Songwriterobit: Curly Putman

Curly Putman, songwriter, has died at the age of 85.

Yes, Green Green Grass of Home. Yes, DIVORCE. But, mostly, this is his masterwork:

Bobby Braddock remembered how Putnam breathed life into DIVORCE:

"I said, 'Curly, why is it that we don't have any takers on this song?' Nobody was jumping on board with it. He said, 'I think it seems a little bit too happy for such a sad song.' I said, 'Do you think it needs a new melody?' He said, Well, just in a couple of places. The last line of the verse and the last line of the chorus.' What I had, looking back, it sounded kind of like a soap commercial... I thought we should split the writer's share on the song, and he didn't want to take it, so we compromised. He took 25 percent, and we put his name on there. If we'd done it today, we probably would have split it right down the middle because the song had been sitting around and nothing had happened with it. Then, Curly made that little change and it made so much difference."

Putman, like the Waltons, spent his early years living on a mountain which bore the family name.

As if his own work wasn't immortality enough, he's also recorded in a Paul McCartney song, Junior's Farm - written after Putman had rented his farm to Paul and Linda for a period in the early 1970s.

Obitornotobit: Pete Burns

It looks pretty official, sadly:

Hi guys, it's Kyle here. Was asked to send out this tweet on behalf of Steve, Lynn & Michael. #rippeteburns #sadtimes #icon SO SAD!!! pic.twitter.com/rOkAVHsZQg

— Pete Burns (@PeteBurnsICON) October 24, 2016

Producerobit: Kashif Saleem

The R&B producer Kashif Saleem has died.

Kashif was a multi-instrumentalist. He was a singer. He was a producer. And he was responsible for some great moments:


He wrote that. As a writer and producer, he sold over 70 million records in his own right. And then, through sampling, went on to provide the guts of millions more.

It's an unblemished record to be proud of.

Saxophonist Kenny G credits the multifaceted Kashif for launching his career.

Almost an unblemished record to be proud of.

Svenagliobit: Lou Pearlman

Here's a sentence that might bring you up short:

Figures from the pop music world have paid tribute to Lou Pearlman, the founder of Backstreet Boys and Nsync, who has died in prison aged 62 while serving a 25-year sentence for a $300m (£229m) fraud.

Yes, the death of Lou Pearlman, without whom we'd not have had Backstreet Boys on NSYNC, has got those who owe him everything trying to thank him while not upsetting those from whom he took everything.

The Nsync singer Lance Bass tweeted: “Word is that #LouPearlman has passed away. He might not have been a stand up businessman, but I wouldn’t be doing what I love today without his influence. RIP Lou.”

The US singer Aaron Carter also paid his respects on Twitter:

#LouPearlman my old manager died in prison... Rip Lou not the best business guy really at all but he did discover me karma is real

"Not the best business guy" is how you'd describe someone who tries to sell hamburgers at a vegan festival. Pearlman was a disgraceful con merchant - and even Bass' "not a stand-up business man" doesn't really come close to how huge his deception was:

According to the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, at the time of Pearlman’s investigation he owed his investors $96 million, but had less than $15,000 in the bank. The investigation found that Pearlman’s records neglected to show the more than $38 million he had withdrawn for himself and his companies.

You can see why Bass - one of the minority of people who shook Pearlman's hand and came away with the same number of fingers he started with - would be trying to look on the positive.

He ended up in such disgrace that when the Hollywood Review met with Pearlman in jail, you could hear Simon Cowell walking away backwards from a claim to kinship:

So yes, he is well aware of record-breaking pop juggernaut One Direction and boasts, "I know if I was out there, we'd give One Direction a run for their money." He reminisces about his "friendly rivalry" in the '90s with that band's puppeteer, Simon Cowell. (Responds a spokesperson for Cowell: "Simon hardly knows him. They were only ever introduced once, and there wasn't any kind of friendly rivalry.")

