Sean Bonniwell of Music Machine dies
January 5, 2012
Sean Bonniwell, leader of the dark-edged 1960s band the Music Machine, has died. He was 71.
The Music Machine had one hit single — 1966′s blazing “Talk Talk” — and produced only one album with its classic lineup. Still, the fuzz-and-Farfisa band is remembered as a vanguard act — an important link from garage rock to moody psychedelic rock and then the proto-punk bands.
Bonniwell wrote most of the Music Machine’s songs and fronted the L.A. band, which was known for wearing all black on stage — the garb including a single leather glove.
Rolling Stone headlined its appreciation of Sean Bonniwell: “The Dark Prince of Garage Rock.”
Bonniwell, a born-again Christian, left the music business as the 1960s faded away. He died Dec. 20, 2011, of lung cancer, in Visalia, Calif., various sources said.
“(Turn On) The Music Machine,” the first album, featured a half-dozen Bonniwell originals, notably “Masculine Intuition” and “The People in Me.” The songs appeared to be part self-therapy as Bonniwell inventoried his demons on vinyl. (Note: The first album appears in various forms, but seems to be best represented on Ultimate Turn On
Routinely lumped in with garage bands, the Music Machine produced a more ambitious sound that brought to mind L.A. contemporaries Love — and anticipated bands-to-be such as Iron Butterfly and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Bonniwell sang in “Masculine Intuition”: “I’ve got a masculine intuition/And it/Do/Not/Never be wrong,” right in line with vintage Arthur Lee.
Unfortunately, the first album (on the dinky Original Sound label) was filled out with cover versions (“Cherry Cherry” and a great “Hey Joe”), leaving a stunning but skimpy record of Bonniwell at his peak. Band members reportedly quit over Bonniwell’s auteur approach, some of them forming the group Millennium.
Bonniwell signed with Warners and released a second album, called “The Bonniwell Music Machine.” Much of the material was recorded previously and it produced no hits. The Warner recordings can be found on Sundazed’s 1996 collection Beyond the Garage
Bonniwell published his memoirs in 1996, also titled “Talk Talk.” He recorded a couple of solo albums and performed his Music Machine material on occasion, sometimes doctoring the lyrics to reflect his Christian bearings. Bonniwell recently marketed a Music Machine video documentary on his web site. (text continues)
Personal note: My first band, the Pack, popped up in 1966. Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. We stole the name from Terry Knight and the Pack. We copped the look from the Music Machine — black on black. We played “Talk Talk” and “Masculine Intuition,” and the rest of the songs came from the Yardbirds. Chris Campbell played drums. I sang and played bass. Wish I could remember the guitarist’s name, think it was Jerry.
Jim Sherwood of Zappa’s Mothers dies
December 29, 2011
Jim Sherwood, a saxophone player known for his work with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, has died at the age of 69.
The multi-instrumentalist, who shared Zappa’s love of the avant-garde and the nonsensical, worked on all Mothers albums, including the classics “Freak Out!” and “We’re Only in It for the Money
Sherwood died Dec. 25 of undisclosed causes.
Although Sherwood can be heard on the early Mothers records, he started out as a their roadie and didn’t join the band full-time until 1968. Sherwood also contributed vocals, vocal effects and the onstage comedy bits expected of all members.
In the 1950s, Sherwood attended high school with Zappa in California’s Inland Empire. Sherman played in several rock ‘n’ roll bands with the guitarist before the Mothers of Invention came to fame in L.A. in the mid-1060s.
After the Mothers disbanded, he performed on Zappa’s debut solo album, “Lumpy Gravy,” and continued to work off and on with the guitarist/composer until Zappa’s death in 1993.
The woodwind player also appeared in Zappa’s movie “200 Motels,” about the insanity of touring as a rock band, and the semi-documentary “Uncle Meat.”
The Mothers nicknamed Sherwood “Motorhead,” based on his love of working on cars. He also was dubbed “Larry Fanoga.”
Sherwood played sax with Reuben and the Jets, a Zappa-produced group that grew out of a doo-wop concept album. Later credits include the Mothers veterans band the Grandmothers and other projects with (ex-Mother) keyboardist Don Preston.
Owsley Stanley dies: the Dead’s ‘Bear’
March 13, 2011
Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the hippie LSD purveyor who bankrolled the early Grateful Dead and revolutionized its psychedelic sound, has died. He was 75.
