The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (329 page)

Given how the singer eventually died, it’s hard to say how much effect on his health this unfortunate accident may have had–but what seems undeniable is that Norman’s maker was determined to call home his representative on earth one way or another.

Wednesday 27

Buddy Miles

(George Allen Miles - Omaha, Nebraska, 5 September 1947)

Electric Flag

Band of Gypsys

(Various acts)

As a twelve-year-old child prodigy, Buddy Miles sat behind his father George Miles Sr’s swing band The Bebops, setting himself up for a great career at the traps and prompting his aunt to nickname him after Buddy Rich. Miles was soon grabbing slots for himself with up-and-coming R & B acts such as Wilson Pickett and Ruby & The Romantics, while also touring with veterans The Ink Spots.

His chance meeting with guitarist Michael Bloomfield (of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band) led to Miles’s embrace of psychedelic blues rock for the first time as he joined Bloomfield’s Electric Flag project alongside singer Nick Gravenites and organist Barry Goldberg. The percussionist’s influence saw Electric Flag take on a more soulful feel, but – despite a couple of well-received albums and an appearance at Monterey in 1967 – the unit was not to last thanks to some poor management and some even poorer drug use.

Miles had met Jimi Hendrix some years before, when the latter was playing with The Isley Brothers: by late 1969, the guitarist was, of course, a household name. Hendrix thus contacted Miles to complete The Band of Gypsys with bassist Billy Cox. The band produced an impressive album in 1970, recorded over two nights at Fillmore East and featuring Miles’s vocals, songwriting and drumming. By its release, though, Band of Gypsys was already history: group members’ issues with management, plus a disastrous gig at Madison Square Garden in January 1970, sent them their separate ways. It was widely believed that manager Mike Jeffery was no fan of The Gypsys, pressuring Hendrix to reunite the more commercially viable Jimi Hendrix Experience. In later years, Miles – who was himself no fan of Jeffery – claimed that the manager had deliberately sabotaged Hendrix’s performances by spiking his drinks, and even suggested that he was indirectly responsible for the legendary guitarist’s death
(
September 1970
).

Devastated, Buddy Miles returned to solo recording, his next record
We Got to Live Together
(1970) featuring tributes to his late friend. The drummer/singer went on to issue over a dozen studio recordings through Mercury, Casablanca and other smaller labels and also performed with a wide variety of other artists including Carlos Santana, Bootsy Collins (in the funk supergroup Hardware), Adrian Gurvitz, Cheech & Chong and, yes, The California Raisins (the eighties claymation group for which he provided distinctive vocals). The musician was unable to complete his final tour in 2007, owing to deteriorating health.

Always a sizeable man, Buddy Miles died from congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas; the condition had dogged his family for some generations. A memorial concert was held in his honour at the city’s Threadgill’s club one month later.

See also
Michael Bloomfield (
February 1981)

Thursday 28

Mike Smith

(Edmonton, London, 6 December 1943)

The Dave Clark Five

Just fourteen months after the death of his bandmate Dennis Payton
(
November 2006)
came news of the passing of The Dave Clark Five’s lead vocalist, Mike Smith. Talented pianist and singer Smith met Dave Clark when both were teenage fans of Little Richard; Clark eventually invited the young financial assistant to join his beat group in 1961. Within a year, The Dave Clark Five featuring Mike Smith, with Clark (drums), Smith (vocals/organ), Payton (saxophone), Lenny Davidson (guitar) and Rick Huxley (bass), issued their first single, ‘Chaquita’, on the Ember label. (It should be noted that The Beatles were still negotiating a record deal at this time.) Their cumbersome name was trimmed to ‘ The Dave Clark Five’ shortly thereafter, and, after a stuttering start, the hits, many of them co-written by Clark and Smith, began to flow in earnest.

The first to chart in the UK was ‘Do You Love Me?’ (1963), which was rapidly followed by the song most associated with the group, ‘Glad All Over,’ their only UK number one. The similar-sounding ‘Bits and Pieces’ followed in 1964 and charted in the UK at number two. Both of these cuts found a home in the US Top Ten – complete with gold discs – in the spring of 1964. Despite a longer shelflife at home, the group scored significantly more Top Forty entries in the US; 1965’s ‘Over and Over’ even topped Billboard’s listings.

After the breakup of the original DC5, Smith stayed with Clark to help the drummer meet contractual requirements, thus forming Dave Clark & Friends, a covers act that was a pale imitation of his 100-million-selling former group. After a brief period working with former Manfred Mann vocalist Mike d’Abo, Smith turned his back on the limelight to work as a producer and jingle writer. Many were surprised to see the singer return in the late nineties with a touring band, Mike Smith’s Rock Engine, though legal reasons prevented him from promoting the act by using any Dave Clark Five connection.

Tragically, in 2003 Smith both lost his only son in a diving accident and suffered a spinal injury that would indirectly cost him his own life. He later died from complications of pneumonia at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. Like Payton before him, Smith narrowly missed his former group’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mike Conley

(Las Vegas, Nevada, 1959)

MIA

(The Swell)

An artist from a very different musical background died that same day – Mike Conley, distinctive former singer with Orange County punks MIA.

In 1980 Conley co-founded The Swell in his home town of Las Vegas, playing bass alongside Todd Sampson (vocals), Nick Adams (guitar) and Chris Moon (drums), thus forming the nucleus of MIA – a version of the band that only lasted for one New Year’s Eve gig. During 1981, Conley, Adams and Moon hopped to Orange County where the definitive line-up of MIA was to be established.

The visceral sound of MIA – with Conley now on vocals and the addition of Paul Schwartz on bass – led to a one-record deal with Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label, the band’s fierce politics fitting in alongside those of the Dead Kennedys’ front man. MIA’s EP
Murder in a Foreign Place
(1984) pushed Conley and co briefly but dramatically to the forefront of the California punk scene. However, relentless touring and the restricted budget for their album
Notes from the

Underground
(National Trust, 1985) caused some members of MIA to cut and run the following year. Despite his best efforts, a year after the third record,
After the Fact
(Flipside, 1987), Conley’s group went the way of all flesh.

Though Conley had for some years been running a bar in Costa Mesa, California, he met a mysterious death near Chicago. At 5:40 am on what would have been a very cold 28 February, the 48-year-old former singer was found lying in the parking lot of a hotel near suburban Melrose Park. Although the woman who discovered him attempted CPR, Conley – who had been working in Chicago on a construction project – was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, having suffered blunt trauma impact to the head after slipping on ice. Another guest at the hotel was charged with the theft of Conley’s cell phone and credit cards – however, murder was quickly ruled out.