The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (98 page)

Sadly, just as her career was in the ascendant, Tasha Thomas was struck down with cancer – losing her battle at just thirty-three years of age in New York.

Tuesday 13

Don Addrisi

(Winthrop, Massachusetts, 14 December 1938)

The Addrisi Brothers

Cancer also took the life of 45-year-old singer/guitarist Don Addrisi, one half of songwriting/recording siblings The Addrisi Brothers. The boys had begun their entertainment careers in bizarre fashion – as members of their parents’ flying trapeze team. They achieved a minor hit as a recording duo with ‘Cherrystone’ (1959) on DelPhi, but Don and his younger brother, Richard (Dick), were to become better known as writers when their recording careers failed initially to ignite. In 1967, the Addrisis co-composed ‘Never My Love’, a US number-two hit for The Association – a song they had originally recorded themselves. In 1972, they scored a bona fide hit as singers with ‘We’ve Got to Get It on Again’ – though their second, ‘Slow Dancin’ Don’t Turn Me On’ (a Top Twenty single on Buddah), was a further five years in the making. (In 1977, they also enjoyed another writing success with Dorothy Moore’s ‘I Believe You’.) By now Don and Dick Addrisi were on an unlikely excursion into the world of disco music, making inroads into the 12-inch market. Jumping labels like they were going out of style, the brothers had a final outing with Elektra in the early eighties – soon after which Don Addrisi succumbed to the pancreatic cancer he had been diagnosed with just months before.

Wednesday 14

Keith Hudson

(Trenchtown, Jamaica, 18 March 1946)

And the third major music personality to die from cancer within a week was Keith Hudson, known as ‘The Dark Prince of Reggae’ for his gutsy, uncompromising dub style. Another disciple of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd, Hudson could count among his school friends pioneering future stars like Bob Marley and Ken Boothe. As a young employee with Dodd, Hudson was put in the unenviable position of being chief minder to Skatalite Don Drummond’s saxophone, but this enabled him to record his first sides at Dodd’s studio at just fourteen. Ever an enterprising individual, Hudson studied dentistry, which paid him a sufficient wage for him to practise his love of music in the evening. With the money he earned, he started his own label, Imbidimts, releasing tracks by the better-known Boothe, John Holt and Delroy Wilson, which enabled him also to issue his own output. The well-received debut album,
Furnace
(and strong follow-up
Class and Subject,
both 1972), allowed Hudson to emigrate first to the UK, then to the USA – reggae as a genre was beginning to pick up interest internationally. In America, he signed with Virgin, but the relationship was less than happy and after one album – almost a ‘soul’ record, completely out of keeping with the artist’s more far-reaching work – they parted company. Put simply, Hudson was too imaginative to fit within a major label’s confines. He kept working, however, and while in New York he founded another label, Joint, putting out a series of impressive albums throughout the seventies and early eighties, including 1978’s brilliant
Rasta Communication.
But, in August 1984, Keith Hudson was diagnosed with lung cancer. Although he appeared to rally, after responding well to radiation therapy the artist collapsed, complaining of stomach pains, on the morning of 14 November. Within an hour he was dead.

See also
Don Drummond (
May 1969) and Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd (Golden Oldies # 19)

DECEMBER

Sunday 9

Razzle Dingley

(Nicholas Dingley - Royal Leamington Spa, 2 December 1960)

Hanoi Rocks

The adopted son of a haulage contractor and his wife, the young Nick Dingley relocated with his family to the Isle of Wight – where his love of drums and horseplay would first gain attention. Here, Dingley caught the rock ‘n’ roll bug, seeing Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Isle of Wight Festival set while working as a site bottle-collector. The first among his friends to own both a moped and then a car, Dingley also developed a taste for speed as he raced the island’s uncrowded roads. Razzle (as he became known) had a knack of charming those he met, and thus in 1982 he talked his way into the drummer’s seat in Hanoi Rocks – the Finnish glam-metal act whose picture he had seen in
Sounds
magazine – via stints with various low-rent punk acts in his new home of London. In truth, Hanoi Rocks – Dingley, Mike Monroe (vocals, piano, sax), Andy McCoy (lead guitar), Nasty Suicide (guitar) and Sam Ya ffa (bass) – were never much more than a second-division New York Dolls-styled rock act who relied more on appearance than on great songs or musicianship; even the impressive hand of ex-Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter as lyricist for 1984’s
Two Steps from the Move
failed to raise them significantly above the mire. Yet their electrifying stage show made Hanoi Rocks one of the most popular rock draws in London at the time – and their version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Up around the Bend’ almost gave the group a UK hit single. Just a few months later, though, it was to prove a disturbingly unfortunate choice of cover.

Befriending fellow hair-metallers Motley Crue at that August’s Donnington Festival, Hanoi Rocks took a break from their exhausting touring schedule to join their US buddies at Crue singer Vince Neil’s Redondo Beach home for a ‘very metal’ week-long party, organized to mark the notorious LA band’s latest album release. With beer, cocaine and women as far as the eye could see, the party was already way out of control (Crue’s Mick Mars had nearly bought it by walking into the ocean high on Quaaludes) before Neil and Dingley decided to go and load up the singer’s new 1972 Ford Pantera with more booze, blowing a couple of hundred dollars before driving back to the apartment. Just four blocks from home, encouraged by Dingley, Neil had built his speed up to 65 mph (in a 25 mph zone), braked and skidded out of control on the damp road. As he did so, the Pantera collided full on with an oncoming VW. While Neil was badly concussed with cracked ribs, Razzle Dingley took the full brunt of the impact: the 24-year-old drummer was driven to South Bay Hospital with excessive head injuries, from which he was pronounced dead at 7.12 that evening (the date on his headstone is 9 December, as per GMT). His body was flown to the Isle of Wight for cremation. Although Dingley was briefly replaced by ex-Clash drummer Terry Chimes, Hanoi Rocks split after a final gig in May 1985.

‘If I live through this, I’m going to settle down with a family and a nice house.’

Razzle kids himself in 1983

In the aftermath of the accident, Vince Neil was internationally castigated for his drunkenness and charged with vehicular manslaughter, though after a much-postponed trial, he escaped with a thirty-day sentence (reduced to eighteen for good behaviour) and 200 hours of community service; he was also ordered to pay the victims – the Dingley family plus the two badly injured passengers in the VW – $2.6 million. In 1992, the Motley Crue singer gave up music to become … a racing driver.

See also
Randy Castillo (
March 2002)

Close!

Nikki Sixx

(Mötley Crüe)

Another hardcore drug-user of some years’ standing, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx has a history of odd heroin experiences - including once injecting neat Jack Daniel’s when he’d run out of the real McCoy.

And the glam-metal band’s 1989 track ‘Kickstart My Heart’ was not just a catchy title, either. Injected by a dealer on 22 December 1987, Sixx awoke some time later to discover that he’d overdosed and earlier ‘died’, according to the paramedics/police standing over him. A couple of shots of adrenalin had brought the metal showman back, but this seemingly horrifying experience had little effect on the dogged Sixx. He promptly hitchhiked home with two stunned female fans who - like his own band members - had heard of his supposed passing, left a message on his answering machine saying, ‘I’m not home because I’m dead’ - and shot up again. And overdosed again.

The Death Toll #3

I HATE MYSELF AND I WANT TO DIE

The following is a collection of songs on the tricky subject of suicide. Let’s face it, listening to one or two of these might make self-destruction seem a preferable option …