The 27s

The 27s—The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll
..

The 27s—-The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll What began as a modest project, an artistic tribute to the 27s, has grown to a 292-page visually enticing pages packed with original art, mood setting illustrations, and a thought-provoking revelation than runs through our forthcoming book. The story of The 27s read like a mini-history of rock & roll.
The 27s permeate across genres and although, say, D. Boon and the Minutemen haven’t sold as many records as Janis Joplin, he is no less important than the Queen of Rock. D. Boon showed that "our band could be your life" for fans across the country—fans that include members of R.E.M., The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Sublime. MySpace’s power to break bands is in part an extension of the fanzine/tape/word-of-mouth/grassroots scene that the Minutemen, Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, and other post-punk/hardcore bands were an integral part of—a scene that paved the way for the great alternative/grunge movement that dominated the 1990s.
The media makes music into a popularity contest and in that framework Jimi, Janis, Jim, Kurt and Brian loom larger than the rest, but the way we look at it each 27 have contributed to the history and development of rock & roll. Once you read it and you’ll discover how and why.
The 27s is a visual feast quite unlike any other music book out there. The story flows like a gushing river, celebrating the lives and legacies of an extremely talented yet rather unknown clique of artists who managed to change the sound of rock.
Visit The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll to sign up for our mailing list. That way you’ll be the first to know about news, special deals, contests, and giveaways. Thanks!
We’re buttoning up The 27s for publication sometime this summer, but plan to share more with our MySpace friends over the next months. In the meantime read up on a few of The 27s below.
Josh & Eric
Samadhi Creations
Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938)
Robert Johnson lived and died in relative obscurity. He was a rootless, restless, sly, street-smart, womanizing, whisky-drinking hobo with a guitar and a gifted ability to pick up and synthesize the music he heard in juke joints and from records and radio. He played mills and barrooms and is only known to have recorded 29 tracks over two recording sessions, yet his music helped father rock & roll. A 1961 release titled King of The Delta Blues Singers bore the painting of a faceless man hunched over his guitar—none of the two known photographs of Robert Johnson had surfaced yet (not until 1986 and 1989). He sounded primal, sang with lived passion about dark meetings at crossroads, love in vain and hellhounds on his trail, and died from poisoning under strange circumstances. Robert Johnson is an enigma and an amalgam elevated by white rockers to the pantheon as a mysterious folkloric hero. When alive he was never the King of The Delta—just a talented minstrel—but he is the grandfather of rock.

Jesse Belvin (December 15, 1932 - February 6, 1960)
Jesse Belvin is hardly mentioned in the annals of rock, but his contributions are significant to its early development. Belvin could croon like Nat King Cole or roar, sounding like a combination of Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Belvin was a prolific songwriter and was known to sell them off to other doo-wop groups in the L.A. area for $100 a piece. He co-wrote "Earth Angel," which was a major hit for the Penguins in the mid-fifties, peaking at the rhythm and blues charts and even crossing over to a respectable #8 on the pop charts. Frank Zappa paid homage to the song and the L.A. doo-wop scene that he grew up with on Weasels Ate My Flesh and "Earth Angel" was recently recorded by both Death Cab For Cutie and Weezer. RCA Records signed Belvin in 1959 and decided to promote him as much as possible. Jesse recorded a slew of singles and Dick Clark ended up using Belvin's "Goodnight My Love" as the closing theme for American Bandstand for several years. February 2, 1960, Belvin played for the first segregated audience in the history of Little Rock, Arkansas. White supremacists hailed racial epithets, halting the show twice. Belvin had received several death threats since his tour started in the still-segregated south, and he was scared for his life. Four hours after the show ended he was on the road near Hope, Arkansas, with his manager/wife JoAnn and a driver when the black Cadillac skidded off the road. Jesse and the driver died on impact while JoAnn died at the hospital later that night. A trooper on the accident scene stated that the rear tires had "been tampered with." No more details surfaced. Belvin is largely forgotten, but his songs and recordings live on.

