Alan's nomination of Dear Dead Alex is right on the money. Alex would have been my nomination for all the reasons given. He was the deliciously-scary uncle I never had!

Why? Borrowing Jimi and giving him back, for his back catalogue, inspiring me to pick up the guitar and have a go, for the power (Rude Mood) and the beauty (Lenny)...'thank you so very much'....

that the more obvious members of "that stupid club" were not selected. Whilst I will always defend the right to free speech, the inclusion of the Notorious B.I.G. almost had me wavering...

Anyhow. A vote from this quarter for the myopically underrated Ronnie van Zandt. The crafter of love songs, protest songs, drug songs and rock songs. A fantastic voice who could nail any style you can name and a true band leader of the tightest most fluid band this side of E Street.

Anyone who takes Neil Young down a peg or too is worth remembering...

if these three hadn’t met the Grim Reaper early doors?

Having digested the list a few just came to their natural end, i.e. James Brown and Johnny Cash etc.

The great loss is those who died young or at the peak of their powers.
My nomination is Gram Parsons, another 5 years and he would have changed country music forever. The songs he did with Emmylou Harris rank amongst the greatest music ever made.

yes he was tortured and yes, he wanted to tell you about just how tortured he was but such an incredible songwriter - XO is an almost perfect record - or as close as i've ever heard... some of the earlier songs too such as 'between the bars' and 'needle in the hay' are so naked and raw and unspeakably beautiful..

i didn't cry when i heard lennon had been shot, maybe i wasn't old enough at the time to fully appreciate it, but i wept when i heard elliott had died, gawd bless him.

Fantastic guitarist, two excellent solo albums.

I suppose its Hendrix. I started listening to Stephen Stills first solo again this month and the Hendrix guitar playing on "Old Times Good Times" is just brilliant. And if they have as they say they have, another album of this stuff to come out I for one can't wait.

Paul Kossoff:

Why is he my favourite? Probably because nobody ever remembers him, while bell-ends like Sid Vicious are revered as icons.

Alex Harvey for me too. Caught them in University days, with Zal all made up like a twisted Pierrot, Alex all sweaty, edgy and really f*cking scary. A man you would not argue with in a pub. When the Faith Healer riff stabbed out into the night, the cognoscenti howled in delight, and we were treated to ten minutes of fantastically charged musical brilliance. We went home singing "Let me put my hands on you" at the tops of our voices, in our best leery Scottish accents. The neighbours will have been very disturbed. Top drawer genius, much missed, he pissed all over anything the punk movement had to offer.

Her life was unusual, her music is perfect.

that I won't hear anymore new music from Lowell George, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Healey or Warren Zevon.

Ronnie Lane

And let's not forget Kirsty MacColl.

It was quite sad when he died because:
He was ace, and there's no doubt several people who owe their existence to one of his records.

He invented Love Unlimited Orchestra, who have three entries in the Greatest Tunes Ever countdown - Love's Theme, It May Be Winter Outside and Under The Influence Of Love.

He was the walrus. Of lurve.

Even his comebacks weren't dreadful, although there is clearly some kind of dignity in a TVAD Hits comp afterlife: popping up on the couches of Breakfast with Bill & Sian, and This Morning. Perhaps if yer lucky 'An Audience With'. Being mildly patronised by that Chiles character on the bloody One Show.

Back when you could get away with 'Greatest Hits' being less than ten tracks long, his mid-70s collection was essential.

The talkie bit "yeah we got it together baby, isn't it nice? etc' at the beginning of 'First, Last, Everything'

The laydeez loved him.

...without suit and tie, dripping with sweat and attitude, Lee Brilleaux from Dr.Feelgood. Who always gave it plenty.

Some of the sobering overall statistics are here:

http://www.av1611.org/rockdead.html

Although points already deducted from the above site for:

1. Saying that Mama Cass choked to death.

2. Ian "Steward".

"Posted By Mark Ellen"

My vote by the way goes to Karen Carpenter.
I guess the "powers that be" in the hearafter would be reluctant to give up one thrid of the greatest girl band ever.
"Karen, Kirsty and Sandy"

Martin

They would have been amazed that no one has mentioned Elvis yet... or (pushing Rock star a bit far) Bob Marley.

My personal one was never a big star, but it hit me surprisingly hard when I realised I would never hear new stuff from him - Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens, who apparently laid down for a nap before his house warming party and never woke up.