Stanley died in a car crash in his adopted home of Queensland, Australia, on March 13.
Although chiefly known for his exploits in manufacturing and marketing the LSD that fueled the San Francisco cultural revolution of the 1960s, Owsley played a major role in the Dead’s development. He created the band’s legendary “Wall of Sound” concert audio system and co-designed the human skull-lightning bolt logo for the psychedelic music band.
Another iconic Grateful Dead image, the dancing Bear, was inspired by Stanley’s brief stint as a ballet dancer. (Bear was a family nickname for Stanley.)
Stanley’s contributions to the counterculture were rewarded in song, with numbers such as Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” Jefferson Airplane’s “Bear Melt” and “Mexico,” the Grateful Dead’s “Alice D. Millionaire” and Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” hailing his exploits. The band Blue Cheer (“louder than God”) took its name from some Owsley acid.
He is credited with making the first public address system dedicated to rock concerts (the Wall of Sound) with its innovative system of onstage vocal monitors.
“We’d never thought about high-quality PAs,” the Dead’s Bob Weir told the San Francisco Examiner in 2007. “There was no such thing until Bear started making one.”
Stanley said he played a key role in the founding of goundbreaking guitar maker Alembic and the concert sound equipment manufacturer Meyer Sound.
The LSD guru was the dead’s first soundman and soon took to recording all of the band’s performances — “sonic journals” he called them. More than a dozen albums have been made from his tapes, most notably the first, 1973′s “Bear’s Choice
“I always recorded all the bands and all the sets I mixed on all my shows like some people keep a diary, at least so long as I had enough money to buy reels of blank tape,” Stanley wrote on his Bear web site.
The early recordings spawned the decades of amateur audience tapes done at Dead Shows, with the band’s blessings. But, Stanley wrote, “From the feedback I have had, and the tapes I have listened to, I estimate 30% or more of both audience and ‘board’ tapes/CDs are either mislabeled or faked.
“There are many tapes in circulation which claim to be of “rare” shows. The reason these shows are “rare” is usually because they never happened.”
Dead guitarist-singer Weir said after Stanley’s death: “I met Owsley at the age of 18. I had just left home, having run off with a rock & roll band. Bear, as we knew him, was one of my all-time biggest influences. Always, when I think of him, I think of the endless stuff he taught me or somehow made me realize; all stuff that I’ve been able to use to the benefit of countless people.”
Mark Tulin of the Electric Prunes dies
February 27, 2011
Mark Tulin, a founding member of the hitmaking psychedelic band the Electric Prunes, has died. He was 62.
The bass player and songwriter suffered a heart attack Feb. 26 while diving off Catalina Island, friends said. He was participating in an annual clean-up event in Avalon.
While remaining active with the Electric Prunes, Tulin played in recent years with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Bill Corgan. He toured with Corgan’s side project Spirits in the Sly (a tribute to Sky Saxon) and played on some of the music for the Pumpkins’ evolving “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope” album.
With the “classic lineup” of the Electric Prunes, Tulin recorded the 1966 hit “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” and appeared on all of that band’s albums. He wrote much of the Prunes’ material with singer James Lowe. The band reunited at the turn of the century and continued to tour and record.
The Electric Prunes were recording for a label headed by Smashing Pumpkins producer Kerry Brown, along with the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
As a studio musician, Tulin worked with Cher, Diana Ross, Kenny Loggins, Neil Diamond, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
Tulin and the Electric Prunes recorded “Pushin’ Too Hard” for a Saxon tribute album.
Capt. Beefheart dies: ‘complex, influential’
December 18, 2010
Don Van Vliet, the musician and painter widely known as Captain Beefheart, has died at age 69.
While Van Vliet long enjoyed the respect of musicians and a cult of hardcore fans, he remained a fringe recording artist throughout his music career, which stretched from the mid-1960s until 1982.
Upon hearing of his friend’s death, Tom Waits compared his legacy with those of Ornette Coleman, Miles David and Sun Ra.
“Don Van Vliet was a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts,” according to the gallery that sold his abstract artworks and announced his death.
“Trout Mask Replica,” the noisy 1969 album from Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, was produced by Van Vliet’s pal Frank Zappa. That strange brew of psychedelic rock, avant garde jazz and gritty blues remains Van Vliet’s best-known work. The debut album “Safe As Milk” also found some early success. His signature song, the blues rocker “Electricity,” came from that album.
Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet were childhood friends in Lancaster, Calif., on the edge of the Mohave Desert. As teens, they bonded over free jazz and Delta blues. Van Vliet’s singing often has been compared to Howlin’ Wolf’s, and that growl filtered down to Tom Waits.
“He was the one who goes ahead and shows the way,” Waits told the L.A. Times after hearing of the Dec. 17 death. “He drew in the air with a burnt stick. He described the indescribable. He’s an underground stream and a big yellow blimp.”
Enshrining “Trout Mask Replica” as No. 58 on its Greatest Albums of All Time list, the magazine wrote: “On first listen, (it) sounds like raw Delta blues: Don Van Vliet (a.k.a. Captain Beefheart) singing and ranting and reciting poetry over fractured guitar licks. But the seeming sonic chaos is an illusion — to construct the songs, the Magic Band rehearsed twelve hours a day for months on end in a house with the windows blacked out.”
At the time of “Trout Mask Replica’s” release, Rolling Stone described the music as “a strange cacophonous sound — fragmented, often irritating, but always natural, penetrating and true.”
Update: In April 2011, “Trout Mask Replica” was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. “This unclassifiable melding of country, blues, folk and free jazz filtered through Captain Beefheart’s feverishly inventive imagination remains without precedent in its striking sonic and lyrical originality,” the Registry noted.
Van Vliet’s death was attributed to complications resulting from multiple sclerosis. He had struggled with the disease for years and had been confined to a wheelchair.
Van Vliet long claimed he was a child prodigy in the visual arts, painting and working in sculpture. He continued to paint abstracts throughout his life. His works are repped by the Michael Werner Gallery, which confirmed his death. Werner reportedly was key in Van Vliet’s decision to quit music and focus on art.
As Captain Beefheart, Van Vliet proved a domineering bandleader, with one of his Magic Bands quitting en masse in the mid-’70s. Ry Cooder was an early backing musician who eventually decided he could not work with Van Vliet.
Zappa and Van Vliet reportedly clashed early and often in their musical affiliations, with Zappa saying he produced Van Vliet by giving up and letting him do what he wanted.
“When it comes to art, I have a real streak of fascism,” Van Vliet said a few years after abandoning music.
Further reading: The 2010 book “Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic” by John French, which covers the making of “Trout Mouth Replica.”
Garry Shider dies: P-Funk guitarist, director
June 18, 2010
Garry “Diaperman” Shider, the longtime musical director for George Clinton’s various psychedelic funk bands, died June 16. He was 56.
The guitarist and singer joined Parliament and Funkadelic during their peak creative years, working on “Maggot Brain,” “One Nation Under a Groove” and “America Eats Its Young.” Shider continued with Clinton and his P-Funk All-Stars through an April tour, which he briefly joined despite just being diagnosed with brain and lung cancer.
He co-wrote some of Clinton’s best-known songs, notably “Atomic Dog” and “One Nation Under a Groove.”
Shider found funk fame for wearing the white loincloth that became his trademark, hence the Diaperman handle. The P-Funk world also knew him as “Starchild.”
“Thank you, Garry, for all you have done,” Clinton wrote on his web site. “Forever Funkin’ On!” The site’s long list of Parliament/Funkadelic musicians has Shider’s name second, right below Clinton’s.
Shider shared the middle name “Marshall” with Jimi Hendrix, a deep influence on his guitar playing (video below).
In the ’70s, Shider played in Parliament/Funkadelic with soon-to-be-legend Eddie Hazel, whose psychedelic epic “Maggot Brain” served as a showcase for the guitarists. (“Maggot Brain” is included on this web site’s list of the “Greatest Psychedelic Songs.”)
Shider was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, along with other members of Parliament/Funkadelic.
Other gigs included Bootsy Collins’ Rubber Band, the Black Crowes and outside work with Hazel. Shider’s songs also ended up on various Hollywood soundtracks, including “Bad Boys.” Clinton produced the recordings of the guitarist’s first band, United Soul.
Shider died in Upper Marlboro, Md. Donations to cover the family’s resulting medical bills can be made on this Sweet Relief-affiliated web site.
Big Brother guitarist James Gurley dies
December 23, 2009
Big Brother and the Holding Company member James Gurley, once dubbed the “father of psychededlic guitar,” has died at the age of 69.