Brian Jones (February 28, 1942 - July 3, 1969)
Brian was true rock royalty and in the early days, the only bad Rolling Stone. He basked with blonde babes and fathered enough offspring to fill a soccer team. But his thirst for the limelight quickly overshadowed his art, which led to his demise. He was born into a respectable family in Cheltenham, England, during a time when respectable families reprimanded their offspring using corporal punishment, even in public. His parents, Lewis and Louise, were more concerned about their family’s image than instilling happiness in Brian and his four-years younger sister Barbara. Louise told her son that Pamela, another sister who had died of leukemia at the age of two, had been sent away for being naughty. They weren’t unusually cruel compared to other families, but years of verbal and physical abuse scarred Brian’s psyche for life. His boyhood was filled with altar service, depression, school pranks, chronic asthma and various nervous disorders. Despite of his nervousness he was capable of coaxing other boys in the schoolyard to do or believe things they’d regret later. The few who came back with clenched fists were met with meekness in Brian’s green eyes. His mother taught him piano and he could practice clarinet at home, but listening to jazz and swing or practicing other instruments was done covertly and away from the house. He picked up an acoustic guitar and became infatuated with rural bluesmen such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightning Hopkins, Ledbelly Leadbetter—and the mysterious Robert Johnson. In his teens, Brian became one of a handful young, amateur blues musicians playing on a scene dominated by scholarly trad. jazzers. He often sat in with various outfits and was capable of laying down decent jazz strums, but he was known to wander off stage if the band started playing numbers he felt were a bit too trad. The behavior garnered him off-stage attention, which he seemed to enjoy. Band members would often try to make him come back because his musical abilities helped the overall cohesiveness. Around this time, Brian became a father for the second time. His first, when he was 16, had been put up for adoption. This time was different. He took odd jobs to pay for his son and the mother, who eventually followed him to London after he moved there. He founded the Rolling Stones as a skiffle group in 1962. The band’s repertoire in the early days consisted of Chuck Berry numbers, Bo Diddley covers and a selection of other blues songs. Brian assumed leadership and his initial fortitude facilitated the band’s sudden success. He chose cover songs, hustled gigs, signed contracts and distributed proceeds (always skimming a little extra before disbursing the others). Women found the broad-shouldered sparkplug adorable. Although he was often nasty on stage and was known to egg on patches of the crowd for the sheer hell of it, but in between he’d turn those green beams in the direction of a special girl watching from the side of the stage and she’d melt. His charm lingered latently and he could be funny, jovial and cordial, his husked voice softly lisping underneath a blond mop top. The band’s Cavern was a London club called Craw Daddy. Within months, Rolling Stones’ reputation made people stand in line for hours for an opportunity to sweat and shake in immobility. Girls with bouncing tops up front, gawking guys in the back. When the Beatles, who had already garnered reputation beyond Liverpool’s Cavern, listened in they were impressed enough to invite the band to one of their concerts as well as talking them up to potential producers and the press. Brian was never a songwriter, but what and how he played refined the overall sound. He doesn’t have a song to his name because he was constantly paranoid about letting others hear what he was working on. He wanted to stick with variations of the blues, while Keith and Mick were rockers. Ultimately, his failure to produce material made him irrelevant, so Mick and Keith moved into position as principal architects of the Stones’ direction. But that was in the studio and backstage. In public, Brian clung to the role as co-leader and bad-boy partier. His choices indicated that being a star was more important than playing music—he adored the spotlight. Skipping out on duties with the Stones, he flew to Monterey with Nico on his arm, so he could introduce Jimi’s Experience to the American audience. The following year, Brian spent time in Morocco recording tribal music, posthumously released as The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. Brian’s leadership had already slipped, but his frequent escapades and propensity to avoid recording dates (he failed to show up during the recording of “Satisfaction”) rendered him persona non grata by his band mates. He would typically show up after Keith had recorded all the guitar tracks, leaving him to add other instruments. The trajectory of figuring out an arsenal of instruments led to a marked disinterest in the guitar, but Brian’s colorations added zest. “Paint it Black,” Rolling Stones’ third British number one single, sounded strangely haunted thanks to his sitar. He reached the apex of multi-instrumentation in 1966 on Aftermath and Between the Buttons. He played marimba on “Under My Thumb,” “Yesterday’s Papers” and “Out of Time;” dulcimer on “Lady Jane;” sitar on “Cool, Calm and Collected” and “Mother’s Little Helper;” trombone on “Something Happened To Me Yesterday” and flute on “All Sold Out.” For fifteen months, Anita Pallenberg was his girlfriend, and she made him laugh and forget about his deficiencies. His persona became increasingly mysterious and some have talked about the couple’s kinkiness: sado-masochism and even coprophagy. But the bliss ended after he had to fly back to London from a road trip on the continent due to a bad case of asthma. With Linda alone in the backseat, it didn’t take long for Keith to win her over. The Stones’ founder turned into an emotional train wreck and two drug busts from the police with subsequent court appearances furthered his condition. A psychoanalysis ordered by the court found him to have an IQ of 133, but “losing his grip on reality. He vacillates between a passive, dependent child with a confused image of an adult on one hand and an idol of pop culture on the other.” He was put on a diet of tranquillizers and moved out of London to Cotchford Farm, an estate previously owned by Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne. Brian looked pale, grew tubbier and was generally zonked from a combination of medicine, booze, depression, asthma and frail nerves. In early June, Mick, Keith and Charlie drove out to sever the ties between Brian and the band. It was a sense of relief for both parties and Brian was promised a golden handshake equivalent of $1.7 million. July 3 was a hot day at Cotchford, the air filled with pollen, but news about the check from the Stones organization lifted Brian’s spirits. He drank heavily, sucked on his inhalator and popped tranquilizers. Although he was hardly fit for stable movement on land, he decided to take a dip in the deep blue swimming pool that night. Anna, the latest of his string of nursing girlfriends, and Frank, a brute of a foreman that was living in an annex while supervising a posse of cowboy builders employed by Mr. Jones, eventually got out to fetch cigarettes, leaving Brian alone. He must’ve felt a drowsy calmness while splashing alone in his pool, eventually sinking to the tile-covered bottom. He was 27 years old.

Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson (July 3, 1943 - September 3, 1970)
Most likely the least glamorous of the 27s, Alan Wilson was more than anything a pure and frail human being, a blues scholar, a great harmonica player, and a guitar player with a solid foundation in Delta blues. Raised in Boston, Alan left for California to help John Fahey with his thesis. Fahey gave Alan the nickname "Blind Owl" due to his coke-bottom glasses and introduced him to Bob "The Bear" Hite, another record collector. Together with Henry Vestine, a Mother of Invention alum, they formed Canned Heat. The band started out as a purveyor of the Delta blues tradition, but got caught up with the psychedelic '60s and added more of a contemporary spin to their boogie. The Bear had a gravelly voice, while Alan sang with a high pitched, often tortured lilt. Although Canned Heat is now largely forgotten (the band still tours with one member from the golden age, Fito de la Parra) it was one of the more popular bands of the late 1960s. They headlined the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. Struggling with chronic depression, Alan Wilson overdosed in Bear's backyard.

Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 - September 18, 1970)
The guitar was an extension of Jimi, a fifth limb he relied on as much as others would a leg or an arm. He played during set breaks or on the bus, recorded or jammed after shows, played along to Bob Dylan records during interviews and slept with the guitar at the edge of the bed. He was born in Seattle by a teenage mom while his much older dad was stationed in the south. His parents were both poor and alcoholic and they moved around a lot, living out of flop houses, cheap hotels and with friends and relatives, never staying too long in any place. Jimi’s brother Leon was born when he was five. Three more followed, but they were all put up for adoption by the struggling family. With an upbringing marked by uncertainty, hunger, the death of his mother and belt whippings by his dad, Jimi became shy and introverted. One of his few joys was playing guitar on a broom along to old blues records. Somebody talked his dad into buying him a guitar and he spent his teenage years playing in a band around Seattle, including the premier club in the Northwest, the Spanish Castle. It didn’t take “half a day to get there,” as he later sang in “Spanish Castle Magic,” but traveling in beat-up cars sometimes led to unpleasant delays. After a brief stint as a parachuter with 101st Airborne Jimi left the army guitarless, wearing issued clothes and $300 in his pocket. He walked into a jazz joint and left with $16. Unable to afford the Greyhound back to Seattle he snuck back on the base and begged to get his guitar back from the guy he’d pawned it to. After recovering the axe he spent the next three years priming his chops as a hired gun on the Chitlin’ Circuit—juke joints, cafes, dances and parties from Virginia to Florida, in the Delta and over to Texas—not unlike Robert Johnson had before him. Jimi’s knowledge of R&B, soul and rock hits of the day led to backing jobs for the stars of the day—Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner and many others—but he kept getting fired for being too flashy. Otis Burke traded Jimi like a baseball card on the tour bus to Otis Redding for two horn players. He was fired a week later and left on the side of the road, but the penniless guitarist simply waited till another tour rolled through town for job. Jimi eventually made it to New York City, playing with Curtis Knight—a pimp with a band—and his own, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. He was finally in the spotlight, but his guitar reverberated nightly across an empty room at the Cheetah Club. Luckily, his dexterity caught the attention of Keith Richards’ girlfriend, Linda Keith, who kept bringing musicians and producers into the club until Chas Chandler of the Animals decided to fly Jimi to London. Finally, his career picked up speed. The day of his arrival, his guitantics wowed members of Britain’s