The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (302 page)

After putting music on hold for three years while in the marines, the newly renamed Fender - known affectionately as ‘El Bebop Kid’ - became a sensation on the Tex-Mex club circuit before recording one of the songs that was much later to become a standard, ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’ (1959). The country/blues ballad’s expected hit status - and indeed Fender’s career - seemed halted, however, by a regrettable charge of marijuana possession the following spring that saw him incarcerated for three further years at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Thus, it took until 1974 for Freddy Fender (who, now in his late thirties, had been working mainly as a mechanic) to reinstate himself as a musician. However, he managed this in quite spectacular fashion over the next few years. Fender’s recording of ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls’ was selected for distribution by the canny ABC-Dot, who heard mass potential in the song. This was vindicated when the record soared to both US country and pop number one in 1975, and Fendermania was suddenly a very real phenomenon. The record, which was named Country Song of the Year, was then followed up by a rerecorded version of ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’, which also topped the country charts (as did two further singles) and earned him another pop Top Ten placing. Fender himself showed he was capable of a clever trick or two, often recording verses in Spanish to maximise a tune’s market chances.

Focusing more on ‘swamp-pop’, Fender faded from the scene somewhat during the eighties, but reappeared briefly as an actor in the Robert Redford-directed movie
The Milagro Beanfield War
(1988), and then with popular Tex-Mex supergroups The Texas Tornados (which also featured the versatile Doug Sahm, formerly of Sir Douglas Quintet) and Los Super Seven, alongside Joe Ely, plus David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos fame. (These latter incarnations finally saw Fender pick up Grammys in 1990 and 2002, having been nominated several times as a soloist.)

At about this time, Freddy Fender -whose health had deteriorated noticeably over the previous few years - received organ transplants, though was unable to stave off the cancerous tumours that had developed on his lungs. He died on 14 October 2006 and was buried in the town of his birth.

Ramon Pinon - the respected Conjunto guitarist who brought Freddy Fender to the attention of his first label - was brutally murdered in 2009 at the age of 84.

Saturday 21

Sandy West

(Sandra Pasavento - Long Beach, California, 10 July 1959)

The Runaways

(The Sandy West Band)

Brought up on a diet of surf and sixties rock ‘n’ roll, young Sandy West’s grandparents supported her early desire to emulate her heroes by buying her a drum kit when West was just fifteen. It took less than six months of practising before opportunity knocked. West was proactive in her search for fellow musicians to play alongside, but it was notorious producer/impresario Kim Fowley who in 1975 suggested that she be the engine in an all-female group. First to show was local guitarist Joan Jett (Joan Larkin), who jumped on a bus to jam with West. Co-manager Fowley then teamed the pair with fourteen-year-old lyricist Kari Krome, who was already signed as a songwriter to his company. The Runaways – as they were quickly named by a producer who wasn’t slow to see a marketable angle – were completed by first Micki Steele (Susan Thomas, bass – soon replaced by Jackie Fox) and, later, lead guitarist Lita Ford, and a natural focal point in lead singer Cherie Currie. One thing for sure, however, was that this was no manufactured gimmick – all of the girls were proficient, hardworking musicians, with West arguably the jewel in the crown. Their sound a collision of metal, rock ‘n’ roll and punk, The Runaways were signed to Mercury, who rapidly issued their first (and best-known) single ‘Cherry Bomb’ and a self-titled debut album (1976). The Runaways toured the globe throughout 1977, embraced by higher-profile bands from the punk scene with which they had now become associated. (In keeping with the genre’s ethos, three members of the group managed to get themselves arrested during a 1977 tour of Europe.) But without record sales to back up the vast amount of press their lifestyles attracted, The Runaways fell into disarray, with internal friction, a series of line-up alterations and questions surrounding the practices of their management seeing them split in 1979.

‘Sandy West was by far the greatest female drummer in rock ‘n’ roll. No one could compete or even come close to her.’

Friend and former Runaway Cherie Currie

Post-Runaways saw varying degrees of success for the former members; only Jett (with The Blackhearts) and Steele (with The Bangles) achieved major stardom. For her part, West formed her own Sandy West Band and taught drums to a number of willing students, though she found that most of her income came from more conventional work such as bartending. In the 2004 movie
Edgeplay
– a documentary about The Runaways directed by one-time bassist, Vicki Blue (aka Victory Tischler-Blue) – a tearful West alludes to her disappointment at the demise of a band she claimed represented all of her greatest dreams.