I agree with everything that has been said about Alex Harvey. My slightly leftfield selection is Gary Holton of the Heavy Metal Kids. These were one of the first bands I saw at Bedworth Civic Hall and they blew everyone away. Gary was later more famous in Auf Wiedersehn Pet, but I would hope he's not forgotten for his rock 'n' roll years.

Ok, not Gram or Gene, who, sad but true, effectively ended their own lives, but poor old Clarence, hit by a drunk driver. Without his guitar, I believe much of the country rock template, yes, probably initiated by Mssrs Parsons and Clark, amongst others, would have foundered a little at the Byrds stage.

The dead pop stars articles were an excellent idea; unfortunately I thought Stuart Maconie’s Ian Curtis piece was a missed opportunity. SM seemed to have released his inner Emo and presented the idea that Curtis’s death was inevitable and the sole defining focus of his art. In contrast to this one of the good points of the film “Control” was that it showed IC’s problems to be everyday ones and that he had choices in his live. I mean “musician marries young and then has second thoughts” is hardly unique. In facts its’ a plot line from the Archers; speaking of which Brian Aldridge shows us you can live a long and eventful life whilst being treated for epilepsy!
I think Joy Division of all bands are a perfect choice for a “what would have been” piece seeing as New Order show us one alternative future. Would Stuart swap 2-3 extra Joy Division Lp’s for the glories of Temptation, Elegia, Bizarre Love Triangle and Technique? What would the musical world be like without the only avant garde song you can play at weddings, Blue Monday? Instead we sadly got the Camden lock cider and black too much eye shadow t-shirt seller’s view of Ian Curtis, which was a shame.

A great talent...."Grace" is a wonderful album....could he have bettered it, we'll never know

I witnessed one of the late , great Alex harvey's final perfomances at Glastonbury in 1980 something, he was fantastic, although I don't think he really got into the spirit of the whole festival thing. My lasting memory of his performance was him , stood at the end of the stage shouting Sing yer cunts , sing!

Second thoughts about what I put here yesterday, very poor taste, won't happen again.

Had U2 failed to breach the gates of stadiums and arenas worldwide, Bono could have conceivably forged an alternative career for himself as a political lobbyist. In the same parallel universe Michael Stipe can be found managing a leftwing food cooperative, bulk purchasing organically-grown lentils from fair-trade sources. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Paul McCartney arrives home as his builder, Noel Gallagher, adds the final curmudgeonly touches to “the best fookin’ kitchen extension in the world.”

While there remains the suspicion that the majority of the chancers who try their luck in the music industry could have succeeded in other areas of life, had fame not come calling, it is doubtful that Gun Club frontman and former president of the Blondie fanclub - Jeffrey Lee Pierce – could have been anything other than what he became.

Here was a man seemingly unable to grasp the practicalities of day-to-day living; who always appeared to be pulling in several different directions at once and whose enthusiasm for the things he cared about sometimes spilled-out into an over-exuberance that could both irritate and inspire. In his autobiography he recalls: “The first time I heard ‘Smokestack Lightening’ in a car behind the Liquorice Pizza Record Store, I immediately ran across the street and forced Lorna Doon to listen to it. She was not impressed.”

Some will mourn the wasted potential of an undeniably talented individual, dead at the unglamorous age of 37, after a blot clot in his brain placed him in a coma - the sad, premature end to a life spent drinking and drug-taking, while scraping an erratic existence on the margins of the music industry. Others will remember an artist whose creative output was so tied to his lifestyle that, had he done it differently, neither the songs nor the worldview that shaped them would have ever come into being.

The Gun Club existed in various permutations since the band’s inception at the dawn of the 1980s, with Pierce being the only constant in their ever-shifting line-up. Initially they traded in a kind of punk blues, inheriting some of the coarseness and lewd vernacular of a musical tradition where “practicing voodoo” and “standing candles” had sexual double-meanings.

Received wisdom is that the band’s first two albums - Fire of Love and Miami represent the pinnacle of their output. However it wasn’t until their third studio album – The Las Vegas Story that Pierce broadened both as a songwriter and a musician. Take the abstract, sky-scraping guitar of Bad America, which seems to reference Hendrix’s deconstruction of The Star Spangled Banner. On the same album, two well-executed cover versions showed-off their range of influences – the epic electric guitar sketches and tumbling piano of Pharaoh Saunders’ The Master Plan segueing fluidly into a distraught reading of Gershwin’s My Man’s Gone Now, as if the two had always belonged together.