musical cognoscenti and he found himself a girlfriend who had previously dated Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and Keith Moon of the Who. Eric Burdon of the Animals who was present that night recalled later that, “It was haunting how good he was.” A week later Chandler brought Jimi to a Cream show so he could meet Clapton. Armed with his guitar he asked if he could jam—a request so ballsy that the guys were caught off guard. Nobody had ever asked to sit in with Cream before. Grafitti around London at the time proclaimed Clapton was God and here was this unknown, wild haired dude clutching a Fender Stratocaster. Jimi plugged in and played Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” in triple speed. Eric’s jaw dropped. “I thought, ‘My god, this is like Buddy Guy on acid,’ ” he recalled later. The years on Chitlin’ Circuit finally paid off. He’d learned how to entertain audiences from watching Little Richards, how to bend strings from Albert King, sat by the feet of B.B. and picked up techniques from an apt student of T-Bone Walker and Freddie King. The analytical musical cannibal had finally transformed into a virtuoso anxious to take on the world. The Jimi Hendrix Experience shook the world with its innovative sounds and fierce electric assaults. He used amps and electronic effects as instruments as much as the guitar, creating dive-bombs, haunting feedback, wah-wah modulated melodies, the sound of a rapid-fire machine gun and Delta blues soaked with dripping washes from the uni-vibe. Jimi suddenly found himself as the celestial center of the psychedelic 60’s, embracing road sex and alterations from acid to speed. Although some women were more important to Jimi than others, he shied away from intimacy and commitment, perhaps ingrained from watching his parents. Off stage Jimi remained polite, but shy and reserved. He kept few close friends and rarely ventured outside the realm of music, socializing almost exclusively with musicians, producers, groupies and hangers-on. That and an incessant tour schedule and recording dates taxed him. His performances became erratic during the last two years of his life. He collapsed on stage and complained that fans came to hear his early hits and watch him play guitar with his teeth. While vacationing in Morocco, most likely the only vacation of his life, an old fortune-teller with a Tarot deck drew the Death card. The card could also mean rebirth, but Jimi freaked out. A few weeks before his death he told a Danish journalist, “I’m not sure I will live to be 28 years old. I mean, the moment I feel I have nothing more to give musically, I will not be around on this planet anymore.” Before he went to bed for the last time he gobbled nine sleeping pills that belonged to a girlfriend. The German pills were stronger than he was used to and sometime in the early morning hours he puked, suffocating himself in deep sleep. He was 27 years old.

Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970)

Arlester "Dyke" Christian (June 13, 1943 - March 13, 1971)
Dyke grew up in a rough part of Buffalo, New York, and learned to be street wise at an early age. He played bass and sang backing vocals for the O'Jays. In 1965 he found himself stranded with half the band in Phoenix. Not one to stay passive, Dyke stepped up to the microphone, hired a few local musicians, and began playing James Brown-style soul as Dyke and the Blazers. The band's 1966 record "Funky Broadway" became a hit (but an even bigger hit for Wilson Pickett who covered it the following year). The band played the legendary Apollo in NYC and James Brown stopped by their dressing room to say hi. "Funky Broadway" was the first song to have the word funk in the title and after it funk as a musical genre became synonymous with the syncopated rhythm pioneered by Dyke and the Blazers. Arlester Christian was shot several times while sitting in his car in down town Phoenix and died leaving a powerful albeit little known legacy. Listen to old James Brown, then pull out his 1967 "Cold Sweat" single and you'll hear Dyke's influence.

Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 - July 3, 1971)
A self-styled "erotic politician," James Douglas Morrison was a creative soul, a loud drunk, and a fantastic entertainer who knew how to push the buttons of individuals, an audience, and society at large. The Doors worked hard at the Whiskey Go Go in Los Angeles. Jim's early stage presence was poor, but as the band grew tighter he grew comfortable with the role. "Light My Fire" sealed the band's success and Jim was lauded as a mysterious Greek god and featured in teeny magazines. But he quickly grew tired of the success and wanted to be viewed as a filmmaker and poet. His lyrics for the Doors touched on subjects such as the meaningless war in Vietnam ("Unknown Soldier"), ecology ("When The Music's Over"), and sketches from his life and imagination ("LA Woman," "The End," "Riders on the Storm") After a concert in Miami he was accused of exposing himself on stage. The charges were ridiculous, witnesses dubious, and the trail bore strong markings of a farce. He was eventually let go with a fine, but he was done with his leather clad show biz persona. He gained weight, grew a beard, wrote poetry, directed a movie, and moved to Paris. One morning his girlfriend Pamela found him dead in the bathtub of the Paris apartment they shared. The cause of death was a heart failure. He apparently did heroin the night of his death, but it was never officially established whether it impacted his death or not.

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (September 8, 1945 - March 8, 1973) Pigpen was the only showman of the Grateful Dead, a hard drinkin’ bluesman whose improvised blues raps equaled Jerry Garcia’s electric hillbilly licks on the guitar. Pig was an integral part of the Dead’s early incarnations. He selected cover songs, wrote words, music, and played piano, organ, harmonica, and sang. Unlike the rest of the Dead Pig wasn’t down with LSD, but he was reportedly dosed on two occasions. In 1966 he had a summer fling with Janis Joplin and introduced her to Southern Comfort, which soon became her signature booze of choice. As the Grateful Dead’s long, strange trip continued with psychedelic jams, Pig, who was more of a blues and rocker, was sidelined. Years of hard boozing soon took its toll and after a long period of illness Pigpen’s liver gave out. His epitaph reads “Pigpen was and is now forever one of the Grateful Dead.”

Wallace Yohn (January 12, 1947 - August 12, 1974)
Wally played organ for Chase, a brass jazz-rock band led by trumpeteer Bill Chase. Wally joined the band for the third and last record, the excellent Pure Music, where his oscillating leads and dripping hammond chords added flair and texture. On August 9, 1974, several members of Chase flew to Minnesota for a gig at the Jackson County Fair. The weather turned nasty and the plane went down with Chase, Yohn, John Emma, Walter Clark, and the two pilots.

Dave Alexander (June 3, 1947 - February 10, 1975)
Dave was the original bassist for the protopunk band The Stooges. Like the rest of The Stooges, he was a fairly unseasoned player in the early days of the band, but their attitudes foreshadowed the punk movement by a few years. He met the Asheton brothers in in high school, but dropped out after 45 minutes of his senior year to win a bet. Eager to go to Liverpool he recruited Ron Asheton to come along and the two saw the Who and tried to find the Beatles. After the trip they founded The Stooges with Iggy. Dave played bass on The Stooges and Fun House, and is credited as the primary composer of "We Will Fall," "Little Doll," and "Dirt." Inspired by Jim Morrison, Iggy took stage antics to unprecedented levels, smearing peanut butter on his chest, cutting his arms with shards of glass, and pioneering the art of stage diving. Drugs were out of control, and although Dave isn't likely to have been any worse than the rest, his interest in practicing dwindled, and he left during the infamous Goose Lake International Music Festival in 1970. He died of pneumonia at an Ann Arbor hospital in 1975.