And that's before you even get to the rumours of sexual abuse, most deeply investigated by Vanity Fair in 2007:

In the November issue of Vanity Fair, Pearlman, for the first time publicly, is described by several former singers, aspiring singers and their parents as a lecher, who used the same deceptive charms to cop cheap feels off teenage boys as he did to allegedly bilk 1,400 investors out of more than $300 million.

Talking to The Hollywood Reporter from prison, Pearlman offered a watertight defence:

He adds that fellow inmates have come to know the real Pearlman through the years and never hassle him about the molestation charges: "They realize that none of that can be true."

'The guys on B Wing don't think I'm a nonce, so how could I be?'

The only trouble with this is that while he's saying he's not a sexual abuser, he also denies having run a ponzi scheme too. In fact, the only thing faster than Simon Cowell trying to distance himself from Pearlman is Pearlman trying to distance himself from the likes of Bernie Madoff. Pearlman insists that he was different because he had a way of making money to repay those he fleeced.

Which is puzzling, as a lot of people invested in a fleet of airplanes which turned out to exist solely as photos in a glossy booklet.

Lou Pearlman was 62. He'd been due to stay inside until 2029.

Suicideobit: Alan Vega

As 2016 continues to cut a swathe through the talented, another name to add to the list: Alan Vega has died.

The family issued a statement via Henry Rollins' website. Which is way more stylish than announcing it via Facebook:

Hello. Henry here. I am afraid I have some unfortunate news. Below is the family approved statement.

We will have a special show tomorrow on KCRW, celebrating the great man’s work. Thank you for reading and thank you for respecting the family’s privacy at this difficult time.

July 17 1618 Hrs. PST

With profound sadness and a stillness that only news like this can bring, we regret to inform you that the great artist and creative force, Alan Vega has passed away.

Alan passed peacefully in his sleep last night, July 16. He was 78 years of age.

Alan was not only relentlessly creative, writing music and painting until the end, he was also startlingly unique. Along with Martin Rev, in the early 1970’s, they formed the two person avant band known as Suicide. Almost immediately, their incredible and unclassifiable music went against every possible grain. Their confrontational live performances, light-years before Punk Rock, are the stuff of legend. Their first, self-titled album is one of the single most challenging and noteworthy achievements in American music.

Alan Vega was the quintessential artist on every imaginable level. His entire life was devoted to outputting what his vision commanded of him.

One of the greatest aspects of Alan Vega was his unflinching adherence to the demands of his art. He only did what he wanted. Simply put, he lived to create. After decades of constant output, the world seemed to catch up with Alan and he was acknowledged as the groundbreaking creative individual he had been from the very start.

Alan’s life is a lesson of what it is to truly live for art. The work, the incredible amount of time required, the courage to keep seeing it and the strength to bring it forth—this was Alan Vega.

Alan is survived by his amazing family, wife Liz and son Dante. His incredible body of work, spanning five decades, will be with us forever.

Last year, Rollins, Vega and Martin Rev took part in an In Conversation event, where the time Suicide played with The Clash in Glasgow came up:

MR: The Clash was a riot every single night and that was straight after supporting Elvis Costello, which was also a riot every single night on the continent. But The Clash was a UK tour, the climax of which was Glasgow. And, as probably many of you know - or know from your parents - at that point Glasgow was one of the poorest cities in the world, if not the poorest. They said, ‘If you can survive Glasgow, you can survive anything’ and they were right. It was a riot. Hatchets were thrown.

AV: It’s true!

MR: We found it embedded in a bass drum; an actual hatchet. A fucking axe head.

AV: They threw an axe at me! They threw an axe at me!

Elizabeth Lamere: And nobody believed you… [LAUGHS]

MR: The money that was thrown could be lethal, too. For the guys who cleaned up afterwards it was pretty good though…

AV: See, we started with The Specials. Two bands opened on that Clash tour. I liked them by the way... they were all fucked up [LAUGHS]. They were great, really great. So they got The Specials and then out comes Suicide and it was ‘BOOOO!!! BOOOOO!!!’ We got booed to shit and had to work our way up from there… upwards, or sideways or downwards. I don’t even know. And The Clash were great and always on the drum riser before the show. I loved them.