In 2005, Sandy West was diagnosed with lung cancer. Aggressive treatment of the disease proved in vain, and she died from a brain tumour in 2006. Currie and Jett were both quick to pay tribute to her bravery, the latter quoted as saying: ‘I am overcome from the loss of my friend. I always told her we changed the world’.

Early Runaways bassist Laurie McAllister died from complications of asthma in August 2011.

NOVEMBER

Wednesday 1

Sheila Rossall

(Bristol, England, 1949)

New Pickettywitch

Sheila Rossall never experienced great fame, though she was for some years in the public eye as the victim of one of the most distressing medical conditions known in modern times.

Rossall, with her good looks and cool, clear voice, seemed an obvious choice to front New Pickettywitch (the successors to Polly Brown’s briefly successful pop act, Pickettywitch) in the mid seventies. By the end of the decade, few chart inroads had been made and it seemed a career playing the clubs was likely – but this, too, was to be halted in tragic circumstances. In 1978, Rossall began to exhibit reactions to perfumes, man-made fibres and processed foods. These at first appeared to be straightforward allergies, but soon the singer’s body began to respond catastrophically. By 1982, Rossall was all but forced to live as a recluse as she became more and more affected by her surroundings. That year, the entire UK was hearing about the ‘bubble-world’ existence of a woman unable to function in a society everyone else takes for granted.

With her weight dropping dramatically, Rossall – who at one point was too weak even to lift her head – travelled to the US for the treatment that would prolong her life. Tests required the singer to live in a ceramic-tiled room and wear and sleep only on cotton cloth. Her diet often consisted of just organically grown vegetation or wild game (which was reported by
Time
magazine to have included bear and lion meat). She could drink only water collected from natural springs.

Her career curtailed, little was heard of Sheila Rossall thereafter, though it is thought that she lived relatively well until dying peacefully in 2006. So little was known of her condition that Rossall had, at various times, been misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, angina, pancreatic tumours, coronary thrombosis and epilepsy.

Friday 10

Gerald Levert

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 13 July 1966)

Levert

LSG

His father Eddie a singer with Philly sensations The O’Jays, Gerald Levert had something of a leg up in the world of R & B, but his contributions to the modern genre were always individual and well-conceived.

The young Levert was brought up in Ohio’s Shaker Heights, though he often toured with his father during the group’s glory days of the early seventies. After the long run of hits came to an end for Levert Sr, it was his son’s turn to take up the mantle. Levert formed LeVert with his younger brother Sean and childhood buddy Marc Gordon while a freshman at college in 1984. His young voice proved remarkably similar to that of his father, which likely precipitated the group’s signing to Atlantic that year. After a lukewarm debut in
I Get Hot
(1985), LeVert went on to accumulate six R & B Top Ten albums (five of which went at least gold) and a series of hit singles, the biggest by far being the Billboard Top Five ‘Casanova’ in 1987.

A solo career for the flamboyant ladies’ man beckoned, and Gerald Levert notched even bigger successes with albums boasting such titles as 2002’s
The G Spot.
The singer – fertile in every sense – even found time to record a brace of records with his father and also fashion a supergroup, LSG, with fellow R & B smoulderers Keith Sweat and Johnny Gill, which added two further platinum albums to Levert’s impressive haul. (He also wrote and produced for a good number of top-level R & B artists, including natural mentors Barry White and Teddy Pendergrass.)

However, it all came to an abrupt end on 10 November 2006 when Levert, who, unbeknown to most, had been unwell for some time, was found dead in his bedroom by a visiting cousin. An autopsy showed traces of a lethal variety of prescription drugs in his system, including painkillers Vicodin, Percocet and Darvocet. Though it was known that the singer had been treating shoulder and foot problems, an autopsy also revealed that he had pneumonia. Gerald Levert’s passing was met with shock and mourning by the entertainment world. He’d recently completed what would be his final album,
In My Songs,
which, on release in February 2007, became an instant best-seller. The artist also had an autobiography and a reality TV program in the works at the time of his death.

‘Nobody was prepared for this. It’s not for real that he’s gone.’

Friend and colleague Patti Labelle

One of Gerald Levert’s last television slots was a touching 2005 appearance on MTV’s
My Super Sweet 16,
singing with his youngest daughter, Carlysia.

See also
William Powell Jr (
May 1977); Sean Levert (
March 2008)