Of greater interest were Pierce’s self-penned songs, written like books with whole chapters missing, the lyrics frequently lamenting changed situations and the irrevocable loss of better times. These were songs that could make your soul ache.

My introduction to The Gun Club came via a lukewarm review in the reissues section of Q magazine. To the best of my recollection none of the albums being considered were awarded more than three stars. I didn’t care about that. It was the name of the group that had caught my attention.

A couple of years later, while flipping through the racks of Adrian’s record shop, I came across the band’s swansong - Lucky Jim. Back home I was immediately taken the album’s centrepiece, Idiot Waltz - a thousand-yard stare into the ashes of a dying relationship, the weeping electric guitar solo interrupted by Pierce’s rueful admission: “It was foolish to be alive. It was stupid in a foolish time.”

Over 10 years after his death in March, 1996, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s posthumous career mirrors the chaotic path that he took during his life. As one Gun Club album gets a long overdue re-release, another on a different record label goes out of print. It took me years to acquire a complete set, but that gave each one time to sink in. These are records that become a part of you. Occasionally a line in a song will catch you off guard and draw blood. Then it’s like being alone in a foreign country, suddenly hit by the bittersweet realisation that you are adrift in the world and that ‘home’ amounts to no more than a few possessions and a handful of friendships forged by the convenience of shared circumstances. Pierce's words shine a light into the human psyche. They make you aware that something important is missing. It hurts to think and feel that way, but it’s a good hurt.

...er, I know some people go on about him a bit too much, but it's Friday night and I need to be moved by something.

The beginning:

The comeback:

The final curtain:

Going along the theme...He was one of the Tuesday Night Supper Club that got Sheryl Crow her start and put out a couple of amazing albums (notably Thud) before committing a remarkably stupid act leading to his demise.

The Sound's Adrian Borland. The Sound were a criminally neglected band, easily the equal of Joy Division. But Borland was not blessed with the photogenic brooding looks of Curtis. Instead, he resembled a slightly tubby estate agent. They made several fantastic albums, and were, reportedly, extraordinary live.

Borland suffered terribly from bipolar affective disorder (manic depression) and threw himself in front of a train on the London underground in the mid 90s.

An extraordinary talent.

I don't know how to post You Tube clips here, but if you go to the site and search for The Sound, you'll find a couple of astonishing performances.

All the mythologising of dead rock stars leaves me a little baffled, I'm afraid. I've never understood it. Just because they're dead, it shouldn't make them any more special. It just means they're not making music anymore. In some cases it's sad that they're not around, especially when they died at a fairly young age, but it shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of their artistic contribution.

Im pretty surprised that no one has nominated the magnificent, mischievous, Antipodean front man of the best rock n roll band (TM) on the planet AC/DC. It was Bon that got me into listening to music properly and, despite the glory of Back in Black, AC/DC never really recovered from his tragic demise. This was the rock star that your parents tried to warn you about- I distinctly remember my mother telling me to take back my copy of If You Want Blood to the local record shop because of THAT sleeve. Bon was the epitome of the rock n roll lifestyle writ large: you knew this man was a very bad man indeed.

Gone but never ever forgotten. Rest in peace you legend.

Here's a couple of sadly missed heroes from the Emerald Isle...

I guess Phil's always been one of my rock and roll heroes... a great singer and consummate front man, under-rated songwriter and bass player. A tragic rock ending too.

And Rory?? What a loss, what a waste. Still one of the greatest blues singers and guitarists and ought to be lionised up there with the usual Guitar Idols!!

Buddy Holly was the most tragic. just trying to gain a few extra hours to do his laundry while touring the north country mid winter.
Ian Curtis pulled a James Dean - dying just before his band broke big-may he stay forever young.
John lennon - We now know the price of fame. All the more tragic coming on the cusp of his return to the business of making art.
Gram Parsons - The dude had it all, Money Fame talent Looks and a Voice. he also had a self destructive streak that stretched from LA to Joshua tree.
Syd Barrett - Shone too close and a maddeningly long drawn out twilight.
Keith Moon - if A cat has nine lives, how many does a loon have?
Vivian Stanshall - Rawlinsons end came predictably too fast, still pissed he's missed.
Nick Drake - proof and all that shyness is deadly.