MR: But you have to remember that The Clash got the same thing. It was the height of punk, so to show your affection you used to spit and throw things. The Clash went on and if you were watching the band - and that was the band that everybody had paid to see - you saw all kinds of shit. And Glasgow was hardcore. Very serious.

AV: But at the front was a bunch of fucking Nazis. Every kind of available filth in the world. And at the back were the poor guys who liked rock & roll and they were exquisite. Go to the back!

MR: And they were fighting each other. The punks, the nazis and the skinheads. They all had their own personal thing. The only unifying factor was that they all hated us.

Here's the band playing without a hail of phlegm and tanners. Wonderfully, it's not clear exactly when and the poster doesn't seem sure if its CBGBs or Max's in Kansas City.

Funkobit: Bernie Worrell

Bernie Worrell, co-founder of Funkadelic and Parliament, has died.

As The Guardian's obituary observes, in effect he was paid in exposure:

Worrell’s contributions as a keyboardist, writer and arranger didn’t bring him a lot of money, the source of much legal action and fierce criticism of Clinton, but fellow musicians paid attention.

As a result, when he was fighting cancer it took a fundraiser to help cover his medical expensese. Although it was a pretty impressive fundraiser.

He had a varied career - he was part of the band featured in Rikki And The Flash, the so-so Meryl Streep movie; he played with Talking Heads during their imperial phase. And, perhaps less magnificently, he was part of Buckethead's post-Guns N Roses existence:

Worrell had been inspired to take up the synth by Emerson, Lake And Palmer. From a Passion of the Weiss interview last year:

I have to say when I was in college at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. I had an Emerson, Lake & Palmer [album]. That’s when I first heard the Moog synthesizer.

It tickled my fancy. That was a big one. [Note: Emerson played an enormous Moog modular synth.] After joining P-Funk, they came out with the Minimoog, which is the granddaddy after the one that Keith Emerson [played]. I bought one, and then came “Flash Light.” And “One Nation” bass line, that’s a Minimoog. Bass line on “Aqua Boogie,” that’s a Minimoog. There’s actually three Minimoogs on “Flash Light.” Everybody gravitates towards the bass line, but there’s two more doing cartoon voices.

With Worrell so influential on black music, this does mean that Emerson, Lake & Palmer are legitimately one of the founding forces of hip-hop. Kind of.

Blissobit: Prince Be

Attrell Cordes, better known as PM Dawn's Prince Be, has died.

A Facebook post from Doc G confirmed the news earlier today:



Prince Be has unwell for some time - Doc G spoke to The Stranger in 2011 as he took on the PM Dawn mantle, and wasn't ruling out a return to stage:

I don't know if he'll ever be able to join me again. Prince Be is doing his best to try and get back his health. I think the death of Nate Dogg woke him up. He was slacking a bit. I don't know if Nate had diabetes, but, you know, the strokes... Prince Be can still sing a bit, but he has paralysis in his right hand and it's a little tough. I wish I had the funds for a portable dialysis machine. We'd go on the road. I have this whole vision to get him back out there. I actually had an idea of putting him in a wheelchair and dressing him up like a Utopian Professor X.

Prince Be was American, but PM Dawn wouldn't have been PM Dawn without Britain.

When Be was six, his dad gave him a record by Donovan - and you can see the influence of Donovan's lyrics and worldview on the candy, universal outlook of PM Dawn. More crucially, when the band couldn't catch a cold in the US, the UK liked Ode to a Forgetful Mind to earn the band a deal with an offshoot of Island Records. Prince Be relocated to London, explaining why to the LA Times in 1991:

That spiritual orientation of the late '60s, stressing peace, love and equality, permeates Prince Be's views. He said he even moved to London recently because he finds the atmosphere there less stressful than on the East Coast.

"You can hear the difference in the songs that were written over there," he said in another interview recently. "New York is really stressed out so the songs I write (there) are really morbid. London, though, is (as) if you took New York's fire and poured water on it, so you still have the embers."

