The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (327 page)

Saturday 26

Jeff Salen

(Bronx, New York, 1952)

Wayne County & The Electric Chairs

Tuff Darts

(Various acts)

Looking like a genial Mafia hitman, guitarist Jeffrey Salen became a familiar face to those who followed the burgeoning New York rock scene during the mid-to-late-seventies. The musician – who’d graduated from the NY School of Visual Arts alongside Blondie’s Chris Stein – played stints with many of the city’s protopunk outfits, including the notorious Wayne Jayne) County & The Electric Chairs.

Salen’s most affectionately remembered band, however, is likely to be Tuff Darts, a rockabilly flavoured act he co-founded that was featured prominently at the city’s fabled CBGB nightclub. Some of the guitarist’s tunes – such as the singles ‘All For the Love of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and ‘(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste’ – have become classics of that era, as has the Billboard-bothering album
Tuff Darts
(1978). Despite this, the Robert ‘RG’ Gordon-fronted band are usually only recalled by those who saw their highly charged performances at one of rock’ most cherished clubs.

‘People weren’t talking about The Ramones or Blondie back then (in 1975)– all you heard about was Patti Smith, Television and Tuff Darts.’

John Holmstrom, journalist,
Punk
magazine

Jeff Salen managed to maintain a decent profile as a session man after Tuff Darts folded. He contributed to the Sparks’ album
Big Beat
(1976) and also played with Marky Ramone’s Backstreet Boys. The guitarist – who broke a long hiatus with the bluesy solo album
The Endless Road
in 2005 – died in New York from a coronary.

FEBRUARY

Saturday 9

Scot Halpin

(Thomas Scot Halpin - Muscatine, Iowa, 3 February 1954)

(The Who)

(Various acts)

Scot Halpin grabbed fifteen minutes of fame as a teenage musician, sitting in on drums for one of the world’s biggest and most powerful groups. Halpin was proficient on most rock instruments, playing with a variety of bands during his professional life: names such as The Sponges, Funhouse, Folklore and SnakeDoctor will mean something to those who knew Halpin as composer in residence at Sausalito’s Headlands Center for the Arts.

Unquestionably, however, the highlight of his musical career came early on. In November 1973, Halpin bought tickets to see The Who – at the height s of their powers as they toured behind the newly released
Quadrophenia
album. Halpin had only recently moved to San Francisco, where the band, and opening act Lynyrd Skynyrd, were playing Daly City’s Cow Palace arena. Unfortunately for Daltrey, Townshend and Entwistle, on this evening Keith Moon had, for whatever reason, chosen to take horse tranquilisers with his brandy. Moon proceeded to pass out at his kit not once but twice (during ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Magic Bus’), prompting a flustered Townshend to apologise and request a sitin drummer from the audience. Despite not having played in a year, teenager Halpin stepped into the breach, even emulating his hero Moon with a calming shot of brandy (but no tranquilisers). The makeweight percussionist negotiated some tricky moments to play almost half an hour with The Who. Daltrey, who praised Halpin’s nerve and ability, presented him with a tour jacket and promised him payment of $1,000.

Scot Halpin – whose career could never have reached such heights again – was remembered by surviving members of The Who following his sad and premature death from a malignant brain tumour.

See also
Keith Moon (
August 1978); John Entwistle (
June 2002)

Sunday 10

Chris Townson

(Battersea, London, 24 July 1947)

John’s Children

Jet

Radio Stars

(Various acts)

By eerie coincidence, another musician who’d stepped in to replace an out-of-commission Keith Moon died just one day later. Chris Townson fell in love with the UK’s blossoming blues and beat scenes as a boy, finding a kindred spirit in singer Andy Ellison. The pair fashioned their own spit ‘n’ sawdust band, Clockwork Onions, which eventually morphed into John’s Children – a band groomed by respected manager Simon Napier-Bell, who felt that, while they could barely play, they knew how to put on a performance. The Who were to discover this during a 1967 German tour in which their openers – by now boasting a young Marc Bolan on guitar – were sent home early for upstaging the more illustrious headliner. This, despite the fact that Townson had become a substitute for Keith Moon after the drummer had broken both legs attempting to gatecrash a party. Townson’s playing had apparently been so impressive that many audience members just assumed that it
was
Moon.

‘I only played three numbers and I was dead! Their energy was staggering!’

Scot Halpin, in interview with
Rolling Stone

Townson and Ellison disbanded John’s Children later that year to fashion their own glamrock outfit, Jet. Unfortunately, the era of stack heels and glitz was coming to an end, thus only one eponymous album emerged on CBS in 1975. A marginal bit of success was found when Jet became Radio Stars, a new wave act that were some five-to-ten years older than most of their contemporaries. But the drummer had quit by the time the band made the charts.

After his brief tenure with Radio Stars, Chris Townson moved on to a successful career as an illustrator of children’s books and album sleeves. In the late nineties, John’s Children made a surprise reappearance with a handful of live dates and, in 2006, put out a record to coincide with England’s participation in that summer’s World Cup. Townson dropped out after his diagnosis with cancer and passed away two years later.

See also
Marc Bolan (
September 1977); Keith Moon (
August 1978)

Goiden Oldies#61

Freddie Bell

(Ferdinando Bello - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 29 September 1931)