The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (378 page)

Steeleye Span enjoyed their best years during the mid-seventies, hooking four Top Forty albums and a pair of substantial hits in the traditional Yuletide hymn ‘Gaudete’ (1973, UK Top Twenty) and the big-selling ‘All Around My Hat’ (1975, UK Top Five). The festive release times for the latter discs clearly helped them to shift; however, fine 45s such as ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ (1974) and ‘Fighting for Strangers’ (1976) were ignored and the Span procured no further hits in spite of considerable BBC support. Hart and Prior therefore went their separate ways, the former issuing a self-titled solo album in 1979 (although this can perhaps be viewed as a Span release, given that various members contributed to its recording.) Further output was restricted to collections of children’s songs (Hart was by now a father) and the occasional backing vocal, although Hart did go on to produce some of The Monochrome Set’s recordings.

Suffering poor health since the late eighties, Tim Hart had emigrated to the Canary Islands to convalesce. Although he rallied for a good number of years, the singer passed away from lung cancer on Christmas Eve.

Friday 25

Vic Chesnutt

(James Chesnutt - Jacksonville, Florida, 12 November 1964)

(Various acts)

A crippling, life-threatening accident at the age of eighteen might be a spirit-breaker to many, but for aspiring singer/songwriter James ‘Vic’ Chesnutt, it was the spur to achieve his life’s goal. Chesnutt was brought up in Zebulon, Georgia, by adoptive parents and encouraged to play music and write songs since his childhood. A horrific car crash in 1983 was to tighten this focus further. Partially paralysed and wheelchair-bound, Chesnutt took his engaging brand of urban folk to the circuit; a change of location allowed him to spend time in Nashville, before winding up back in Georgia, and specifically, back in the vibrant scene in Athens. Chesnutt– formerly a founding member of The LaDi-Das – was spotted at the 40 Watt Club by local hero Michael Stipe of REM. The impressed star thus produced the singer’s first two albums,
Little
(1990) and
West of Rome
(1991).

Despite this connection, these records were not to make Chesnutt an overnight sensation, the often self-effacing artist steadily developing a reputation within the music press for his darkly comic output. Other artists had been paying attention, as well, as was evidenced by the
Sweet Relief II
charity album (1996, curated by afflicted musician Victoria Williams), which saw acts such as Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Live, Sparklehorse and, of course, REM take on Chesnutt’s songs. This record fared well and a breakthrough was now possible for the artist. Capitol signed him for two albums,
About to Choke
(1996) and
The Salesman and Bernadette
(1998 – featuring Lambchop as the artist’s backing band). Chesnutt’s raw subject matter and delivery didn’t sit especially well with a major label though, and by
Merriment
(2000), the singer/songwriter was back with an independent label in Backburner.

Chesnutt remained remarkably active in the studio, issuing records under his own identity as well as that of alterego ‘brute’, as whom he recorded with the Georgia band Widespread Panic. In his career, the guitarist worked with several other notable names, including Cowboy Junkies, Godspeed! You Black Emperor and former Throwing Muses leader Kristin Hersh, with whom he’d toured extensively in 2000.

Vic Chesnutt – who’d recently spoken candidly about his varied attempts at suicide – died on Christmas Day 2009 from an overdose of muscle relaxants in an Athens, Georgia, hospital. Given his recent revelations, it is to be assumed that the administering was deliberate.

Tony Bellamy

(Anthony Avila - 12 September 1946*)

Redbone

(Peter & The Wolves)

(Various acts)

Born Anthony Avila, Tony ‘T-Bone’ Bellamy was a Yaqui Native American who co-founded the successful swamp/R & B band Redbone in 1968. Bellamy, a gifted singer, pianist and guitarist schooled in a number of disciplines, including flamenco, earned his break within the Moby Grape-spin-off band Peter & The Wolves; the musician also backed artists like Dobie Gray in his early days. However, Bellamy was to find great, if fleeting fame as singer, guitarist and keyboardist with the mixed-blood outfit after they signed with Epic in 1969.

