The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (278 page)

(New Messiah Emerging)

Guitarist Kurt Struebing’s brand of metal might have been too extreme even for the recently departed Tommy Vance, but it’s not so much the music that draws the attention with this story. In April 1986, Washington police received a garbled 911 call from a young man who claimed to have murdered his mother with a hatchet and a pair of scissors. Which, apparently, he had. Struebing was guitarist with Federal Way metal act NME (or New Messiah Emerging, the name usually punctuated with swastikas), an alleged neo-Nazi act ‘at war with the world’. Suffering from severe psychosis, Struebing had attempted to cleanse his body with carpet shampoo the day before he committed the crime. He’d become obsessed with the belief that all humans – including his family and friends – were robots, the singer feeling that if he tried killing himself and his adoptive mother, 53-year-old Darlee Struebing, it would somehow prove his theory. In the event, Struebing was sentenced to twelve years for second-degree murder in a high-security institution (later reduced to eight, due to his disorder), where he attempted suicide at least once. By 1994, the musician was released, reforming NME and reissuing the band’s 10-year-old album,
Unholy Death,
the following year to a new audience of metal thrill-seekers. And it doesn’t end there …

Amazingly, Kurt Struebing had turned his life around by 2005 to such an extent that reliable sources claimed he was now a successful graphic artist who was only too ready to help others by playing benefit concerts (he’d recently raised money for the bereaved family of a soldier shot in Iraq) – and on top of this a quiet, doting family man who loved his wife and son. Which makes Struebing’s death in his home town in 2005 all the more baffling. Approaching the Spokane Street bridge, raised to allow a tug to pass below on the Duwamish Waterway, the guitarist failed to slow down in his Volkswagen Jetta, crashing through two barriers and careering off the edge of the draw span. The car plunged fifty feet to the road below; Struebing was killed by the impact.

Thursday 10

Jackie Neal

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 7 July 1967)

An equally dramatic tale emerged from the US just twenty-four hours later, with the shocking murder of pop/blues singer ‘Jazzy’ Jackie Neal, the victim of an apparent crime of passion. Neal was one of ten siblings born to noted Baton Rouge bluesman Raful Neal. Though she was not as internationally recognized as her father, the singer had made sufficient headway to play a series of highprofile dates in Europe, for which she had purchased her own tour bus. Neal’s four albums had sold steadily, and there were many who felt that, despite her age, she could still crack the big time: one of these was her boyfriend, James White. Neal, however, had ended their relationship at the end of 2003, after which White’s behaviour had become increasingly disturbed. Weeks after threatening the singer and smashing her car windows, White made his way to the crowded T’Nails beauty salon, Baton Rouge, where he pulled out a gun and fired four bullets into Neal before turning the gun on himself. Neal’s friend Angela Myers was critically injured during the shooting, while the intended victim died within seconds of the attack. In the outpouring of grief that followed, the hospitalized White was apprehended: on 11 May 2005, despite a plea of ‘not guilty’, he was charged with first-degree murder (plus attempted murder) and faced execution.

It had been a particularly difficult year for the Neal family, with the deaths of father Raful and brother Ronnie occurring just before that of the singer, who had three children of her own.

Danny Joe Brown

(Jacksonville, Florida, 24 August 1951)

Molly Hatchet

(The Danny Joe Brown Band)

Later that same day, the death was announced of singer Danny Joe Brown, a longtime member of Southern rockers Molly Hatchet. The former coastguard joined the popular band (named after a murderous seventeenth-century prostitute) at the age of twenty-four, Molly Hatchet then securing a deal with Epic, who issued the band’s eponymous, platinum-selling first album in 1978. The second,
Flirtin’ With Disaster
(1979), surprised even the band by shifting in excess of 2 million copies worldwide as Hatchet – Brown, Dave Hlubek, Steve Holland and Duane Roland
(
June 2006
– guitars), Banner Thomas (bass) and Bruce Crump (drums) – became much-sought-after festival headliners. Brown suffered constant health problems, however, and, following the onset of diabetes in 1980, was obliged to retire from Molly Hatchet’s punishing tour schedule. Following a shortlived sojourn with his own band, Brown felt compelled to return to his first group for the album
No Guts
…
No Glory
(1983), by which time hard rock was back in vogue. Although record sales never matched those of the early days, Molly Hatchet remained a going concern until 1998, when the singer finally pulled the plug on the band following a stroke.

Danny Joe Brown died at home in Davie, Fort Lauderdale – just half an hour after returning from a four-week stay in hospital. The cause of death was given as ‘complications arising from diabetes’, including renal failure and pneumonia.

Wednesday 16

Justin Hinds

(Steertown, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 7 May 1942)

Justin Hinds & The Dominoes

Justin Hinds – who arrived in Kingston aged seventeen – was to become one of the great names of early Jamaican ska, a Rastafarian, Bible-toting mainstay of Duke Reid’s Treasure Isles label, whose band The Dominoes never gained the recognition they deserved. The group – named after the main man’s favourite R & B singer Fats Domino, and consisting of Hinds plus backing singers Junior Dixon and Dennis Sinclair – made numerous records for Reid after Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd turned them down in 1963. But, over the next decade, Hinds became extraordinarily prolific, his best-known songs perhaps ‘Carry Go Bring Come’ (1963), ‘Botheration’ (1964, rerecorded 1967) and ‘Mighty Redeemer Part I & II’ (1968). Hinds continued recording into the seventies and eighties, working with producers of the calibre of Jack Ruby (Burning Spear, etc), though, by this time, Justin Hinds was more active in Europe than he was at home. Although slowing down as he grew older, the singer continued to tour tirelessly until 2004. His death came just weeks after diagnosis with lung cancer.

Tuesday 22

Rod Price

(London, 22 November 1947)

Foghat

Respected UK-born slide-guitarist Rod Price was to become the fulcrum of boogie rockers Foghat during the band’s most prolific years. Alongside fellow Londoner and ex-Savoy Brown singer/guitarist ‘Lonesome’ Dave Peverett, Tony Stevens (bass) and Roger Earl (drums), Price enjoyed remarkable commercial success in the US with Foghat, who ran off five gold records and a double-platinum live set between 1972 and 1981. Known as ‘The Magician of Slide’, Price was a mainstay of the band until its split at the start of the eighties (though Foghat were to reconvene for later recordings). Thereafter, the musician’s fine traditional style saw him play with a variety of artists, including Champion Jack Dupree, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters; he also issued a couple of albums of his own,
Open
(2000) and
West Four
(2003).

Rod Price’s untimely death followed an accident at his New Hampshire home. It appears that the musician suffered a coronary before falling downstairs, sustaining head injuries from which he died shortly afterwards. In recent years, the rock ‘n’ roller had developed a reputation as a family man and loving father to his five kids.