The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (383 page)

FEBRUARY

Golden Oldies#108

Richard Delvy

(Bridgeport, Connecticut, 20 April 1942)

The Bel-Airs

The Challengers

(Various acts)

Richard Delvy staked his place in rock immortality firstly as drummer with a pair of surf-rock favourites, and later as a highly respected pop producer and music publisher. As drummer with The Bel-Airs, Delvy (who had replaced original percussionist Dick Dodd, later of The Standells) enjoyed a significant flamenco-inspired airplay hit with ‘Mr Moto/Little Brown Jug’ (1961). This key instrumental track was also recorded by Dick Dale and The Ventures.

Delvy then joined The Challengers, with former Bel-Airs saxophonist Nick Hefner. Without company backing, this group toured enough to fund the recording of a debut album,
Surfbeat
(1963), a task that the group apparently completed in under four hours. This Delvy-produced effort was released by Vault, and, offering something of a blueprint for ‘surf-rock’, became a sizeable hit.
(Surfbeat
is still much in demand by collectors.) Without a Billboard hit of their own, The Challengers were seen as the band that put all your beach-friendly standards onto one record, the group issuing a slew of Delvy-produced albums in a similar vein. The group also hosted its own television show at this time in the predictably titled
Surf’s Up.

With The Challengers’ appeal beginning to fade, Delvy pushed his production/publishing skills in other directions, working with The Chambers Brothers and The Outsiders, before arranging and directing the output of highly successful early seventies acts The Partridge Family/David Cassidy and Tony Orlando & Dawn. He was also a key composer for Saturday-morning cartoon fodder such as
The Archies
and
Fat Albert
before becoming an executive at MGM and Bell Records. Meanwhile, a new collection of Challengers songs was released in 1995, once again featuring the drumming and production skills of Delvy.

Richard Delvy died on 6 February 2010 in California’s West Hills Hospital following a lengthy illness.

Thursday 11

Gena Dry

(London, 1963)

(Colour Noise)

A sad tale was reported by the London press in February 2010–that of the mysterious death of former indie singer, guitarist and songwriter Gena Dry. Her band, Colour Noise, never broke into the mainstream but Dry remained a very individual and popular performer who in her career had worked on songs for major British artists Ian Dury, Boy George, Adam Ant and George Michael. (She also collaborated with her uncle, mime artist Tim Dry, who saw some success in the eighties with the futurist duo Tik & Tok.)

Despite her naturally outgoing personality, Dry began to suffer from stage fright during the mid-1980s, eventually seeking help from a man who described himself as an ‘arts therapist’. The counsellor–who was eventually barred from practising in 2009–deployed some questionable methods which involved alienating clients from their families and simulating scenarios of sexual abuse. Dry had for many years attended sessions, spending thousands of pounds in the process. During this time, she recorded that her family relationships had deteriorated and that she had begun to suffer severe nightmares. In the event, it was her evidence that had helped bring about the bogus therapist’s downfall. Since the turn of the millennium, Dry had embraced the online community where she worked in A&R, the musician also teaching and promoting young talent.

Despite this, her depression appeared to have reached a critical point in 2010. Dry’s family had described the singer as ‘in a bad way’ after a surprise visit to them the day before her death. Gena Dry left early the following morning to return to her London home, but never made it back. Her body was discovered on a railway line near Slough, the artist assumed to have jumped from her train.

Sunday 14

Doug Fieger

(Oak Park, Michigan, 20 August 1952)

The Knack

(Sky)

(Triumvirat)

(The Sunset Bombers)

Although Doug Fieger will always be remembered as the writer and voice behind 1979’s biggest-selling US hit record, he’d rubbed shoulders with rock’s great and good many years before this. Fieger, a budding actor at the time, began his music career as a thirteen-year-old with US country-rock band Sky. Within a couple of years, the group had grown sufficiently in stature to find themselves signed by impressed Rolling Stones and Traffic producer Jimmy Miller, who’d answered Fieger personally and even stopped by his family home to listen to a demo. Although it wasn’t really to happen for Sky commercially, the group recorded two albums for RCA and opened several times for Traffic (another of Miller’s projects), as well as The Stooges and even The Who. (The latter’s Pete Townshend had professed to being a fan of Sky, shocking Fieger by singing one of the group’s songs back to him over the telephone some years later … )

Following a brief period touring as a stop-gap bassist with German prog unit Triumvirat, and a spell with The Sunset Bombers, Fieger renewed his acquaintance with guitarist/keyboardist Berton Averre and drummer Bruce Gary–two musicians with whom he’d crossed paths in Sky days. The three recruited Prescott Niles (bass), with Fieger switching to singer/songwriter duties, and by 1978 The Knack were born. Implausible to think now, but the group’s early concerts were among the hottest tickets in Los Angeles, with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Ray Manzarek (The Doors) queueing up to jam with them.

There was seemingly no stopping The Knack. Donning skinny ties, jackets and drainpipes, this group took America by storm with the million-selling single ‘My Sharona’ (1979, US number one–six weeks; UK Top Ten), a song written and performed by Fieger as the flagship track to their debut album
Get The Knack
–which itself went on to sell triple-platinum. Their supporters saw The Knack as fresh, natural successors to imported sixties pop acts like The Kinks, The Who or even The Beatles; however, there were soon many detractors who found Fieger’s writing ‘lightweight’ and even a touch distasteful, given that most of the album seemed to deal with his preferences for very young women. They may well have swept aside all before them, but the band soon felt a backlash unlike
any
previously seen–mainly via the infamous ‘Nuke the Knack’ campaign.

‘Compared to Doug Fieger, Rod Stewart is a paragon of sexual humility.’

Rolling Stone
reviewer Dave Marsh, 1980

And it did some damage, too. Second single ‘Good Girls Don’t’ sold well initially, though was clearly hampered by sudden negative publicity (the line about ‘sitting on your face’ probably didn’t help) and then the admittedly ghastly ‘Baby Talks Dirty’ struggled to break the Top Forty. It was probably because of this that The Knack were unable to sustain significant interest after a second album, disbanding in 1981. Those who liked the band’s ‘look’ still had The Cars, so no matter.

Doug Fieger subsequently reformed The Knack ten years later, but by now they were regarded as little more than a curio, a band that hadn’t kept pace with the changing attitudes of a scene in which it so keenly wished to take part. Fieger should’ve cared– the royalties from ‘My Sharona’ alone were enough to indulge him in his love of sports cars for the rest of his days.

The singer–who had also recorded with Was (Not Was) and Bruce Kulick, among other contemporary acts–died after a long battle with lung cancer at his home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.

See also
HelmutKollen (
May 1977); Bruce Gary (
August 2006)

Lee Freeman

(Burbank, California, 8 November 1948)

The Strawberry Alarm Clock