Pete Ham (April 27, 1947 - April 23, 1975)
A Welsh singer, guitar player, and songwriter, Pete was a dedicated musician who spent as much time as possible honing his craft for his group Badfinger. The group's predecessor was founded in his hometown Swansea while Pete was still in his teens, and they played a lot of the same venues as Steve Winwood and The Who. A small-time manager named Bill Collins saw the group's potential and took them under his wing, letting the members live and practice out of his London home. Collins encouraged The Iveys to work on song-writing and Pete took the advice to heart. While the rest of London went psychedelic, The Iveys remained old fashioned in both dress and song writing. Although the group's talent attracted attention from several record companies, Collins stayed put, waiting for a better opportunity. A former Beatles roadie who worked for Apple records took a strong liking to the group, and in 1968 Paul McCartney signed them .. the single "Maybe Tomorrow," which trailed on the Billboard 100, selecting a follow-up proved difficult. In 1969, Paul McCartney gave them "Come and Get It" and an opportunity to record that track and a pair of their own for the movie The Magic Christian, starring Pete Sellers, Ringo Starr, Raquel Welch, and a John Cleese cameo. Before the release, the group changed their name to Badfinger and went for a slightly harder rock edge. In November 1970, Badfinger released their second LP (No Dice) and the single "No Matter What" reached number eight on the Billboard charts ("Without You" from the same album became a hit for Harry Nilsson (1971) and Mariah Carey (1993)). Signing on with business manager Stan Polley in 1970 proved to be a bad decision. He came highly recommended, but his mob ties and clever financial acrobatics only became obvious to the band members down the road. The group played acoustic guitars on George Harrison's monumental triple record All Things Must Pass (1971), sang backup vocals on a Ringo Starr single, and Pete performed "Here Comes the Sun" on acoustic guitar with George Harrison on his Concert for Bangla Desh (see blog entry for a clip). The group's last record for Apple, Ass, failed to reach the BIllboard Top 100. The eponymous Badfinger was met with little enthusiasm, but 1974's Wish You Were Here was lauded by Rolling Stone magazine and other outlets. In a lawsuit with Warner Brothers, Polley was asked about money supposedly stashed away in an escrow account, but he didn't respond to the requests and the money had vanished. In retaliation WB removed Badfinger's records from its catalog. Pete found himself in a rut. He had written Top 10 singles and worked hard for his band, but had no money and little fame to show for it. April 24, 1975, Pete hanged himself in his studio, blaming Stan Polley for his death. Pete's daughter was born the following month.

Gary Thain (May 15, 1948 - December 8, 1975)
Thain left his native New Zealand when was 17 and lived as a bass player from then on until he died ten years later of a heroin overdose in London. He paid his dues playing R&B in German bars, and made it to London during the height of the Swinging '60s. He played in a jazz-rock trio called New Nadir, and Jimi Hendrix got up on stage with them one night at the Speakeasy. His next project was holding down the groove in the Keef Hartley Band, a tremendous British blues band. He stuck around for all six records and even played Woodstock. In 1972 he got a phone call from prog rockers Uriah Heep, flew to the U.S., and ended up touring and recording with the band during its golden age. Gary was fairly quiet, thin and frail from his drug use, but recognized as one of the two best musicians in the group. He was electrocuted while on stage in 1974, blacked out and suffered severe burns. The band cancelled the rest of the tour. Gary never fully recovered and left the band shortly thereafter by mutual agreement. A few months later he was found dead.

Chris Bell (January 25, 1951 - December 27, 1978)
Born into a wealthy family in Tennessee, Bell spent his childhood listening to the Beatles, photographing, and playing music with his friends. He got a reputation as a good songwriter and guitar player and started hanging out with Alex Chilton. Fuelled by his fascination with the Beatles he wanted the two to become a song writing team like Lennon/McCartney. Working in the legendary Stax studio at night as Big Star the group created a brilliant album titled #1 Record. The sound has later been labeled power pop, but it was drowned out by FM staples such as Led Zeppelin and marred by lousy distribution by Stax. In its original configuration, Big Star only played seven gigs before Chris Bell left disillusioned. He became a born-again Christian and worked on a solo album that wasn't released until 14 years after his death. Chris Bell accidently crashed his car while driving home early one morning and died on impact. Big Star's music is revered by artists such as Eliot Smith, Wilco, R.E.M., and Ryan Adams. Cheap Trick's remake of "In The Street" is now known as the theme from That '70s Show. (Alex Chilton, who kept the band alive for another album after Bell left, recently revived Big Star.)