But Prince Be also found Britain to be more comfortable on a social level:

"They're not so race conscious over there. They understand me better. It's a shame but it's hard being black and spiritual in this country."

You'll see Prince Be described as an optimist in many places over the web; there can surely be no better proof of his optimism than a man who moved to John Major's England because it felt like a Shangri-La.

RIP: PRInce

Bugger.

Bugger that, and bugger this year.

Countryobit: Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard has died at the age of 79. There are, of course, any number of obituaries online already.

Perhaps the best story about Haggard is that his musical career had its inspiration in one of Johnny Cash's prisons gigs. It's a great story because it shows what treating prisoners like people can do, but it's also great because that whole 'here is a man playing guitar, I can do that too' storyline in effect makes Haggard a punk hero as well as a country one.

I first came across Merle Haggard thanks to the NME - younger readers might need to be told there used to be a music magazine with that name. Back in 1988, the paper produced an album of Vietnam related pop, rock and soul called Feels Like I'm Fixin To Die. It's pretty good, and on it was this:

He came to regard the song as a bit of an albatross:

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t written Okie. Not that I’m ashamed of it. I’m not sure but what bothers me most is the people that identify with it. There is the extremity out there. I don’t know. It made people forget that I might be a much more musical artist than they give me credit for. I was indelibly stamped with this political image—this political, musical spokesman, or whatever.

And although it's a great song, based on the lyrics I might have not bothered digging much further into Haggard's back catalogue when I was 18. But this song made me give him a second look:

There's a moon across the border in the Louisiana sky
I smell the Pontchartrain,
I hear Silver Wings
Then, away Merle Haggard flies

If Nanci Griffith was giving him a verse in a song, equal billing with Loretta Lynn - well, he had to be worth a second look, right?

Beatlesobit: Fred Arnold

Really, this is just a plug for an article over at The Arkansas Times, recording the death of Fred Arnold. The story starts as an everyday tragedy - homeless man becomes the 467th person to die in a car accident in the state in 2015 - but becomes much more:

[His friend Walter Durst] said that Arnold, who often went by the nickname Billy, had once owned a set of iconic record stores in Charleston, S.C., where he had also been a radio show host and an active promoter of punk bands in the 1980s. He said he'd visited London, Cuba and Russia (that his politics "bordered on Communist") and had also briefly lived in Colorado, as he preferred a colder climate. He said that Arnold had suffered a number of strokes in recent years, exacerbating many of his other problems. The letter, though, grew stranger as it went on. Durst claimed, for instance, that Arnold had known all the members of The Beatles, and had been particularly good friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. That after Lennon's death, Arnold and Ono had continued to correspond and had remained close friends. "It was one of the hardest things I have ever done," he wrote, "when I had to write to Yoko to tell her of Fred's death."

Progobit: Keith Emerson

Keith Emerson, the one who wasn't Lake or Palmer, has died.

Oddly, Mark Ronson was also out the blocks to pay tribute (this time with a Tweeted performance).

That link with the death George Martin, though, is appropriate - although Emerson went further, and brought jazz and classical sounds into the heart of their music, rather than spraying it on as an influence.

Not all the world was ready - if you think Punk was a movement which fell apart, how much worse to be part of a scene known as "progressive" and yet having created a sound which now feels very much part of the past?

Here's Emerson as part of his pre-ELP outfit, The Nice, covering Leonard Bernstein:


Early reports say that Keith died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Producerobit: George Martin

There's been a great deal written about George Martin over the last couple of days - I can't recall an occasion previously when a record producer's death has led the BBC News, for example.

If you're looking for a good place to start, or frankly are only prepared to read one thing about Martin, I'd suggest the Guardian's collection of other producers talking about his work, although it's a pity they start with Mark Ronson's bit:

I was in a studio last night with a bass in my hand, thinking, ‘What would George do?’

Were you really, Mark? Really?

It might make me a bad person that when I heard the news, my mind went straight not to The White Album or Love Me Do, but... well, to this:

To be fair, Big Train did capture something quite essential about Martin there - yes, he was brilliant musically, but like many musicians that didn't make him any less of a bore when he talked about it.

