The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (175 page)

Wednesday 16

Bobby DeBarge

(Robert Louis DeBarge - Ohio, 5 March 1956)

Switch

(DeBarge)

Led by Bobby DeBarge and Phil Ingram, Switch were protégés of Jermaine Jackson when they first came to prominence in 1978. Signing to Motown, the band made serious inroads into the US R & B/pop charts with ‘There’ll Never Be’. The DeBarge family was much like that of Jacksons: among its ten children were brothers Tommy (bassist with Switch) and the younger Eldra, who, under Bobby’s guidance, fronted disco favourites DeBarge. Switch continued on Total Experience records, while DeBarge went on to enormous success on Motown, with Bobby playing mainly a production role on hits like their infectious, million-selling ‘Rhythm of the Night’ (1985). Success, however, was fleeting: by 1987 Eldra was concentrating on a solo career while Bobby, perhaps ill-advisedly, fronted a new line-up of DeBarge.

Suffering without the vast income of his earlier career, DeBarge, and another musician brother, Chico, found themselves imprisoned in Michigan for cocaine trafficking in 1988. Then, soon after the release of his own solo album,
It’s Not Over,
Bobby DeBarge added to the proliferation of AIDS deaths during the nineties; it is widely thought that he contracted the disease while in jail. DeBarge’s devastated family subsequently ditched pop music to return to their gospel roots.

Wednesday 23

Dwayne Goettel

(Vancouver, British Columbia, 1 February 1964)

Skinny Puppy

Canadians Skinny Puppy were hardcore industrial experimentalists par excellence well before it was a fashionable genre in which to immerse oneself. Their music a fusion of electronica and metal riffs, Puppy were a band obsessed with issues of inhumanity and the darker side of the human psyche: the name was appropriate in that their infamous live shows often featured traumatizing images of vivisection. Never a likely commercial unit-shifter, Skinny Puppy were nevertheless picked up by Columbia in 1987, even finding time for various side projects Download, Duck and Pigface (which featured members of Revolting Cocks). Keyboardist and sample wizard Dwayne Rudolph Goettel had begun as a trumpeter in his high-school band; he was in the middle of working on the band’s ninth studio album when he was found dead from a suspected heroin overdose in his parents’ bathroom.

Saturday 26

Ronnie White

(Detroit, Michigan, 5 April 1939)

The Miracles

A founding member of one of Motown’s most cherished acts, Ronnie White first encountered singer Smokey Robinson as his family’s paper boy; the pair then formed an embryonic Miracles – The Five Chimes – during their time together at Northern High School. The Chimes became The Matadors and eventually The Miracles, and were picked up by Nat Tarnopol (Jackie Wilson’s manager) and then Berry Gordy, who managed the band as it gave Motown an early number-two smash with Robinson’s sharp pop composition ‘Shop Around’ (1961). The hits – ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me’, ‘Mickey’s Monkey’ (both 1963) and ‘Ooh Baby Baby’ (1965), among others – flowed; Robinson and White began to clean up, also writing tunes for The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells. Working so closely caused frequent arguments between lead Robinson and bass baritone White, and the former eventually left The Miracles in 1972. Early disco favourite ‘Love Machine’ (1976) was one of the few chart hits the once-great act enjoyed without its talismanic former frontman, and they disbanded for good two years later. After a far-quieter later career, Ronnie White died in retirement from leukaemia at his Detroit home.

See also
Marv Tarplin (
Golden Oldies #148)

Wednesday 30

Sterling Morrison

(Holmes Sterling Morrison - East Meadow, Long Island, New York, 29 August 1942)

The Velvet Underground

(Various acts)

Guitarist Sterling Morrison was a student at Syracuse University when he befriended literature major and basic musician Lou Reed. Having lost touch, the pair met once again in New York, where the mythology surrounding the Velvet Underground began in earnest. Wilfully antiestablishment, the band – completed by multi-instrumentalist John Cale and (eventually) androgynous percussionist Moe Tucker – built its reputation around seventeen-minute noisefests like ‘Sister Ray’ (1967). The influence of The Velvets was always at a polar opposite from their commercial success; part of the legend was the patronage of iconic popartist Andy Warhol, who financed the band’s first (self-titled) album, and also introduced them to funeral vocalist Nico (Christa Paffgen). Warhol’s ‘banana’ design became (like The Rolling Stones ‘lips’) a powerful visual emblem. Despite one or two attempts at a more commercial sound, there was no mainstream breakthrough for a band destined to remain the most famous cult-rock act of all time. Morrison, earning extra money as both an English teacher and later a tugboat captain in Houston, parted company with Reed in 1971, their relationship having soured. Despite these unlikely career paths, Morrison’s music didn’t die completely: he is known to have played with several acts in Texas during the eighties, one of which was The Bizarros.

Despite Nico’s sudden death (
July 1988),
The Velvet Underground attempted a brief reunion, opening for U2 in 1993. The guitarist’s performances were well received, but the group had fallen out (yet again) by the end of the tour. Two years on, Sterling Morrison succumbed to a nine-month battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Poughkeepsie, New York – the day after his fifty-third birthday – ending this truly revolutionary band for ever. Cale, who had handed over all VU guitar duties to Morrison in 1968, performed two specially written pieces at his memorial.

See also
Angus MacLise (
June
1979)

SEPTEMBER

Friday 1

Damon Edge

(Thomas Wisse - Los Angeles, California, 12 November 1949)

Chrome