Without yet even having looked inside the cover of this issue (I'm way busy with music and photography at festivals this summer), I have to say that...I was riding on a bus back from eastern New York State, visiting a nearly-girlfriend in Schenectady in September 1970, for two nights, then buying an issue of Circus & reading that Jimi had just died--of what *I* had *almost* just died of--suffocating on one's own vomit. Unlike Hendrix, I had someone sufficiently annoyed with the sounds I was making to rescue me.There but for fortune...

On the bus, there was this middle-aged, white male drunk muttering & cursing like an abandoned tool as if he wanted the world to hear the explusions from his alcohol-soaked body and mind, 2 seats in front of me.

A S.U.N.Y.A.B.(State University of New York At Buffalo) student a few rows up looked back, saw me, and the wastrel, noted what I was reading,and the absurdity, and oh yes, the irony. His name was Matt Goldman, and he introduced me to his academic coterie during several hitch-hike trips down to Buffalo from Oakville,Ontario (and back, subsequently. Life-changing.
He and all of his friends were in the draft lottery in '71, and one day a guy we hung out with named Steve got his notice. He had a birthday that came up as #5 (out 365). He paled. We all paled--and I was still too young to dodge even if I hadn't been living in Canada since 1959.

As my hair grew, I got everything from "Yankee Go Home" to "What makes you so special?" to "are you a boy or a girl?"

So,yeah Jimi Hendrix's death changed my life fast and permanently. When Janis Joplin died a month later, then Jim Morrison in '71...I was already hardened to losing favorite musical bright stars that burnt out at the top of their arc, like roman candles.
Could have punched the kid in '80 who laughed when he & I heard in a bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan that John Lennon had been gunned down by Chapman. Ignorant little gnat. Now, I just lower my eyes when I hear another good one has gone, then carry on and look at eager, smiling, inventive youths, before the poison cloud snuffs them too.

He wasn't a rock star.....but had the spirit.

This is Raglan Road sung by Luke and used to great effect on the In Bruges film with Brendan Gleeson,Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes.
For that clip just add "On Raglan Road - In Bruges" to You Tube as the embedding is disabled.

For the man.....here he is.

to the 'What if he'd lived longer' question.

I'm not sure how 'rock'n'roll' he was in terms of the Groupies, the drugs and all that McGubbins, but i'm pretty much convinced that if he'd lived longer, we might well we wondering 'Elvis who?'

Couldn't agree more with Alex Harvey being included. Sadly too young to have seen him, but the Whistle Test clips are absolutely captivating.

Seconds for Bon Scott (who was surely influenced by Alex doing Faith Healer?), Phil Lynott and Hank Williams.

And my suggestions; Sylvester, New Model Army's sorely underrated drummer Rob Heaton, Metallica's bassist Cliff Burton, Ike Turner, Patrick Cowley, King Tubby and Ozzy's old guitarist Randy Rhoads.

What the hell, let's have some Randy: Ozzy's voice is already shot to bits at this stage of his career but RR absolutely tears it up.

Keith Richard.
Oops, sorry! He just looks dead.

A list sadly too long to be comprehensive, but several spring to mind instanly:

Nick Drake - Too much talent to handle in such a thin skin

Sandy Denny - A tragic loss of the best female British folk singer ever

Alex Harvey - Sheer brilliance

Keith Moon - Not just a character, but a stunning musician

Paul Kossoff - Another great talent who died too young

Rory Gallagher - The nicest guy in the business

And recently - Colin Cooper of the Climax Blues Band. A brilliant musician, a very modest man and a lovely guy.

RIP all of you.

I'm aware he's not dead AS SUCH, but as a "rock star", I'm sure you will agree, he's been a goner for quite som time now. However, his left handed yet enthusiastic contributions to "quite good" sixties combo The Beatles earns him a place alongside George, John and Liberace, in the "best dead rock star" canon, does it not?

My 80's/90's band Dwarf Americans ( "straight outta Preston" )had a stage favourite song - Dead Rock stars ( in their Underpants ) - http://www.myspace.com/dwarfamericans - thinly based on the Paula Yates photo book current at the time- 'Rock Stars In Their Underpants'. which considering how things turned out, is slightly chilling.

Best verse?

'Showed some 4x6 glossys,
We'd had run off at Boots,
Buddy and the Bopper in Y fronts,
Brian Jones' jockstrap by the pool,
More reasons to checkout, Jim,
Morrisons till Pere La Chaise,
Dead rock stars in their underpants,
"Never wore them anyhow" he says.'