The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (375 page)

Her death occurred while she and boyfriend Stephen Reeves vacationed in Bharatpur, India. O’Sullivan was killed instantly when the couple’s rental car crashed between Agra and Jaipur: her partner escaped with serious injuries. Among those paying tribute was Westlife vocalist Nicky Byrne, who then suffered the loss of his father, popular Irish cabaret singer Nicky Byrne Sr, just twenty-four hours later.

Friday 6

Jacho

(Denis Quillard - Paris, France, 3 July 1957)

Stinky Toys

In a scene dominated by English acts, Stinky Toys stood out as the first (and for a while, ‘only’) French punk band when they formed in Rennes during 1976. The group – who were, in truth, closer to the bluesier sound of a Rolling Stones or Pretty Things – muscled their way onto the newwave scene, playing London’s 100 Club Punk Festival that year alongside UK standard-bearers The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Buzzcocks and The Damned. Their album
Stinky Toys
(Polydor, 1977) was, however, roundly ridiculed by the press and the group was shortly dropped by their label.

Guitarist Jacno and singer Elli Medeiros jumped from what was clearly a sinking (stinking?) ship by the early eighties, fashioning their own duo and, finally, gaining some better responses for their three electro-flavoured albums,
Tout va Sauter
(1980),
Boomerang
(1982) and
Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune
(1984). Jacno – who procured his stage name from a French designer – recorded as a solo artist thereafter.

Jacno, who had been a chain-smoker for much of his life, died from cancer at a Paris hospital at the age of fifty-two. The musician is credited by a number of later acts – including the successful Air, Daft Punk and Tahiti 80 – for having pioneered French electropop.

Sunday 8

Jerry Fuchs

(Gerhardt Fuchs - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 31 December 1974)

LCD Soundsystem

MSTRKRFT

!!!

(Turing Machine)

(Maserati)

(The Juan Maclean)

(Various acts)

Gerhardt ‘Jerry’ Fuchs was the percussionist with US altrock bands Turing Machine, The Juan Maclean and Maserati, but gained most of his recognition as a drummer with James Murphy’s acclaimed LCD Soundsystem and MSTRKRFT, with whom he appeared on
The David Letterman Show.

A diverse creative talent, Fuchs studied graphic design at the University of Georgia (he was later to be employed by
Entertainment Weekly),
simultaneously immersing himself in the fertile Athens music scene, which had brought him into contact with local heroes Maserati. Fuchs’s remarkable ‘motorik’ style earned the drummer some serious trips across the US, Fuchs moving to New York and guesting with Vineland before settling (briefly) with post-rockers Turing Machine at the end of the century. (Fuchs also played with Sacramento oddballs !!!, with whom he recorded the Billboard 200-scraping
Myth Takes
(2007) and even managed to make time for sessions with name acts Moby and Cloudland.)

His life was, however, to end in unfortunate circumstances. Early on 8 November 2009, Jerry Fuchs was trapped in a broken elevator during a fundraising event in his home borough of Brooklyn. As the musician attempted to jump free, his clothing caught on masonry, causing him to fall five storeys down the shaft to his death. The tragedy is thought to be the first of such fatal accidents in rock music since the mysterious death of Deep Purple roadie Patsy Collins in Jakarta at the end of 1975.

Fuchs was the second Maserati drummer to meet a tragic end, Mikel Gius - who also played with !!! - having been killed in a road accident in December 2005.

Sunday 15

Derek B

(Derek Boland - Hammersmith, London, 15 January 1965)

The United Kingdom was quick to embrace the ‘new’ US rap culture at the turn of the eighties, however it had been somewhat sluggish in creating its own stars of the genre. Young Derek Boland was certainly among the first, hawking his mobile DJ unit around London as a fifteen-year-old, and knocking on doors until the then-illegal station Kiss FM gave him a shot and a slot in 1981. The teenager thanked them by disappearing to start his own pirate station in 1982, which at that time was the only way to play and hear obscure hip-hop music on a regular basis in Britain. After working as a surrogate A&R man with the Music of Life label, Boland began recording himself as EZQ, which was to herald a dramatic change in his status.

As a DJ, he’d been widely recognised as ‘Derek B’, now using this epithet for the single ‘Goodgroove’ (1988) – a cut that surprised even the artist by shooting into the UK Top Twenty that February. Derek B was invited onto influential chart showcase
Top of the Pops,
as he was for the follow-up, the omnipresent ‘Bad Young Brother’. This also wasted little time in charting impressively, ensuring that B’s debut long-player,
Bullet From a Gun
(1988), fared well. (Despite his by-now considerable recognition within bona fide UK rap, Derek B’s biggest songwriting hit was, ironically, the soccer novelty, Anfield Rap’, which made the UK Top Five for Liverpool FC that summer.)

With the popularity of homegrown hip-hop artists quickly receding, Derek B faltered with his next record and soon disappeared from the public eye. Although his recording success was relatively shortlived, the artist worked with a number of key contemporaries such as The Cookie Crew and Eric B & Rakim. Derek B had led a quieter life until his unexpected death from a heart attack at just forty-four years old.

Monday 23

Pim Koopman

(Wilhelmus Frederikus Koopman - Hilversum, Netherlands, 11 March 1953)

Kayak

Percussion and synth-player Pim Koopman co-founded the internationally popular Kayak as a teenager at the height of prog-rock in 1972. The Dutch musician – who was also largely responsible for the arrangements of his band’s music – lined up alongside Max Werner (lead vocal/mellotron), Ton Scherpenzeel (keys/accordion), Cees van Leeuwen (bass/harmonica) and John Slager (guitar) during Kayak’s most successful period.

Signing with British label Harvest – already home to prog-gods Pink Floyd (and later to Kayak’s fellow countrymen, Focus) – the band released the albums
See See the Sun
(1973),
Kayak II
(1974),
Royal Bed Bouncer
(1975) and the prophetically titled
The Last Encore
(1976). By this time, Koopman was already beginning to suffer from deteriorating health, the artist opting from hereon to work in the studio only. Koopman made a successful return to a revived Kayak in 1999, the band recording another six studio albums. However, in the interim he’d worked as a highly sought-after producer: among his charges were successful Dutch rock act Robby Valentine and the band Diesel, with whom he also recorded two albums. (With the latter, Koopman enjoyed a surprise US Top Forty hit in 1980 with ‘Sausalito Summernight’.)

Pim Koopman was genuinely versatile, penning six pop tunes that were entered into the Eurovision Song Contest over the span of two decades, and even providing Dutch voice-overs for the US cartoon movies
Happy Feet
and
Lilo & Stitch.
Having suffered heart issues for several years, Koopman passed away following a cardiac arrest in his birth town.

Koopman’s Diesel band mate, bassist Frank Papendrecht, had passed away following a heart attack just six days before.

Golden Oldies#102

Al Alberts

(Al Albertini - Chester, Pennsylvania, 10 August 1922)

The Four Aces

Al Alberts - one of the early heroes of the US doo-wop quartets - was an acclaimed singer and composer whose work is still widely played today. Alberts was one of many talents to graduate from South Philadelphia High School, the budding musician completing military service with the US Navy before working with singer Dave Mahoney - the two of them then recruiting Rosario Vaccaro (trumpet) and Lou Silvestri (drums) to form The Four Aces.