DEAD DUDES (MOSTLY)

NOTES ON CELEBRATED MUSICIANS WHO DIED IN 2025

Max Romeo, 2022.

I occasionally write obituaries of freshly dead musicians. Actually - and here’s a secret - sometimes I write obit’s of those who are alive, healthy and active but the paper wants to have the obit’ ready to go when they do depart. This is employed not just for famous musicians but every major figure across the board.

These are called ‘stocks’ and I’ve twice been asked to update my stock of Berry Gordy over the years, the Motown founder now in his 90s and powering on to launch musicals and marry (and divorce) women decades younger than he. Whoever has written up the likes of Macca and Ringo must get surely annual requests to update.

These days its only occasionally I am requested to write an obit’; this year it was Sly Stone (stock), Danny Thompson (stock) and Terry Reid (I’d interviewed TR last year). As other musicians I either rated highly or had a passing acquaintance with also slipped away over the past 12 months I’ve decide to pay homage here.

Some of these characters I’d considered writing on here in some depth, then never gotten around to it. Maybe one day I will. Anyway, this is my chance to acknowledge the passing of those who made music that, at some point, engaged me.

If I’ve missed out a personal favourite - or you have a story to share - then do please say so. Yes, its a dude fest: female musicians can be thankful they’ve enjoyed a healthier year than their male counterparts.

It doesn’t get any better than this. Tell it like it is, Jimmy!

JIMMY CLIFF

I was once at a Willie Nelson concert at the Barbican Centre and found myself seated next to Jimmy Cliff - like, wow! Country music was (perhaps still is?) huge in Jamaica so I wasn’t surprised to find Jimmy, visiting London for business reasons, enjoying Willie. He slouched low in his seat and kept counting the rhythm with his right foot throughout. At intermission I chatted with Jimmy and he was polite, chilled, not revealing much beyond he hoped - this was late 1990s - that a follow-up to The Harder They Come might soon go into production. Sadly not.

That film made Cliff an international icon and, to my mind, remains the best film made about the music industry (and Jamaica) and best performance by a musician in a film. I recall seeing THTC LP as a child in a record shop and, upon reading the sleeve notes about this society so different to Auckland’s static suburbs, wondering what Jamaica and its music was like. When I got to hear the music a few years later I was hooked - just fabulous! And, finally, when a scratchy print was shown of the film at an Auckland rep’ cinema I was agog. Like, wow! Wow!

I saw Cliff perform at least 3 times - once at a muddy Womad festival in Reading, where he raised everyone’s spirits, and once at a very wet Womad Taranaki where he sang Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now in the hope the rains would stop (instead they turned torrential: no one claimed Cliff could control the elements). He was always in superb voice and a master performer. His post THTC recordings were often bland but his pioneering 1960s and early 1970s recordings are timeless.

ACE FREHLEY

I discovered Kiss via Wayne Edmonds, a Maori kid at school who always was ahead of the rest of us - he smoked cigarettes! - and, being a fan of Marvel comics, they duly appealed. Tho’ as I’d never listened to heavy rock before I did initially struggle to connect with Destroyer once I purchased a copy at Wayne’s insistence. And, as with all Kiss fans, I had a favourite member and that was Ace, the guitar-strangling, rocket-firing, stoned spaceman.

My infatuation was brief, tho’ I did (and still do). like New York Groove, the solo hit Ace enjoyed with an old Arrows stomper. It turns out that 45 years ago this week Kiss played Western Springs in Auckland and I and other teen pals jumped the fence to see them. By the age of 16 I didn’t find my pre-teen heroes impressive. I know nothing else about Ace, beyond he yo-yo’ed in and out of Kiss over the decades and, I think, was a wastrel. While Wayne Edmonds died several years ago. Lung cancer? I wonder.

