The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (309 page)

One of Australia’s loudest bands emerged in the late sixties, fronted by English-born singer and guitarist Billy Thorpe. The musician had emigrated with his family in 1955, at just seventeen heading to the King’s Cross area of Sydney where he joined the (previously instrumental) group that would help cement his legend.

Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs – a bluesy beat band completed by Vince Maloney (guitar – later with The Bee Gees), Tony Barber (guitar – replacing Valentine Jones), John Watson (bass) and drummer Col Baigent – quickly became one of the most popular groups in Aus, securing a number one single in Sydney with their version of Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Poison Ivy’ (1964 – a record most famous for holding The Beatles off the top spot). An assortment of further hits followed, including the national number one, ‘I Told the Brook/Funny Face’ in the early summer of 1965. By now, dynamic leader Billy Thorpe and his band could declare themselves the country’s top indigenous group, a position they held until a financial dispute later that year saw the original line-up dissipate. (Despite some further chart entries for the new-look Aztecs, the crown was thereafter claimed by newer pop acts such as The Easybeats.)

Thorpe looked to a new direction toward the end of the sixties, his outgoing personality also securing him television host slots, but the spectre of bankruptcy placed the artist’s future in considerable doubt. A harder, bluesier version of The Aztecs then emerged at the start of the seventies, its ever-mutating roster boasting such luminaries as Lobby Loyde, the legendary Aussie guitarist who later played with Rose Tattoo – and who survived Thorpe by just two months
(
April 2007
). In early 1972, the ‘new’ Aztecs landed Thorpe another enormous Australian hit with ‘Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy)’, bolstered by a triumphant performance at that year’s Sunbury Festival.

In his career, however, Billy Thorpe made few inroads into the charts of other nations, and this was not improved by fitful attempts at a solo career. Having moved to the USA, Thorpe left the music industry to pursue business ventures – which included a toy company with former band mate Barber. A return to Aus in the nineties, however, saw the singer welcomed with open arms, as he was now an elder statesman of the Aussie rock scene. Thorpe’s advancing years only enhanced his raucous singing style, fans old and new flocking to his shows as an artist perhaps best enjoyed in concert made a successful return to live performance. Thorpe’s tireless touring eventually caught up with him, the singer dying of a massive heart attack at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. He was just sixty years old.

MARCH

Wednesday 7

Bill Chinnock

(Newark, New Jersey, 12 November 1947)

(The Storytellers)

(Various acts)

A stalwart of the Jersey Shore music scene during the sixties, Bill Chinnock was leader of the influential Storytellers, a band not especially recalled for its own output, though it had significant impact in break-ing future local heroes, The E Street Band. The Storytellers – who issued the 1968 single ‘Cry to Me’ on Kama Sutra – also featured fledgling musicians Danny Federici (keys) and Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, who moved with Chinnock to his next act, The Downtown Tangiers Rockin’ Rhythm & Blues Band. An observer was the young Bruce Springsteen, who, upon the group’s split, poached Federici and Lopez for his own projects.

Bill Chinnock, meanwhile, moved to Maine and, despite continued problems with record companies, issued a series of blues recordings, the best-received perhaps 1978’s
Badlands,
which found the musician hooking up once more with Lopez and also Randy and Michael Brecker (the latter of whom died just before Chinnock
(
January 2007)).
A brief relocation to Nashville, Tennessee brought out a more ‘countrified’ flavour to his work, his later career seeing collaborations with Roberta Flack and The Doobie Brothers – though Chinnock’s briefly-vaunted membership with this band never came to pass. A year or so before his death, Bill Chinnock had been diagnosed with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that destroys the immune system. Having been in considerable pain for some time, Chinnock took his own life at his home in Yarmouth, Maine.

See also
Danny Federici (
April 2008)

Friday 9

Brad Delp

(Danvers, Massachusetts, 12 June 1951)

Boston

(Various acts)

A higher-profile suicide in this week was that of former Boston front man, Brad Delp. It was a sad end to a career that had begun at a Mr Coffee factory in Delp’s home town of Danvers, Massachusetts.

Enthusiastic and distinctive young singer/multi-instrumentalist Delp met his future band mates while working for the Hot-Watt Company in 1969, innovative musician and technician Tom Scholz recruiting him for his Mother’s Milk project with mutual pal Barry Goudreau (guitar). After a few years and no small amount of hard work, Epic Records decided that they liked the group’s demos but hated the name: thus, Boston (completed by bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian) were born in 1975.

The success of their debut album –
Boston
(1976) – is the stuff of classic-rock mythology. Driven by the enduring international hit ‘More Than a Feeling’ (US #5; UK #22), plus several other group standards, this record has gone on to sell over twenty million copies worldwide (remaining the second-biggest selling rock debut in US history, after that of Guns n’ Roses) – and in its wake has influenced an entire generation of wannabe axe-heroes. But, having almost singlehandedly ushered in the era of ‘stadium rock’ (see Foreigner, Journey, Styx, etc), Boston as individuals were barely recognised, despite extraordinary commercial success, a deserved Grammy nomination and – remarkably – the holding of their first New York concert at Madison Square Gardens itself. (More familiar than its members was the band’s ‘guitarship’ logo that seemed to appear everywhere.)

Almost apologetically – and despite bearing more than a striking resemblance to its predecessor – Boston’s second record
Don’t Look Back
managed a mere seven million copies in the US two years later. (This also claimed a Top Five single in the title track.) It seemed that the Boston juggernaut could not be stopped: even a protracted lawsuit between Scholz and former manager Paul Ahern saw an unlikely triumph for the band, Boston overcoming this (and a few line-up changes) to return with the MCA album
Third Stage
(1986). Fans flocked as though the band had never been away, and both album and lead single ‘Amanda’ topped the US charts.

‘I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation. I have lost my desire to live.’

The suicide note of Brad Delp

Delp, whose distinctive soaring vocal had undeniably set the band apart from their rivals, decided to call time on Boston in 1990, and sales and chart positions for the next record,
Walk On
(1994), were clearly affected by his departure. The singer – who’d been collaborating with the long-departed Goudreau on other projects – nevertheless couldn’t stay away and joined Boston on tour the following year.

A fifth Boston album, 2002’s
Corporate America,
boasted more of Brad Delp’s vocals and musical input, but became the group’s first to suffer the ignominy of failing to dent the Billboard Top Forty. It was to be his last recording with Boston, a final concert with the band seen out in late 2006.