Redbone – a Cajun expression meaning ‘half-breed’ – consisted of Bellamy, brothers Lolly (guitar/vocals) and Patrick Vasquez (bass/vocals) and Peter DePoe (aka Last Walking Bear, drums – replaced by Arturo Perez, then Butch Rillera). The band allegedly formed on the suggestion of Jimi Hendrix, himself part-Native American. Somewhat bravely, the group debuted with a double-album in
Redbone
(1970), though didn’t achieve Billboard 200 status until its follow-up
Potlatch
(1970), which included the minor hit single ‘Maggie’. The next album,
Message from a Drum
(1971), brought Redbone their first major international hit in ‘The Witch Queen of New Orleans’ (1971). The record narrowly missed the US Top Twenty, while only failing to top the UK charts that fall owing to the presence of Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’. Redbone’s interest in their own heritage saw the band run into trouble with the song ‘We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee’ (1973), which was rather predictably met with a US ban on its single release, although it scored the group a number-one hit in Europe. (The lively ‘Come and Get Your Love’ (1974, US Top Five) was a safer bet, this record becoming Redbone’s biggest American hit and selling in excess of a million copies.)

With little further success, however, Bellamy left Redbone in 1977, forming the lesser-known BimBam. Tony Bellamy – who was inducted into The Native American Music Association Hall of Fame in 2008 – died from liver failure in a Las Vegas hospital, also on Christmas Day. (He survived Lolly ‘Vegas’ Vasquez by just two months, the singer/guitarist succumbing to lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on 4 March 2010.)

‘Other people write about the bling and the booty. I write about the pus and the gnats. To me, that’s beautiful.’

Vic Chesnutt maps out the differences

*Some sources cite Bellamy’s birth year as 1940, but apparently this was only quoted in his early career to enable him to play the clubs.

Monday 28

James Owen Sullivan

(Huntington Beach, California, 10 February 1981)

Avenged Sevenfold

(Pinkly Smooth)

(Suburban Legends)

Rebranding himself as The Reverend Tholomew Plague (or simply ‘The Rev’), James Owen Sullivan was drummer and back-up vocalist with American metalcore band Avenged Sevenfold.

As a talented teenager, Sullivan could be found drumming with the vast post-ska collective Suburban Legends – also the home of later AS bassist Justin Sane (Justin Meacham) – though by 1999, the percussionist had decided on a somewhat different route to musical fame. With his Mayfair High School pals, Synyster Gates (Brian Haner, guitar/piano) and Zacky Vengeance (Zac Baker, guitar), Sullivan (also on piano) co-founded the Huntington Beach-based Avenged Sevenfold with M Shadows (Matt Sanders, vocals) and Matt Wendt (bass – replaced by Sane, and then Johnny Christ). Although not religiously motivated, the band arrived at their distinctive name through biblical references, the member identities largely nicknames they’d kept since high school.

With one record already under their belt, the group had a major breakthrough with the gold-selling
Waking the Fallen
(2003), which prompted a lucrative deal with Warner Brothers.
City of Evil
(2005) then became Avenged Sevenfold’s bestselling record to date, spawning a great single in ‘Bat Country’ (a gold-seller, co-written by The Rev and Shadows) which was enough to see the band walk off that year with MTV’s Best New Artist Award ahead of Rihanna, James Blunt and others. Sevenfold were now major-league, although it could be argued that the eponymous fourth album (2007) suffered somewhat from over-expectation: nevertheless, the record entered the Billboard Top Five and has since then earned the group a platinum disc. (Sullivan had kept himself amused by also fronting the occasional project Pinkly Smooth, an avantgarde metal band fashioned with Haner. This resulted in the album
Unfortunate Snort
(2001).)

Sadly, all was not as it seemed. Sullivan suffered from cardiomegaly (an enlarged heart) and had for some time been on strict medication to deal with the condition. On the evening of 28 December 2009, the musician and his girlfriend Leana MacFadden attended a friend’s wedding reception and Sullivan – having imbibed a considerable amount of alcohol – had forgotten whether or not he’d taken his daily dose. After over-compensating for this, the drummer was found deceased by his partner, having suffered acute polydrug intoxication. Despite an initial verdict of natural causes, Sullivan’s death was recorded as ‘accidental overdose’.

Avenged Sevenfold (with The Rev at far left): Sadly, the fallen couldn’t be woken

‘Australia’s most unique, gifted and uncompromising guitarist.’