The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (81 page)

Ignoring medical advice, Alex Harvey went out on tour again early in 1982 with a new band, The Electric Cowboys – but his death just one day ahead of his forty-seventh birthday put paid to any further ventures. Harvey suffered a heart attack on a ferry heading back to England, and died in Zeebrugge, Belgium.

MARCH

Wednesday 17

Samuel George

(Detroit, Michigan, 1 October 1942)

The Capitols

Best known for their impressive dance routines and pumping, lurching ‘Cool Jerk’ single, The Capitols were one of Detroit’s hottest acts as R & B moved into the mainstream. The band had begun as a five-piece around 1962, its main members being Samuel George (vocals/percussion) and Donald Norman Storball (guitar). Ollie McLaughlin’s Karen label issued an early single, ‘Dog and Cat’ (1963), which garnered airplay but no sales; somewhat disillusioned, George and Storball split from the other members, eventually adding keyboard-player Richard McDougal. ‘Cool Jerk’ (1966) shot The Capitols into the US Top Ten – shifting almost a million copies in the process – but was the group’s only significant hit. Later songs were just pale imitations of this dancefloor filler and the group split for good in late 1969.

Samuel George was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife in a family dispute at his home in Detroit. Storball had by this time become a policeman in the city, but it’s not thought he was involved in any investigation of the murder.

Friday 19

Randy Rhoads

(Randall William Rhoads - Santa Monica, California, 6 December 1956)

Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz

Quiet Riot

To those with long memories, the events of 19 March 1982 read like another chilling, condensed version of ‘the day the music died’: a long journey, an overcrowded, broken-down tour bus, a Beechcraft Bonanza with a dubious pilot …

In an unlikely musical marriage, Randy Rhoads added his impressive classically trained guitar skills to the Brummie metal thrum of Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz. The youngest of three children, Rhoads was born into a musical heritage, and later taught guitar at his mother’s music school. (There was little family snobbery about Rhoads choosing a rock career – he inherited his Gibson guitar from his grandfather.) Forming popular hard-rockers Quiet Riot at twenty – with Kevin DuBrow (vocals), Kelli Garni (bass) and Drew Forsyth (drums) – Rhoads made two albums with this band considered likely to be America’s next big thing. As it was, their records were not even issued in the US and, despite hit status in Japan, Rhoads quit when asked by his musician friend Dana Strum to audition for Ozzy Osbourne late in 1979. The former Black Sabbath leader now fronted Blizzard of Ozz, and by 1980 Rhoads was to be the Prince of Darkness’s new lead guitarist. An instant hit in performance, Rhoads also contributed to Blizzard’s first pair of albums, the eponymous debut (1980) and the (accurately titled)
Diary of a Madman
(1981). While touring this album, Rhoads’s interest in classical guitar reawakened, and he spent much of the time on the road practising and taking tuition. It seemed to many that he might well give up rock ‘n’ roll and return to his roots – though it will never be known whether he would have.

On the evening of 18 March, the band and its entourage were heading towards Orlando for a slot supporting Foreigner at Florida’s ‘Rock Superbowl XIV’ when it became apparent to driver Andrew Aycock that they would need to stop to replace some parts of the ailing tour bus. Aycock wasn’t in the best frame of mind anyway: his ex-wife had showed up at Blizzard of Ozz’s show and had insisted she be driven to Florida with the group. As Aycock – pumped up on cocaine – drove through the night, the couple bickered relentlessly at the front of the bus, much to the chagrin of Osbourne and his girlfriend, Sharon Arden, who were not best pleased at having another passenger in the already overcrowded vehicle. In the morning, the bus stopped at a depot in Leesburg, Florida, for repairs to be carried out. Spotting several Beechcraft light aeroplanes housed near by, Aycock boasted that he could fly and suggested a quick spin while they waited. What the driver failed to mention was that his pilot’s licence had been revoked following a recent accident. After keyboardist Don Airey and tour manager Jake Duncan had enjoyed a short flight, Rhoads and Osbourne’s longtime costume designer, 54-year-old Rachael Youngblood, agreed, against their better judgement, to give it a go. Neither was a particularly comfortable flyer (especially Rhoads, who had something of a phobia), but perhaps they felt it would alleviate the tedium of the dragging journey. Exactly what happened while the craft was airborne will never be known, but it seems that Aycock, still very much under the influence of cocaine, decided to buzz the tour bus in order to put the fright-eners on Osbourne and in particular the ex-Mrs Aycock. Diving four times, the Beechcraft clipped its wing against the bus on the final occasion, went into a mid-air spin and finally crashed in flames into a nearby house. All three on board were killed instantly. Some believe that Aycock may have deliberately attempted to hit his ex-wife who was standing yards from the bus.

‘The day that happened is a day I’ll never forget. It was the most horrific thing that has ever happened to me, because [Randy] was a sweet man.’

Ozzy Osbourne

Hearing the enormous crash, Osbourne and Arden leapt from their beds and ran to the scene. Learning that a deaf man lived in the house hit by the burning aircraft, Ozzy Osbourne heroically raced into the stricken building and pulled the stunned but grateful occupant to safety. Said Osbourne: ‘Had I been awake I’d have been on that plane – probably sitting on the fucking wing.’ But he was clearly distressed by the whole episode: although the guitarist was much younger, Osbourne considered Randy Rhoads a good friend and acted as a pallbearer at Rhoads’s funeral, even break-ing with years of tradition to mark his respect for the deceased by showing up in a suit.

See also
Kevin DuBrow (
November 2007)

APRIL

Friday 30

Lester Bangs

(Leslie Conway Bangs - Escondido, California, 14 December 1948)

Probably the most ‘out there’ critic rock music has seen, Lester Bangs modelled his attacks on the leftfield stylings of beat writers like Hunter S Thompson and William S Burroughs rather than the largely sterile prose of many of his contemporary critics. Having already written an unpublished autobiographical novel, Bangs began his brief odyssey by responding to a 1969 small ad placed in
Rolling Stone
requesting reviews from its readers. Success at this brought him steady freelance work from the rock world’s leading journal – until his somewhat confrontational style was considered too abrupt by editor Jann Wenner, who feared it might discourage major musicians from giving interviews. Thus Bangs was sacked, only to reappear within the pages of
Creem, Village Voice
and the UK’s
NME
– his cathartic writing on a subject that was already beginning to take itself way too seriously would not be ignored. Among his other credits, it’s widely believed that Bangs coined the term ‘punk’ (applied to rock music) – he certainly used it as early as 1970 when referring to the MC5.

Lester Bangs, despite not being a successful musician himself, fell into many of the scene’s traps. By his thirties he’d become such a voracious amphetamine-user that when he was found comatose in his Manhattan apartment on 30 April 1982, it was first assumed that he had overdosed on something more sinister than the Darvon and Valium he’d taken to relieve the symptoms of influenza. His death was, however, a complete accident. A wake was held for him at the legendary CBGB’s club several days later. Kickstarting a vogue for fractured, stream-of-consciousness writing, Lester Bangs influenced an entire generation of music scribes – the majority pale imitations of the finest rock journalist at his emetic best.

‘Look at it this way: there are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack.’

Lester Bangs offers his
raison d’etre,
1980

JUNE

Thursday 3

Rusty Day

(Russell Edward Davidson - Garden City, Michigan, 29 December 1945)

The Amboy Dukes

(Cactus)

(Detroit Wheels)

(The Midnighters)