Gurley (center in photo, with Big Brother) died of a heart attack at his Palm Springs home, two days before his 70th birthday.
Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew wrote on the band’s web site that “James was the spirit and the essence of the band in its early days. He showed us the way as a Zen master would show the way.” Country Joe and the Fish lead guitarist Barry Melton has called him “the Yuri Gagarin of psychedelic guitar … the first man in space.”
Gurly played on the band’s recordings with Janis Joplin, notably “Ball and Chain” and “Piece of My Heart.” His screaching intro to “Cheap Thrills
Gurley was a self-taught guitarist, who closely studied the recordings of bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins. He moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s and played the coffee-house circuit as a folk musician, as did many of the musicians who would later shape the psychedelic “San Francisco Sound.”
“He was plugged into the early San Francisco scene before the rest of us were,” Andrew told the Marin Independent Journal.
Rock promoter and psychedelic music patron Chet Helms brought Gurley into the young Big Brother and the Holding Company, which built a following around his aggressive, high-volume, amp-abusing playing style. He was the band’s first star, until Helms imported Texas singer Janis Joplin.
In a Big Brother web site tribute, drummer David Getz recalled the first time he heard Gurley: “I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that, heard a sound like that. It was this frenzy of notes that took one to the kind of place that people like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were trying to reach, not something you expected to hear from a rock band.”
Rolling Stone’s Lester Bangs called Gurley’s playing “a searing storm of noise … directed (at listeners) with a kind of joyous fury.”
Big Brother as a band often drew fire for ragged playing, often attributed to drug use. Joplin soon left the group, taking Andrew with her. Gurley recalled the superstar’s departure as “a sick morass of disgusting slime.”
Gurley played bass in the post-Joplin Big Brother, which recorded several albums before disbanding in 1972. (The married guitarist and Joplin apparently had an affair in the band’s early days.) He joined Andrew and Getz in a reunited Big Brother in 1987, remaining a member until 1996, when he left on bad terms.
Gurley had a long history of drug-related problems. In 1970 he was charged with second-degree murder in the heroin overdose of his wife, but was acquitted.
In later years, he released solo albums (“Pipe Dreams,” “St. James”) and worked in new age and space rock. He formed a musical partnership with percussionist Muruga Booker. “I didn’t want people to come hear me play and want “Ball and Chain,” Gurley said of the solo works.
Gurley is survived by his second wife and two sons. Big Brother is planning a benefit performance for Gurley’s family early next year.
Julian Lennon remembers ‘Lucy’
November 26, 2009
The real-life Lucy of “Lucy in the Skies With Diamonds” is inspiring Julian Lennon once again. On Dec. 15, he’s releasing the single “Lucy” in her memory, with proceeds going to fight lupus, the disease that killed her.
Lucy Vodden’s death in September reminded Beatle fans of the genesis of the “Sgt. Pepper” psychedelic classic.
Julian, John Lennon’s son, brought home a picture he’d drawn in preschool. He titled it “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” providing his dad with material for the song.
Lennon always maintained the song was about the boy’s drawing, not LSD, but the content and initials suggested otherwise.
The new “Lucy” song was being recorded by Julian Lennon’s colleague James Scott Cook near the time of Vodden’s death at age 46. Lennon and Cook rewrote some of the lyrics and cut the “Lucy” record as a duet. Cook’s grandmother, Lucy, also suffers from lupus.
Lennon looked up his old classmate after learning she had the autoimmune disease. “She created millions with her name,” he told USA Today. “The least I could do was try to support her and make sure she was comfortable.”
Vodden, who died at 46, tried to keep a low profile regarding the song. She liked the Beatles, but not “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” “I don’t relate to the song, to that type of song,” she told the Associated Press before she died.
The “Lucy” EP will feature a foldout copy of the original Lennon drawing (pictured). The digital download will be exclusive to the iTunes Store for now, as was the 40th anniversary release of “Give Peace a Chance give givegive givereleased by Lennon, Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono earlier this month. That single benefited the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund.
Lennon runs a new digital-media record label — theRevolution — whose first release will be “Lucy.” Next year Lennon plans to release an album, “Everything Changes.” The musician and filmmaker has not released new music in almost a decade.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is a top 10 entry on our list of the Top 100 Psychedelic Songs of all time.
Brian Jones death probe renewed in U.K.
August 31, 2009
The open-and-shut ruling that Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones died of “misadventure” is getting another look from British police. Fans have long suspected the rock star was murdered in 1969.
