The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (189 page)

Friday 10

Kenny Pickett

(Kenneth Lee - London, 3 September 1942)

The Creation

(The Kennedy Express)

The Creation – originally The Mark Four – were the shortlived band touted as ‘the next cultural phenomenon’ by Tony Stratton-Smith’s equally shortlived Planet Records. With his penchant for spray-painting the stage, Kenny Pickett was certainly a notable frontman – but it just didn’t happen, though The Creation – Pickett, Eddie Phillips (guitar), Mick Thompson (rhythm guitar), Bob Garner (ex-Merseybeats, bass) and Jack Jones (drums) – were actually better than the hype might have had folk believe. Their biggest hit (well, it made thirty-six in November 1966) was the catchy, guitar-driven ‘Painter Man’ (Top Ten when demolished by Boney M in 1979), but few other Creation ditties caught the public’s attention. Pickett nevertheless enjoyed a varied and unusual career in music. Leaving The Creation in 1967, he became road manager for Led Zeppelin and Steppenwolf, before composing the biggest hit of his life – yes, Clive Dunn’s ‘Grandad’, a UK number one in 1970.

Kenny Pickett reformed The Creation in the mid nineties (after a brief tenure as singer of The Kennedy Express), the band gaining something of an audience from the Britpop crowd, signing with (aptly) Alan McGee’s Creation label. Then, at a gig in Mortlake, South London, the singer collapsed and died during a rendition of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B Goode’. He is believed to have suffered a coronary, though the post mortem failed to confirm a definite cause of death.

Golden Oldies #4

Colonel Tom Parker

(Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk - Breda, The Netherlands, 26 June 1909)

A significant figure in rock ‘n’ roll history, Tom Parker earns his position here more genuinely than he did his military title: an illegal alien who arrived in the USA aboard a merchant ship, Parker took on an assumed identity in order to join the US army. He only began his forays into show business on his return to civilian life, a move to Louisiana opening up opportunities as a C & W music promoter - and it was here, as opposed to in the army, that Parker became ‘Colonel’, the epithet given him by state governor Jimmie Davis. Parker chanced upon singer Elvis Presley, whom he persuaded Sun to offload to RCA for a remarkable $35,000 - a vast figure for a relative unknown. From hereon, Parker controlled Presley’s career closely. While many of his methods were highly questionable, there’s little doubt that The King would not have taken his throne without the Colonel’s guidance. Parker’s method, so he claimed, was based around the ‘less is more’ principle, the manager keeping his star away from the public eye to maximize interest. Elvis, for example, never played in Europe - though many believe the reason behind this Parker decision was that the Svengali himself wouldn’t have been readmitted into the US. Meanwhile, Parker pocketed nearly half Presley’s earnings from record sales, publishing, residuals or profits from the movies the star was roped into making during the sixties. In the early seventies, Parker sold the rights to Presley’s back catalogue to RCA for an undisclosed amount - but on terms that were unfavourable to the singer. To his credit, Parker had masterminded such strokes as Elvis’s triumphant comeback shows in Vegas around this time, which fans still hold in greater affection than any early performances. On balance, though, his cosseting of Presley was greatly damaging to the singer, who lived a life of crass indulgence behind the scenes: the legend’s death (
August 1977)
is still considered by many an inevitable result of such a lifestyle.

Parker outlived his protégé by almost twenty years, finally agreeing to sell many of Presley’s master recordings to RCA in 1983. After finding a lower-profile position as entertainments consultant for Hilton Hotels during the nineties, Parker died from a stroke on 21 January 1997 - appropriately, perhaps, in Las Vegas, in whose casinos he is thought to have spent much of his fortune.

Wednesday 22

Billy Mackenzie

(Auchterhouse, Dundee, 27 March 1957)

The Associates

A headstrong teenager, Billy Mackenzie travelled extensively and even married in Las Vegas to avoid deportation; his desire to sing only manifested itself on his return to the British Isles – though not everyone cared for the cheery Scotsman’s four-octave range. When The Associates – Mackenzie, plus multi-instrumentalist Alan Rankine – came out of Edinburgh with a cover of ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ (1979), the critics were ready to dismiss another David Bowie copyist (this was the year of Gary Numan, after all). A year on,
The Affectionate Punch,
a shimmering, original debut album for the Fiction label, changed all that. By 1982 The Associates had jumped at an offer from Warner Brothers and soon became chart regulars – for that year at least. Second album
Sulk
(1982) raced into the Top Ten – as did the very distinctive single ‘Party Fears Two’ (a tale of student gatecrashing, somehow plucked as the theme to BBC Radio Four’s
Weekending),
and sprightly follow-up ‘Club Country’ almost followed suit. Mackenzie seemed born into the spotlight, weaving and grinning his way through live shows and television slots alike. This was a time of silver lamé and white teeth: with a third chart success, ‘18 Carat Love Affair’, Mackenzie easily looked the part. The first problems, however, came with the delay in releasing further material; Rankine had been less happy with all the attention lapped up by Mackenzie, and the pair parted soon after. Returning in 1984 with some new Associates – Steve Reid (guitar) and Howard Hughes (keyboards) – the singer found the locks had been changed while he’d been away. Thereafter, none of Mackenzie’s albums or singles (which included 1985’s lovely ‘Breakfast’) registered on the charts.

With a solo set,
Outernational
(1991), dismissed by both critics and punters alike, Mackenzie was declared bankrupt three years later. Although he’d landed a further deal with Nude (Suede’s label) in 1996, the singer had already moved back to his parents’ Dundee home – and was succumbing to serious depression as he approached his forties. It seems that the death of his mother that year proved the straw that broke the camel’s back: four days after sealing his contract, Mackenzie took himself into his father’s garden shed and swallowed a combination of prescription tablets. Shortly after the removal of his son’s body, the singer’s bereft father burned the shed and everything in it.

Billy Mackenzie’s work for Nude was issued via the touching and highly personal posthumous collection
Beyond the Sun
(1997).

The Sweet - Scott, Tucker, Connolly and Priest: Better watch out if you’ve got long blond hair

FEBRUARY

Sunday 9

Brian Connolly

(Brian McManus - Hamilton, Scotland, 5 October 1945)

The Sweet

Set to become the prettiest boy in British glam rock, Brian Connolly went by the name of McManus until leaving home and opting for his birth mother’s name when he discovered his adopted status at eighteen. Connolly was already a seasoned guitarist by the time he formed Wainwright’s Gentlemen in 1966 (once boasting Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan as vocalist), a serious rock band that changed its name to Sweetshop two years later. As the shorter, cuter The Sweet, Connolly – with Andy Scott (guitar), Steve Priest (bass) and Mick Tucker (drums) – rose steadily to the fore of UK popular rock. Conceding that they would sell more under the songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman (‘Chinnichap’), The Sweet went on to fight regular chart battles with Gary Glitter, Slade and T Rex as
Top of the Pops
became fun again. The band’s enormous singles sales between 1971 and 1975 peaked with the number one ‘Blockbuster’ (1973), but this was surrounded by an impressive tally of other bubblegum hits, including five records at number two, of which ‘Ballroom Blitz’ (1973) was also a very healthy US seller. (The Sweet also managed eight number ones in Germany.) The dimpled Connolly was clearly the focus for teen worship, but he was happy to share the limelight with bass ‘tart’ Priest, whose fluttering interjections became a band gimmick, copied by many. A split with Chinnichap (who had plenty of other big-name artists to cater for) preceded a dip in fortunes for The Sweet, however, although they did write ‘Fox on the Run’ (1975), another big US hit that also pushed new pin-ups The Bay City Rollers all the way in the UK.