The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (42 page)

Buckley’s work became increasingly impenetrable over the next few years: some of his habits, meanwhile, are all too familiar. The singer was no junkie, but he
was
very impressionable, taking substances on the whim of others; he’d also developed a predilection for pushing as far as he could, whether this meant driving too fast or drinking too much. After a sell-out show in Dallas, Buckley arrived inebriated at the Santa Monica home of his friend, music student Richard Keeling, who clearly did not wish to be disturbed. Thrusting some powder at the musician, Keeling washed his hands of Buckley as he snorted the drug, in the mistaken belief that it was cocaine. Within a short time, the singer was in a bad way, and had to be taken home to his second wife, Judy, who, believing he would sleep it off, put him to bed. She returned to him later to discover that he had turned blue – and had slipped away. A post mortem revealed that Tim Buckley had ingested both heroin and morphine. Keeling, as the supplier, was indicted on two charges of second-degree murder but charged with involuntary manslaughter.

If the rare music of Tim Buckley was to be transcended by anyone, it was by Jeff, the son he barely knew, who like his father was taken way, way too soon
(
May 1997).

JULY

Thursday 31

Tony Geraghty

(Republic of Ireland, 1952)

Brian McCoy

(Northern Ireland, 1942)

Fran O’Toole

(Republic of Ireland, 1948)

The Miami Showband

Three years after fourteen died in Derry on Bloody Sunday, a group of innocent musicians were cut down in similar scenes of senseless terrorism. A changing unit – in 1975 comprising Tony Geraghty (guitar), Des McAlea (saxophone), Brian McCoy (trumpet), Ray Millar (drums), Fran O’Toole (vocals), Dickie Rock (vocals) and Steven Travers (bass) – The Miami Showband were little more than just that: a good-time Dublin pop group with wide appeal and a number of albums to their name. They certainly posed little political threat to anyone.

The band had been visiting Banbridge, County Down, to play a concert at the Castle Ballroom, when terror struck. A splinter group of the notorious paramilitary organization the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) – known as the Shankhill Butchers – had been involved in several ruthless acts before. This time they chose to frame the Catholic members of the Showband as IRA-supporters attempting to smuggle munitions across the border. Thus an ambush was carried out on the group’s minibus just outside Newry; four UVF members set up a bogus army roadblock and flagged the vehicle down. When two of them tried to plant an explosive device in one of the band’s amps, it detonated, killing them both instantly. In the aftermath to this already grisly scene, Geraghty, McCoy and O’Toole were taken off the bus and summarily executed by shotgun. A year later, Thomas Crozier and Rodney McDowell – the two UVF members held responsible for the killings – were each sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

AUGUST

Wednesday 27

Bob Scholl

(Mount Vernon, Westchester, New York, 14 July 1938)

The Mello-Kings

Hailed as the ‘blackest-sounding white group’ of their day, The Mello-Kings deserve plaudits for being one of the first inter-racial vocal groups to achieve a level of national success. Led by first tenor Bob Scholl – along with his brother Jerry (lead) – the group fought their way out of the tough suburb of Mount Vernon to sign as teenagers with Al Silver’s Herald label. In August 1957, a single, ‘Tonite, Tonite’, was all ready to launch the band – then known as The Mellotones – to stardom, until surly Gee Records boss George Goldner pointed out to Silver that he already had a band in the charts with this name. Thus, The Mello-Kings were born – and the record gave them a huge R & B/airplay hit. It was in live performance that the band flourished most of all, a huge draw on the chitlin circuit during the late fifties, though they had further localized hits such as ‘Valerie’ (1958).

Despite no wider acceptance for The Mello-Kings, Bob Scholl managed to continue the group until 1969, finding a new outlet on the revival circuit – until his death in a New York boating accident.

OCTOBER

Wednesday 1

Al Jackson Jr

(Memphis, Tennessee, 27 November 1935)

Booker T & The MGs

Unassuming, congenial percussionist Al Jackson had the best possible start, playing the traps with his father, big-band leader Al Jackson Sr, at just five years old. His formidable style, energy and God-given ability to ‘sniff out the groove’ meant Jackson was seldom out of work. Beginning as a full-time member of his father’s jazz/dance band during his teens, via Willie Mitchell’s house band at Hi Records, he secured the enviable position of Stax house drummer with Booker T & The MGs. The latter – regularly lauded as the tightest backing band in the world – enjoyed a series of timeless international hits under their own steam, including ‘Green Onions’ (1962) and ‘Time Is Tight’ (1969). Members of the band also played on numerous hits for other artists/labels, including Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett.

Throughout his life, Jackson had so many friends and admirers (future MGs bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn almost cost himself his marriage, so obsessed was he with watching the young prodigy play with Willie Mitchell every night) that it is hard to imagine the man having enemies of any description. However, the nature of his death throws this into sharp perspective.

Had Jackson not been such a keen boxing enthusiast, the first night of October would surely have ended very differently. Wanting to watch the Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier rematch (the socalled ‘Thrilla in Manila’) on a giant screen (a rarity in those days) at Mid-South Colisseum, Jackson informed the Detroit studio who had hired him to produce a Major Lance session that he’d fly out from Memphis a day later. Returning home from the match in good spirits, Jackson interrupted intruders, who forced him into a prone position and tied him up before he could utter a word. Apparently, one of the gang knew of Jackson (or at least his home) and had chosen this as the venue to rendezvous after a bank robbery in Florida earlier that week. Also present was Jackson’s estranged wife, Barbara – bound and gagged, and thus unable to warn her husband. She could only watch as a gunman pulled a pistol and shot him five times in the back. By 3 am, Barbara Jackson had worked herself free and ran screaming into the street, after which the police were quickly summoned. Al Jackson, without medical attention, was already dead from his injuries. He and his wife had been working towards a divorce, and she – having that July shot him in the chest supposedly in self-defence – was among the first to be suspected. The circumstances seemed particularly suspicious given that no item of value appeared to have been removed during the break-in. On 15 July 1976, though, the gunman responsible (rumoured to be the boyfriend of singer Denise LaSalle) died in a shoot-out while resisting arrest in Seattle.

If the death of Otis Redding eight years before (
December 1967)
was a grave blow to Stax, this brutal slaying of one of its lynchpins saw the once-great label close its doors for good just a year afterwards, and the label finally collapsed when executive Johnny Baylor was found guilty of defrauding creditors of $2.5 million.

Sunday 26

Elbridge ‘Al’ Bryant

(Thomasville, Georgia, 28 September 1939)

The Temptations

(Various acts)