Police in the southeast county of Sussex police confirmed Aug. 31 that they had received new information on the mysterious death and were re-examining the 40-year-old case. The ruling of “death by misadventure” basically meant the troubled rock musician drowned while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
“These papers will be examined by Sussex Police but it is too early to comment at this time on what the outcome will be,” a spokesman said. The review does not necessarily mean there will be a full new investigation.
Interest in the death was renewed four years ago with the release of the movie “Stoned
Circumstances surrounding the incident are as complicated as they are mysterious, according to U.K. journalist Scott Jones, who spent several years researching the Brian Jones death. Jones (no relation) reportedly was the journalist who turned over 600 documents on the case.
In 2005, the investigation was reopened after a 150-page report on the Brian Jones case came from a team of investigators working with a fan club and one of guitarist’ ex-girlfriends.
Jones had been dismissed from the Stones weeks before his death, largely because of his drug-addled lifestyle. (The photo at right shows his condition at the “Rock and Roll Circus
Jones was allowed to announce the departure, saying: “I no longer see eye-to-eye with the others over the discs we are cutting.” Jones, who started the band and named it as a tribute to Muddy Waters, objected to the Stones’ shift away from the American blues music he loved.
Despite his rep as a blues purist, Jones brought numerous unusual instruments into the band’s late-’60s recordings, such as the sitar, tambura, dulcimer, mellotron, theramin and harpsichord. His playing loomed large on the Stones’ 1967 psychedelic album “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” which was seen as a half-hearted response to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (No. 4 on our list of the top psychedelic albums.)
Brian Jones also played a key early role in the introduction of world music into rock, recording the Moroccan music that formed the album “Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka.”
Jones is also remembered for his role in fashion, leading the way for many British musicians, especially in the psychedelic music era. He dressed to blow minds while blowing his own on dope.
Here’s a video of “We Love You” from the 1967 psychedelic album. Sadly, Jones is trashed, as was typical in those days.
Sky Saxon of the Seeds dies; garage guru
June 26, 2009
Garage band icon Sky Saxon has died after a long career that included pop stardom with the Seeds and psychedelic explorations as a solo act. He was sixtysomething.
Saxon died Thursday in his new home of Austin, Texas, as he was preparing for a ’60s tour with the Electric Prunes and Love. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Saxon’s latest group was called Shapes Have Fangs, reflecting the singer’s eccentricity as well as his love of oddly titled songs and curious band names. He adopted the name Sky Sunlight Saxon in the years after the Seeds disbanded. Richard Marsh, his real name, was born in Utah.
The Seeds’ two albums remain a powerful influence on rock music, ranging from the jukebox hits “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine” to the sex saga “Up in Her Room,” clocking in at 15 minutes. The song “Mr. Farmer” has become another signature song over the years and was heard in the rock movie “Almost Famous.”
Saxon and his L.A.-based Seeds obviously influenced Jim Morrison and the Doors, who had supported them on tour. “The End,” for example, appears to be a direct cop of Saxon’s spooky baritone narration. In turn, Saxon explored some Doors-like directions after the original Seeds disbanded.
The Seeds provided a bridge between some of the original three-chord attitude rockers such as the Kingsmen and the edgier psychedelic bands. Later, the Seeds’ brand of garage rock reverberated throughout the punk rock movement. Generations of rockers have covered Saxon’s songs.
The bands’ two albums, “The Seeds” and “A Web of Sound,”
The Seeds reunited in 2004 for the album “Red Planet,”
Several of Saxon’s post-Seeds records are out of print or only available as imports. “Transparency”
Saxon recorded with the Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan last year and appeared in one of that band’s psychedelically influenced music videos.
Saxon was a member of the famed L.A. commune the Source Family and performed with its psychedelic jam band the YaHoWha.
Saxon’s wife, Sabrina, announced the death on her Facebook page: “Sky has passed over and YaHoWha is waiting for him at the gate. He will soon be home with his Father. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him here with us. More later. I’m sorry.”
Update: A tribute to Sky Saxon at the EchoPlex in L.A. featured Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins, the surviving members of the Seeds, the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Electric Prunes. Here’s an outstanding video of Corgan and a one-time band (including Smashing Pumpkin Mark Byrne and SAC organist Mark Weitz) working out to Saxon’s “900 Million People Daily (All Making Love).”
