The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (385 page)

On the night of 6 March 2010, Mark Linkous–who’d been visiting friends in his new home town of Knoxville, Tennessee–drank heavily and exchanged texts outdoors with an undisclosed friend. The musician then informed his hosts that he wished to take a walk–which he did. Linkous was then seen seated in an alleyway on Irwin Street: here, he produced a rifle and shot himself in the heart, dying instantly. Linkous, who had been married since 1991, was known to have been suffering personal problems at the time of his death. Tributes to the musician poured in over the next few weeks, with Patti Smith, Steve Albini, Radiohead, Death Cab For Cutie, The Flaming Lips and The Jesus Lizard all quick to express their condolences. Finally, the last Sparklehorse record,
Dark Night of the Soul
–once again a collaboration with Danger Mouse–gained a release in July of 2010.

Wednesday 10

Micky Jones

(Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, 7 June 1946)

Man

(Various acts)

Micky Jones was the virtuoso guitarist with Welsh rockers Man, and by far the longest-standing member of the band. He was originally the engine-room of sixties pop hopefuls The Bystanders–Jones, Ray Williams (bass), Jeff Jones (drums–replaced in 1970 by Terry Williams) and Clint Space (Clive John–keyboards)–a band originally presented as a ‘Four Seasons/Beach Boys’-styled harmony-pop unit. The Bystanders were somewhat unlucky in that their best-known singles, ‘98.6’ (1967) and ‘Jesamine’ (1968), were concurrently much bigger hits for other artists (Keith, and The Casuals, respectively).

A dramatic change of direction followed the recruitment of singer/multi-instrumentalist Roger ‘Deke’ Leonard. This then became the first line-up of Man, now a psychedelic/prog outfit signed to Pye, for whom an impressive first record,
Revelation,
was issued in January 1969. This record was home to the notorious ‘Erotica’, which suffered a BBC ban thanks to its fairly blatant use of a simulated orgasm. (It became the first highprofile track to portray this, a few months ahead of Gainsbourg & Birkin’s ‘Je t’aime’ and some years before Donna Summer took the idea to a whole new level.) Despite considerable label-hopping over the next seven years, Man issued more than a dozen studio/live albums, with
Back into the Future
(1973),
Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics
(1974),
Maximum Darkness
(1975) and
Welsh Connection
(1976) all finding a Top Forty placing during the band’s most popular period. Micky Jones was the only consistent member on all of these recordings, and was rumoured even to have overdubbed guest-guitarist John Cipollina’s work on
Maximum Darkness.

After Man’s break up in 1976, Jones continued with a variety of projects–including his own Micky Jones Band–before the group’s fitful reunion in 1983. This new species of Man featured Jones, Leonard, Martin Ace (bass) and John ‘Pugwash’ Weathers (ex-Gentle Giant, drums) and stayed together for the next thirteen years until the drummer returned to his former band, to be replaced by the returning Williams.

Jones’s diagnosis with a brain tumour in 2002 required him to leave for treatment, the guitarist replaced by his own son, George, who also stood in for Leonard when required. Despite an initially positive response to treatment, Jones Sr left Man for good in 2005: for the last three years of his life, he required constant care, eventually living in a Swansea hospice. His peaceful death was met with tributes from across the rock world. According to Leonard, Jones was ‘the greatest improvisational guitarist in the world’.

Clive John passed away from emphysema in August 2011, Ray Williams having died in 1993.

Tuesday 16

Ksenija Pajčin

(Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, 3 December 1977)

(Various acts)

A successful Serbian singer, model and dancer, Ksenija Pajcin was as much recognised for her provocative dress and stage act as she was for her music. The starlet had begun on the dance floor, then finding a berth with pop duo The Duck, in which she courted controversy when discovered to have lip-synced in live performance. Unsurprisingly, Pajčin was not noted for having a particularly strong voice, however she managed to issue three albums–
’Too Hot to Handle
(1997),
Extreme
(2001) and
Siguma
(2005), plus a greatest hits package–in ten years as a solo artist. And when she didn’t have a record out, Pajcin was happy to talk openly of her sex life and the numerous cosmetic ‘improvements’ she’d made to her body.