On a side note, how many Game Of Thrones fans do you think had a horrible two minutes on Wednesday morning?

Countryobit: Joey Feek

Joey Feek, the "Joey" in Joey + Rory, has died.

She's been unwell for some time, and her decline has been recorded by Rory, her husband as well as her collaborator. Yesterday he posted:

"At 2:30 this afternoon, as we were gathered around her, holding hands and praying... my precious bride breathed her last."

The pair had been active in the music industry - and married - before forming a professional partnership to compete on Can You Duet, a CMT Voice-style show. The pair came third, but a combination of their talents and connections saw them spin their appearance into a three-album run with Sugar Hill Records; then a number of self-released albums which became more and more Christianity-heavy as they progressed.

Punkobit: Vi Subversa

What a grim start to the year it's been, with legends and heroes dying left and right. Yesterday, Vi Subversa of The Poison Girls died. Here's how her son, Pete Fender, told the world via Facebook:

It is with deep sorrow that I have to announce the mourning of my wonderful mum Frances Sokolov, known to many as Vi Subversa, who has passed away peacefully following a short illness.

We know that her death will come as a shock. Vi had recently celebrated her 80th birthday and only a few short weeks ago gave what was to be her final performance.

Vi led an extraordinary life in a variety of fields, but was no doubt best known as the lead singer, lyricist and rhythm guitarist in Poison Girls.

She was a key figure to a lot of people and we know that there will be a great many who would wish to pay tribute to her music and words, as well as to her remarkable achievements in life.

We know too that she would want this to happen.

We are holding a private funeral for her close friends and family, and naturally there will be a public event to celebrate her life and work later in the year. We, her family, ask that our need for privacy be respected during this very difficult time.

We are confident that Vi would not wish her friends and fans to overindulge in sadness. We all feel that her life was complete and should be celebrated. She made it to the milestone, and her time had come. Flesh and blood is what we are.

Djobit: Terry Wogan

Arriving back in the UK from a weekend in Amsterdam, on a TV screen glimpsed through a security window was a grinning, waving Terry Wogan. We already knew, of course - this is the 21st Century and you don't have to wait anymore until the news, on the hour, with James Alexander Gordon, to find out what's going on.

My Mum loved Radio 2, or at least loved it enough to be able to listen to it during the day, and much of my early musical experience came from 233 and 330 (less so Stereo VHF). Both Waggoner's' Walks, Diddy David Hamilton, Pete Murray, Jimmy Young and, every breakfast, Terry Wogan. This was his first run of breakfast shows - the era of Pru Forrest, JR, and suggesting that Super Trouper claims Abba were making telephone calls from Tesco. It seemed to be at the time that doing the breakfast show on Radio 2 must surely be the most desirable job in the world.

Along with Ribena and fried eggs, Wogan was how I woke up every morning - calming and reassuring, especially on those mornings when my eyes had gummed themselves shut and I'd come to in panic and fear. He was the very model of avuncularity and, although my tastes moved on, I'll miss knowing he's around.

Producerobit: Dale Griffin

Dale Griffin, Mott The Hoople's drummer, has died.

Although it was his work on the drumstool that leads his biography, Griffin's influence on music runs much deeper than that - between 1981 and 1994, he worked for the BBC, primarily producing sessions. And most of those sessions were for John Peel. The John Peel wikia has started on the work of detailing the 2000 or so Peel Sessions that he - often with a grump in his heart, it must be said - produced. They've got as far as E at the moment, but it's already a list that brings together Ex, Terence Trent D'Arby and John Chibadura & the Tembo Brothers. There's not many producers who could claim to have worked with so many acts, across such a wide range of styles, and with such success.

Managerobit: Giorgio Gomelsky

Giorgio Gomelsky, the original manager of The Rolling Stones, has died.

