969 Nilsson was enjoying a long-overdue hit with the reissued (and Grammy-winning) Fred Neil tune ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ (best known from its inclusion in the movie
Midnight Cowboy)
but by far his biggest was to be the Badfinger classic, ‘Without You’, a worldwide number one and a song that outsold all others in 1972. Nilsson made no secret of his frustration that few of his own compositions matched the success of these. The fact that his singles choices were often trite, joky affairs never likely to sell (see 1976’s ‘Kojak Columbo’) didn’t alter this perception.

During 1974, while Lennon was apart from Yoko Ono, he and Nilsson were regularly ejected from Los Angeles bars for their behaviour – what had initially been planned as a ‘lost weekend’ lasted almost an entire year: the musicians worked together, played together, but most of all got perpetually hammered together. Nilsson’s own misuse of alcohol was to cost him dearly twenty years later. Although his voice had been irreparably damaged by years of drinking, Nilsson was putting the finishing touches to a comeback album when he suffered a massive coronary in 1993 – from which he was never to recover.

DEAD INTERESTING

HIGH-RATIO NILSSON

Set to die young himself, Harry Nilsson had a connection to an eerie number of highprofile rock deaths. The writers of his biggest hit, ‘Without You’, Pete Ham (
April 1975)
and Tom Evans
(
November 1983)
both committed suicide in otherwise unrelated circumstances. Meanwhile, among his many music acolytes were ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot
(
July 1974
) and The Who’s Keith Moon
(
September 1978)
- both of whom died at Nilsson’s London flat.

Having been closely involved after the death by shooting of occasional Beatles collaborator Mal Evans
(
January 1976
) , a shocked Nilsson was provoked by the assassination of his very close friend John Lennon
(
December 1980
) into speaking for the campaign against gun ownership in the US.

Saturday 22

Rhett Forrester

(Tucker, Georgia, 22 September 1956)

Riot

(Mr Dirty)

Rhett Forrester was tall, blond and good-looking, shaping up well as a tennis pro and brave enough to graduate from his mother La Fortune’s ballroom-dance class. But with a voice reminiscent of Free’s Paul Rodgers and the position of frontman for New York hard-rockers Riot, he was surely set for superstar status in rock music. (Forrester even threw a few handy *bad boy’ points into the mix by serving time for a gas-station robbery.) The singer had taken vocal lessons and auditioned for Riot, his natural charisma winning him the slot as the band opened for The Scorpions in 1982. For a while, the metal group were among the US’s most popular live attractions, but after two consistent (if predictable) studio albums with Forrester,
Restless Breed
(1982) and
Born In America
(1983), they split amid disagreements with their management. Forrester took himself off to France, where he recorded his own album,
Gone with the Wind
(1986), Riot’s fanbase switching allegiance to Forrester’s solo career. A new project, Mr Dirty, was underway by January 1994.