The most shocking aspect of Ksenija Pajcin’s story, however, was her death. For some time, the singer had conducted an onoff relationship with model Filip Kapisoda, a former sportsman and reality-television star who was ten years her junior. In January of 2010, the couple had made headlines by narrowly escaping death in a car accident; however, this was merely the precursor to an even greater drama. Some days after police had been called to Pajcin’s apartment to investigate a disturbance, the singer’s mother discovered her daughter’s body and then that of Kapisoda in a separate room. It appears that Ksenija Pajcin had been shot three times by the model, reportedly in anger that she had aborted their child. Kapisoda had then turned the weapon on himself.

Wednesday 17

Alex Chilton

(Memphis, Tennessee, 28 December 1950)

The Box Tops

Big Star

(Various acts)

Watching Alex Chilton’s assured owning of the stage as he gruffed his way through ‘The Letter’, it’s still near impossible to believe that the singer of The Box Tops was, at that time, still in his mid-teens. In truth, the angular, floppy-haired front man had been a pop-starin-waiting since winning a series of Memphis talent shows, his musical background clearly having paid off. Yet stardom remained a fleeting experience for Chilton.

The son of jazz musician Sidney Chilton, Alex was a quiet and thoughtful soul, denouncing the hell-raising of his peers as he eschewed what he considered the outmoded values of his forebears. He’d begun as an introspective guitarist, bassist and song-writer–and it took the prompting of others to get Chilton up on stage without an instrument, this proving a revelation even to him. Recruited by manager Dan Penn as front ‘man’ for his locally established unit The Box Tops (formerly The DeVilles), Chilton experienced the rare honour of a credible US number-one single at the age of just sixteen, watching in astonishment as ‘The Letter’ became a vast global hit during 1967. This admittedly fabulous single seemed to defy classification, bearing all the immediate hallmarks of a pop/beat standard, yet with a lyric (by Wayne Carson Thompson) and a delivery that were more consistent with contemporary soul outings. And all was dished up by Chilton and co within two minutes. By the end of the year, ‘The Letter’ was on its way to
four-million
worldwide sales, there having been Top Ten placings in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and, of course, the UK. (The song also topped the charts of Chile, Israel, Norway and Poland.)

How Chilton and The Box Tops were to respond to such an impact appeared a conundrum until they almost turned the trick again with Penn and Spooner Oldham’s million-seller ‘Cry Like a Baby’ (1968, US number two; UK Top Twenty), the group in the midst of a steady series of Hot 100 visits. (A few of Chilton’s own efforts were also to find their way onto b-sides and albums at this time.) Then, after a final Top Twenty hit with Thompson’s ‘Soul Deep’ (1969), Chilton and guitarist Gary Talley–by now the only remaining members from DeVilles days–decided to call it a day.

While The Box Tops remained briefly extant as a studio group, their mercurial former leader was away recording his own music. After such huge commercial success, it would have been tough for most to deal with such a drop-off in attention, but Chilton seemed happy enough, and was to augment his reputation (if not his coffers) with his next band. For many, the recordings of Big Star–Chilton, Chris Bell (guitar/vocals), Andy Hummel (bass) and Jody Stephens (drums)–surpassed anything produced by The Box Tops. Although the band (often labelled as ‘powerpop’) weren’t to enjoy similar chart success, Big Star issued a series of highly influential albums including
#1 Record
(1972),
Radio City
(1974) and
Third/Sister Lovers
(1978). Here, though, it was to be inner-band tension that unsteadied the ship: the sizeable gap ahead of the third Big Star record was down to a diminishing of interest from Chilton, who had become weary of studio infighting (mainly between Bell and himself), the singer/songwriter effectively jumping ship during its 1974 recording.

Over the next two decades, Chilton recorded a number of variable solo albums, also playing with a plethora of other artists (including The Replacements, who issued a song with his name as its title), and producing The Cramps, The Gories and several records for Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. Big Star’s surprise return during the nineties was partially down to highprofile homage paid in the work of newer rock collectives, such as REM, Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream–all of whom had been equally fast to pay tribute to Chilton in the press. In 2005, the band released
In Space,
their first studio recording in over thirty years, although by then only Chilton and Stephens remained from the original line-up. (Chilton also deigned to appear at Box Tops reunions on top of this.)

Alex Chilton–whose songs have been covered by such names as Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith, Cat Power, Garbage and Cheap Trick–died from a heart attack at his home in New Orleans.

Chilton thus reunites in rock’s Great Beyond with former Big Star sparring-partner Chris Bell, who died one day before the singer’s twenty-eighth birthday (
December 1978). Just four months after Chilton’s death, Hummel lost his lengthy battle with cancer (eJuly 2010). Former Box Tops drummer Thomas Boggs died from cancer in 2008.