His entry into the music business came by way of London's coffee bar boom - his tiny Espresso bar became such a hit it formed a foundation of a nightclub; then, he helped create The Crawdaddy. This venue gave early starts to the Stones, Julie Driscoll, Rod Stewart and others. Although his stewardship of the Stones career wasn't long, his early support gave them the base on which Andrew Loog Oldham would build; Gomelsky moved on to help The Yardbirds build their career.

By the mid 60s, Gomelsky was running a management/label hybrid, Paragon, releasing music on the Marmalade label. This came apart when the money men for the venture at Polydor fell out with him; Gomelsky headed for France where he would find himself working with Gong and managing Magma, almost single-handedly creating an alternative music scene for the nation.

Since 1978, he lived in New York. He curated a series of music festivals and again got involved with releasing music and managing musicians.

In 2001, he spoke to Eurock about how the business had changed in fifty years:

When I got to London in the mid-fifties, the “pop” scene was just a pale imitation of white US commercial music. At least there was a local “do-it-yourself” music, “skiffle”, (imported to the UK by British bandleader CHRIS BARBER) derived from Lonnie Johnson and other blues/folksters, which allowed young people to take up instruments. The Beatles started out as “The Quarrymen” and were able to inject some freshness into music when they started to make it. The Stones and the other blues bands introduced a new generation to black music thereby rendering an invaluable service too. European musicians were practicing jazz, and although aesthetically more appreciated than in the US, it seemed less urgent, less “dramatic”, less speaking to a new generation. So rock took over. Later the punks kicked everybody in the proverbial ---. This opportunity is still present, but bands/managers/labels are now so focused on making it in whatever category they and the “industry” define themselves to be, that a “major breakthrough” has become well nigh improbable. It’s the old story yet again, the seemingly tragic-comic vicious circle between the true function and merit of art and that of commerce and politics. Ultimately, it’s a question of education. I’m hopeful that the internet will allow the natural curiosity of those attracted to music to explore every nook and cranny of musical production and discover where the real values are and that bands will emerge who know what directions to pursue.

Giorgio Gomelsky was 82. He died of cancer, like so many others.

Onehitobit: Troy Shondell

Troy Shondell, a Transatlantic one-hit wonder, has died.

His hit, This Time (We're Really Breaking Up), sold a million copies in the US - making it to number six (different world, 1961) in America and 22 in the UK. Nothing he did subsequently would worry the chart compilers on either side of the ocean.

Shodell went on to work with Phil Spector, but decided that his professional future wasn't in front of the microphone. He moved into the collections business, becoming an executive at ASCAP.

Troy Shondell died from complications related to Alzheimers and Parkinsons. He was 76.

Goodbye, Spaceboy

That's been a hell of a day. You could hear Shaun Keaveny on 6Music trying to keep it as light as possible, but also trying to keep it together. The Today programme was noticeably less interested in the other stories it had to cover; the Archbishop of Canterbury's appearance to talk about the death pangs of the Anglican Communion was cut down.

Twitter - for a while, at least - was united in positive memories. (Tumblr, being Tumblr, less so).

And it's not that Tumblr didn't have a point, it's just that its timing was off - there's time to sift through the Nazi stuff, and the China Girl video, and Tin Machine and the period when he perhaps became detached from a sense of humour. But let's have a moment to fill out the pro column first, shall we?

Here's a quick round-up of some of the coverage from today that you might have missed:

OpenLearn remembering the Banc, the Bonds and the ISP

The Western Daily Press on Bowie at Glastonbury

Vox on Bowie's part in ending the Cold War

The Local (German news in English) takes a photo tour of Bowie's Berlin

The Evening Argus on Bowie's live album recorded in Falmer

Liverpool Echo on alteregos in pop, and 1977 gig photos

The New York Times on Bowie's impact on fashion

Atlas Obscura remembers The Laughing Gnome

Billboard catches up with Peter Schilling, who had a US hit with a "sequel" to Space Oddity

Bustle collects the best Bowie lyrics

Legendobit: David Bowie

The radio alarm clicked on this morning to the words "it's been announced in the last few minutes that David Bowie has died."

So the new album turns out to have been like a bush doing one last fruiting; a coda, not a rebirth.

Fuck.