D’ANGELO

I purchased D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar debut CD in 1995, smitten as I was by the sultry title tune. The rest of the album didn’t make the same impact - his version of Cruising lacked the lightness of Smoky’s original - and, while he sang well, and had fluid backing from the musicians, I just didn’t find his songs clicking with me: I could hear his influences (Smoky, Marvin, Sly etc) but didn’t find a truly distinctive new voice at work. Like the Britpop bands then dominating UK charts, D seemed more a carbon of his influences than an original artist.

Ditto Voodoo which, when released, attracted the kind of across-the-board rave reviews only a few pop albums get each year. The grooves were good but the songs tended to blend into one another. Perhaps my ears are too old school and I’m looking for tunes when D’Angelo was more of a groove merchant? I recall thinking when the video of him pouting-near naked was on high rotation that if he spent as much time working on his songwriting as he did in the gym working on pecs and abs his tunes would be stronger. His third album? Forget it.

Anyway, D died of cancer too young and - who knows? - might have developed into a more interesting artist as a veteran.

TERRY REID

Terry Reid was a British singer and songwriter with a huge voice who many expected to reach stardom in the late 1960s/early 70s. He turned down the vocalist gig in both Led Zep and Deep Purple, determined to go his own way. So he did, ending up a cult figure who toured the UK every year.

I started going to Reid’s concerts around the turn of this century, not cos I was familiar with his music - his two albums of note had long been deleted - but due to hearing he was an interesting artist. And Terry was, one who blended R&B and folk and rock and had a remarkable voice. He was also, obviously, an alcoholic and this ensured his performances could be sloppy. Very sloppy, on occasion.

I interviewed him for The Guardian last year and went to see him perform at The Half Moon. Here he was sober and delivered a rousing performance. It would turn out to be his last performance as cancer claimed Reid this summer. His 1973 album River is diffuse and fascinating.

This is the first FFD tune I heard and it remains my favourite. Extremely atmospheric, bluesy dub soundscape and then Joe Dukey’s vocal drops in and kiwis can fly!

SLY STONE

I wrote on Sly in an early Yak when his abysmal memoir was published, noting how I’d followed him since childhood and been fascinated/depressed by how he wasted his talent and life via megalomania and addiction. As noted above, I wrote his obit’ for The Guardian so, if you want the details of his long life - somehow his body held up no matter how much poison he ingested, even once he had done irreparable damage to his mind and soul - its on their website.

What’s to say? Sly was talented and smart, being in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s he saw rock’n’roll taking shape as “rock” and realised he might be able to command the new hippie audience by adding psychedelic touches to his James Brown inspired-funk. And, yes, by leading a mixed race+gender band he broke down barriers.

But his creativity was limited to a handful of exceptional songs on 3 flawed albums: Stand!, There’s A Riot Goin’ On, Fresh. When people go on about his ‘genius’ I think ‘no, you are buying the hype’, as his body of work is slight compared to JB or RC or so many other major artists. Admittedly, the sludgy stoned funk on Riot did offer new parameters for funk, one the likes of D’Angelo continued to draw inspiration from.

This noted, Sly was a thoroughly unpleasant man - comparable to Phil Spector in being the geeky studio bod who embraced toxic masculinity and revelled in treating everyone in his universe badly. Sly poisoned his talent and he spent the past 50 years in the shadows, the ghost of lost talent. What a waste of a life.

DAVID JOHANSEN

In autumn 2000 I spent an afternoon wandering Manhattan with David Johansen. I was in NYC to interview him as he was coming to the UK for the first time in a long time to promote his Harry Smiths acoustic blues project. His label had put me in the cheapest hotel in town - you literally had to put coins into the TV if you wanted to watch it! I felt like I was living in a David Jo song.

Anyway, I introduced myself to David as his Bottom Line concert on the Saturday night and he suggested I call him around midday Sunday to arrange a meet up. I did so and he gave me instructions to his apartment building, from where we wandered out, stopping for endless coffee refills - having quit drinking booze, David now guzzled coffee - and into book shops. David insisted I buy an Alan Watts book, which I did. Yes, I read it, no I didn’t find it enlightening.

Anyway, I liked him, he was a garrulous character and possibly the heaviest cigarette smoker I’ve ever encountered.