Dennes Boon (April 1, 1958 - December 22, 1985)
Dennes grew up in San Pedro, California, then an industrial port. At 14 he jumped from a tree in the park and landed in front of Mike Watt and they became friends. D listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the group's political lyrics became a life-long influence on his music. While still teenagers, Boon and Watts started a cover band, but later, after seeing the punk scene in L.A. did they think of creating their own music. The two added George Hurley on drums, called themselves the Minutemen, and helped plow way in the nascent indie scene with Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, Mission of Burma, and Husker Du. The Minutemen turned most conventions upside down: songs clocked in at around a minute, few songs had choruses, the tunes blended jazz, funk, latin, punk riffs, and rock, and the lyrics were at times enigmatic, but political in a radical and/or blue collar way. The Minutemen's most successful album was Double Nickels on the Dime, the title a joke on Sammy Hagar's "Can't Drive 55," and indirectly a joke on the rock establishment at large. To the Minutemen, doing things econo was a lifestyle. Records were cut for less than $1,000, the band traveled in a well-used van, and set up their own gear throughout the long tours. The econo mentality paid off as each tour increased the band's reputation and brought a small profit. Unfortunately, the band's career was cut short when D. Boon's girlfriend fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed the van on a road trip to Arizona. D slid out of the van, hit the pavement and broke his neck and died on impact.

Pete de Freitas (August 2, 1961 - June 14, 1989)
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Pete was recruited as a replacement to Echo and the Bunnymen's drum machine. De Freitas proved quickly that he was much more than an average drummer. Opting for tribal rhythms and shunning excessive cymbal use he established himself as an original rock drummer in the reverb-drenched eighties music scene. He was the backbone of Crocodiles, Porcupine, Heaven Up Here, and the brush-laden Ocean Rain. Then in early '86 he left for New Orleans where he set a new record in rock 'n' excess. He consumed vast quantities of LSD, molly, cocaine, and booze while pretending to create music with his new band The Sex Gods. Instead of creation it was a macabre display of destruction. He totaled two cars, two motorcycles, and nearly himself. He stayed manically awake for eighteen days straight. When his money ran out, the party ended and his compadres-in-excess drifted home. Pete returned to Liverpool like a burnt-out shell and asked for a second chance. The Bunnymen took him back in, but the band never found the way back to its creative glory (not just because of Pete). Mac left and the three started recording with a new singer. Unfortunately Pete died on his bike on the way to the studio in a head-on accident with a car.

Mia Zapata (August 8, 1965 - July 7, 1993)
Raised in Kentucky on Bessie Smith, Jimmy Reed, Hank Williams, Billie Holliday, and hardcore punk Mia founded the Gits at Antioch College in 1986. A few years later, the band and a group of friends moved to Seattle in search of a new audience. The city's alternative music scene, what was later labeled grunge, was about to blow up, and the Gits' post-punk music, attitude, and poetic lyrics garnered the band a devoted following. The band nickel and dimed an independent tour of northern Europe. The following year saw the band's first release, Frenching the Bully. In 1993, the band was busy working on an anticipated follow-up when Mia was raped and murdered late one night on her way home, ending the band's career. Kurt Cobain, who was a friend of Mia's, was profoundly affected by her murder and Nirvana played a benefit concert for the singer August 6, 1993. In 2004, Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia was sentenced to 36 years in prison for her murder.

Kurt Cobain (February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994)

Kristin Pfaff (May 26, 1967 - June 16, 1994)
Born in New York, Kristen picked up bass at Boston College and ended up studying womens studies at the University of Minnesota. After graduation she founded and toured with a local trio called Janitor Joe. While playing a club gig in California, Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson asked if she wanted to play bass for Hole, and after a few days she accepted. Pfaff moved to Seattle to be close with the band and almost immediately joined the band for the recording of Live Through This, Hole's first major label debut. The record went platinum and many feel Pfaff's bass playing, piano, and backup vocals that helped elevate the overall sound. Since moving to Seattle Pfaff became successful, got a heroin habit (which she kicked in 1993), and was close with Kurt Cobain. She was deeply affected by Cobain's suicide and decided to quit Hole and move back to Minneapolis where she had a new band lined up called Palm. Courtney Love didn't take the news lightly. The morning Kristin was supposed to leave she was found stiff in the bathtub from an apparent overdose. Over the course of two months Love had lost a husband and her band's bass player.

Jeremy Michael Ward (May 5, 1976 - May 25, 2003)
Ward piped De Facto's dub and later Mars Volta's sonic output through an assortment of guitar effects, which sculpted the sound of these two highly original bands. He died of a heroin overdose aged 27 less than a month before Mars Volta's debut De-loused in the Comatorium came out, but his influence on the band and its members have lingered on. While working as a repo-man Jeremy found a journal that became the main inspiration for Frances the Mute, and he also coined the term amputechture, the title for the band's third LP. After his fatal overdose, band mates Cedric and Omar swore off drugs for good.