The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (412 page)

Wednesday 20

Gerard Smith

(Harlem, New York, 1974)

TV on the Radio

Brooklyn-based art-rock warriors TV on the Radio were left in a state of limbo following the death of bass player Gerard Smith at the age of just thirty-six. The eclectic and well-respected five-piece had been assembled by Nigerian performer Tunde Adebimpe (vocals) and Dave Sitek (guitar) after the pair began composing as a duo in 2001. With Kyp Malone (vocals/guitar) already on board, Adebimpe then hired former art-student Smith after picking out the musician as he busked at a Brooklyn subway in 2005. It transpired that each was a fan of the other’s work.

TV on the Radio’s third album – and their first to feature multi-instrumentalist Smith – was the excellent
Return to Cookie Mountain
(Interscope, 2006), which missed the Top Forty by just one place, but was named Album of the Year by
Spin
magazine. (Such had been the impact of the band that David Bowie contributed his vocals to this record.) Its follow-up,
Dear Science
(2008), was also highly acclaimed and broke the band into Billboard’s Top Twenty.

With everything apparently going to plan, TV on the Radio were then dealt a heartbreak-ing blow: Gerard Smith was diagnosed with lung cancer in early February of 2011. Although it seemed early on that the bassist was responding well to treatment, he sadly died just six weeks later, leaving a partner and young son. TV on the Radio’s fifth album,
Nine Types of Light
(2011), proved a marvellous and fitting legacy to the late musician, hitting the US Top Twenty on the day of his passing.

Monday 25

Poly Styrene

(Marianne Joan Elliot - Bromley, Kent, England, 3 July 1957)

X-Ray Spex

Born to a Scots-Irish mother and a Somalian father, Marianne Elliot had been one of the UK’s most recognised punk scenesters ahead of her brief fame as singer Poly Styrene with the great X-Ray Spex – standing out initially for her preference of dental braces over the underground glamour considered an integral part of the lifestyle. Despite the movement’s alleged hatred for all things ‘hippy’, Poly was unapologetic in her role as punk’s barefoot princess, and the singer was soon known for her highly individual style and rhetoric that decried the falseness and disposability of late-seventies Britain.

DEAD INTERESTING!

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUICIDE?

What are the odds of superstar rock chameleon David Bowie proving an unlucky talisman for your TV hour? Believe it or not, in September 1977, booking The Thin White Duke was tantamount to booking The Angel of Darkness …

T Rex front man and pin-up Marc Bolan had been enjoying a brief resurgence with his own UK showcase that summer and had booked The Clash (who’d once forewarned us of this particular year) to appear. However, with Strummer and co unavailable, Bowie (who happened to be in town to promote his
Heroes
album) agreed to fill in with a short-notice appearance on his old glam buddy’s show. As the pair camped it up in fine style, Bolan slipped off the stage to his and Bowie’s great amusement. Within seven days, laughter turned to tears with the T Rex front man’s sudden death following an auto accident in London
(
September 1977).

Some days later, Bowie was also a late booking for Bing Crosby’s prerecorded US Christmas special. Bing was apparently nonplussed to be working with Bowie (of whom he’d barely heard anyway), but agreed to duet with him on ‘Little Drummer Boy’. A month on, Crosby collapsed and died on a Spanish golf course. Attempts to book Bowie onto subsequent television shows featuring Hootie & The Blowfish have thus far been sadly thwarted.

The Fairer Sex Pistols? Poly Styrene
(front center),
surrounded by newwave contemporaries Chrissie Hynde, Deborah Harry, Viv Albertine, Siouxsie Sioux and Pauline Black

The singer had run away by sixteen – reportedly with just three pounds in her pocket – to live a bohemian lifestyle. She released a one-off reggae-flavoured single, ‘Silly Billy’ (1976, as Mari Elliot), before adopting her new moniker and forming a band. As leader of X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene wrote and enjoyed a series of hits including ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours’ (1977), ‘The Day the World Turned Dayglo’, ‘Identity’ and ‘Germ-Free Adolescence’ (all 1978, all UK Top Forty) – each vignette delivered in Poly’s unabashed squeal and augmented by the honking saxophone of Lora Logic (Susan Whitby – later replaced by Rudi Thomson). Perhaps second only to that of Patti Smith, her work at this time can be seen as having a huge impact on feminist punk, cited as influence by the next generation of artists such as America’s Le Tigre and Sleater-Kinney.

Health issues, however, meant that Poly’s time in the spotlight was effective but brief: in 1978, she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, correctly identified over a decade later as a minor bipolar disorder – but certainly nothing that should have capsized her recording career. Her band having disintegrated, however, Poly Styrene issued a solo album,
Translucence
(United Artists, 1981). With her post-Spex solo career faltering somewhat, Elliot-Said – now having adopted her real/married name – devoted herself to the Hare Krishna movement, recording further work through their studios, such as the jazz-tinged
Gods and Goddesses
(1986). Some of X-Ray Spex briefly reconvened to record a second album, the largely ignored
Conscious Consumer
(1995). Over the next two decades, the singer only reappeared sporadically, in 2008 marking the thirtieth anniversary of Rock Against Racism with a spirited rendition of ‘Bondage’ before adoring fans at Victoria Park.

During an early 2011 interview, Marianne Elliot-Said revealed that she was battling advanced-stage breast cancer: the singer was shortly to move into a hospice, which came as a shock to her many admirers. Before her premature death from the disease, Elliot-Said – once more as Poly Styrene – managed to release a critically acclaimed album,
Generation Indigo
(Spinner, 2011). She is survived by her daughter Celeste Bell-Dios Santos, the lead vocalist with Spanish-based dance act, Debutant Disco.

See also
Jak Airport (
August 2004)

Tuesday 26

Phoebe Snow

(Phoebe Ann Laub - New York, 12 July 1950)

Expected to follow Carole King as America’s next big female name in soft-rock and blues, singer/songwriter Phoebe Snow is best recalled these days for one major hit record. Snow was another born into a musical dynasty, finding her way via Teaneck, New Jersey, into the Greenwich Village scene during the early seventies.

By 1973, Snow had signed with Denny Cordell’s Shelter label, her Grammy-nominated debut album
Phoebe Snow
(1974) nudging platinum in the US. This record contained the Billboard Top Five hit, ‘Poetry Man’, the song that particularly prompted many to tout the singer/guitarist as a serious name for the future; Snow was narrowly beaten to the Grammy for Best New Artist by Marvin Hamlisch. Although a follow-up album,
Second Childhood
(1976), earned her another gold disc, these very much proved to be her peak years. ‘Gone At Last’ (1975, US Top Forty – with Paul Simon) and ‘Every Night’ (1979, UK Top Forty) were to give her further hits, but Snow’s career was effectively put on hold while she cared for her severely disabled daughter Valerie, born in 1975. The singer had separated from her husband and therefore supported them both by recording radio and television jingles, mainly for IT&T and Bloomingdale’s. (Snow had, in fact, borrowed her own stage name from an archaic advertising campaign by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad.) In the meantime, the singer’s recording career was in limbo and she fell foul of record company lawsuits more than once for contract breaches.