The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (75 page)

The circumstances surrounding Mike Bloomfield’s death are baffling. Although he had clearly overdosed, it is disputed whether the drug in question was Valium or heroin. His body was found near his home, at the wheel of his Mercedes. All four of the car doors were locked.

See also
Paul Butterfield (
May 1987); John Kahn (
May 1996)

APRIL

Sunday 5

Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite

(Torrance, California, 26 February 1945)

Canned Heat

The 300lb-plus scholar of blues discovered his passion while managing a California record shop called Rancho. Known as ‘The Bear’ for his vast proportions (he was also over 6’ tall), Bob Hite discovered a fellow enthusiast in Alan ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson while at college in Los Angeles. The pair, both harmonicaplayers and would-be vocalists, formed Canned Heat – Hite took the name from a 1928 Tommy Johnson lyric – from the residuals of an earlier shortlived jug band, and electrified their sound for maximum R & B effect. Canned Heat – fleshed out with another blues fanatic in Henry ‘Sunflower’ Vestine (guitar), plus Larry ‘The Mole’ Taylor (bass) and (initially) drummer Frank Cook – wowed the massed throng at Monterey in 1967, Wilson’s haunting, tremulous falsetto countering Hite’s awesome bass growl and formidable bearded presence. The year after, the great ‘On the Road Again’ – Wilson’s reworking of a blues standard – gave Canned Heat their first big international hit, inadvertently becoming something of an anthem for the hippy movement. This unlikely-looking band were suddenly huge, prompting a headline slot for The Heat at Woodstock. Hite and Wilson’s influence did much to popularize the blues among white music fans as a result. ‘To sing the blues, you gotta be an outlaw. Black guys are born outlaws, but we whites have to work for that distinction,’ said Hite – not uncontroversially.

Despite considerable sales and mass critical acclaim, tragedy struck Canned Heat with the unexpected suicide of Wilson – the co-founder’s body was found by a distraught Hite at his home
(
September 1970).
Canned Heat was a dispirited group after this, and their profile was to dip considerably in the aftermath. They did, however, continue to record and to tour unremittingly for the next decade. ‘The Bear’’s vast bulk finally gave out in 1981 – he collapsed between sets during a concert at Hollywood’s Palamino nightclub. He’d been severely obese for two decades, but now sporadic use of cocaine and heroin was putting extra strain on an already ailing heart. (Like Wilson, Hite suffered from depression, though in his case it stemmed from his diminished fortunes and a bad marriage.) Taken from the venue by friends, Bob Hite died of a heart seizure at his home in Mar Vista later the same evening. Hite’s staggering collection of some 60,000 blues discs was left to the United Artists archive.

On the road again, with ‘The Heat’ - Wilson, Hite, Vestine, De La Parra and Taylor

By now largely a nostalgia-circuit blues band, Canned Heat suffered a third loss when Vestine died a rock ‘n’ roll death in France (
October 1997).
Amazingly, The Heat
still
continued to burn after this, releasing albums into the new millennium. Their constantly morphing alumni have included Hite’s bassist brother, Richard, who often played alongside ‘The Bear’. He, too, died young – from cancer in 2001.

Tuesday 7

Kit Lambert

(Christopher Sebastian Lambert -11 May 1935)

Born into a prolific line – his father was composer Constant Lambert, his grandfather the Australian painter George Lambert – the youngest Lambert was always likely to make a name for himself in one branch of the arts or another. Although his father was seldom around as he grew up, Lambert Sr’s wilful reputation was to have some effect on the young man. While studying at Oxford, he discovered his sexual preferences – and did little to hide them. Kit Lambert first brushed with death in 1961: having left the army, he decided in a fit of bravado to become a jungle explorer, but a trip to the source of an uncharted Brazilian river ended in horror when a close friend was killed by a cannibalistic tribe. Shaken by this, Lambert relinquished this career, and moved into entertainment on his return. A lover of the cinema, he spent some time as a low-profile film director’s assistant on such pieces as
The Guns of Navarone
and
From Russia with Love.

Two years later, Lambert and filmmaking colleague Chris ‘Chip’ Stamp, searching for subject matter for a movie, chanced upon a British rock ‘n’ roll band. That group was The High Numbers – an early short-haired version of The Who. Abandoning the film project and ousting the manager, the inexperienced Peter Meaden (who died in 1978), Lambert and Stamp set about changing the band’s fortunes. Lambert was key in encouraging Pete Townshend to write songs: his early gift to the guitarist of two tape recorders was reciprocated by a series of punchy pop classics and ambitious conceptual projects that made his and The Who’s names over the next few years. (He also suggested Townshend’s trademark ‘windmill’ guitar style.) By 1966 Lambert was assuming all production duties on the group’s work. That same year, his and Stamp’s new Track label landed a coup, signing Jimi Hendrix – and had several lesser successes such as Thunderclap Newman and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. But by the mid seventies the relationship between Lambert and The Who had reached something of a natural cul de sac. Stamp returned to the film world, while Lambert produced a variety of styles of performer from Patti Labelle to a number of early punk bands, among whom he perhaps hoped to find a new Who.

In April 1981 – by which time he was spending much of his time living in and restoring an old Venetian palace – Lambert returned to London to stay with his mother for a few days, during which time he got himself into an altercation at a Kensington nightclub: a heavy drug user, Lambert reportedly fought with a dealer to whom he owed money. The next morning, Kit Lambert collapsed and fell down his mother’s staircase, and died from a brain haemorrhage.

See also
Keith Moon (
September 1978); John Entwistle (
June 2002). Peter Meaden died a month before Moon.