The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (331 page)

After working on the 1973 hit ‘People Need Love’ (which was credited to the somewhat clunky ‘Bjorn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid’), Brunkert then played percussion on Abba’s all-conquering ‘Waterloo’ (1974). This huge record – one of the better Eurovision Song Contest winners – went on to top the charts in eight countries including Britain (although oddly not Sweden) and made the Top Ten in nine others, including the USA. The percussionist maintained a steady association with Abba as their grip on the record-buying public showed no signs of weakening throughout the decade. The last of Abba’s major European hits to feature Brunkert’s work was ‘One of Us’ (1981). The musician had previously played with acts such as Science Poption and jazz-rock exponents, Opus III.

Ola Brunkert’s sudden and shocking death was initially something of a mystery – the former drummer was found in the garden of his Majorca apartment with severe lacerations to his throat. An eventual verdict of accidental death was reached. Brunkert had fallen into a glass door before wrapping a towel tourniquet around the wound and staggering outside to summon help in vain.

Daniel MacMaster

(Barrie, Ontario, 11 July 1968)

Bonham

That day, the music world also lost Daniel MacMaster, lead singer of Bonham, the British/Canadian hard-rock group formed by UK drummer Jason Bonham – son of Led Zeppelin’s late, great sticksman
(
September 1980).

MacMaster performed on Bonham’s Top Forty debut
The Disregard of Timekeeping
(1989) and its hit single ‘Wait For You’. The album went gold and great things were expected of the band, but they weren’t able to recapture the magic on the 1992 follow-up
Mad Hatter.
When Jason Bonham decided to call time on the project, MacMaster moved on to solo work, with varying degrees of success. His 2005 album,
Rock Bonham … And the Long Road Back,
was not perhaps helped by its title.

The singer – who was married with two children – died at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center from a suspected streptococcal infection (staph virus). He and his family had initially thought it was nothing more than a cold and a sore throat.

Friday 21

Klaus Dinger

(Scherfede, Westphalia, Germany, 24 March 1946)

Neu!

La Düsseldorf

(Kraftwerk)

(The No)

Klaus Dinger was the highly regarded German drummer and multi-instrumentalist who invented (or at least discovered) what he called the ‘apache’ beat – later redefined as the ‘motorik’ beat – a staple of the genre that came to be known as krautrock.

Dinger – who had played on crude homemade drums before he could afford a proper kit – formed his first band, The No, at nineteen. The No was highly influenced by the all-pervading British beat groups of the day, but the expressiveness of his free jazz playing was to push Dinger toward more experimental rock music. He met Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter and was asked to record drums for the track ‘Von Himmel Hoch’ on Kraftwerk’s first album (1970). However, with Kraftwerk (briefly) faltering, Dinger and guitarist Michael Rother broke loose to record as Neu! under the supervision of his former band’s producer Konrad Plank. In this configuration, Dinger’s performances became more euphoric, and the music was defined by his heavily percussive style. Neu! became a cult favorite and issued four albums by 1975.

For his next project, La Dusseldorf, Dinger concentrated on guitars and keyboards and his brother Thomas took over percussion duties. The new group’s first trio of albums for Teledec had such an impact on David Bowie that he went on to describe them as ‘the soundtrack of the eighties’. These records reportedly topped a million in sales – a remarkable achievement for such an underground act. As of 1985’s
Neondian,
however, Klaus Dinger was working pretty much as a solo artist. Although he recorded well into the new millennium, a 2006 attempt to revive the La Dusseldorf name was prohibited for legal reasons. Dinger succumbed to heart failure just three days before his 62nd birthday.

Konrad Plank died in 1987.

Sunday 30

Sean Levert

(Cleveland, Ohio, 28 September 1968)

LeVert

Just eighteen months after the passing of Gerald Levert
(
November 2006
), the death of his brother and former bandmate Sean Levert was announced.

The sons of former O’Jays legend Eddie Levert, the brothers achieved stardom in the late 1980s with their R & B trio LeVert. (The group was rounded out by high-school pal Marc Gordon.) LeVert’s albums
I Get Hot
(1985) and
Bloodline
(1986) garnered both attention and extensive airplay, while an eventual hit single ‘Casanova’ (1987) reached both the Billboard and UK Top Tens. (Four subsequent collections also achieved at least gold status in the US, two claiming Top Forty berths.)

Sean Levert launched a solo career in 1995 which, despite the decent debut of
The Other Side
(featuring the Billboard hits ‘Put Your Body Where Your Mouth Is’ and ‘Same One’), was ultimately less notable than his older brother’s. He kept a relatively low profile after that, making a few appearances in made-for-video movies.

Despite vowing to reanimate LeVert after Gerald’s death at the end of 2006, it seems that Sean Levert fell into financial problems, finding himself incarcerated for the nonpayment of child support for three of his children. Within a few days of arrival at the Cuyahoga County Correctional Facility, Levert developed high blood pressure and suffered hallucinations. He passed away before authorities were able to transfer him to a state penitentiary. Levert apparently died from complications of sarcoidosis, his condition exacerbated by high blood pressure, diabetes and withdrawal from the prescription medication Xanax.

APRIL

Sunday 6

Lawrence Brown

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 November 1944)

Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

Although not as easily recognisable as his eponymous group leader (or imposing singer Teddy Pendergrass), Lawrence Brown was nonetheless a key vocalist with Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes during their most influential years.

Originally known as The Charlemagnes, the popular Philly softsoul outfit had been a fixture on the local circuit for some years before they began scoring hits in earnest. Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff’s ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ (1972, US number three, US R & B number one; 1973, UK Top Ten) finally pitched this highly polished group into the big league. Further hits, written either by Gamble and Huff or Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, were sporadic but always evocative. These included – ‘The Love I Lost’ (1973), ‘Bad Luck’ (1975), ‘Wake Up Everybody’ (1976) and ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ (1977).

Though figurehead Melvin was the first member of The Blue Notes to pass on
(
March 1997),
Lawrence Brown’s death from a respiratory condition came amid a dark period for the former Philly greats: Franklin Peaker (struck by a car in 2006), Pendergrass (
gJanuary 2010
), original member Roosevelt Brodie ( July 2010, from diabetes) and Bernard Wilson (December 2010, from complications of a stroke) all died in relatively quick succession.