Former Mac guitarist Kirwan dies aged 68
First ‘Bond girl’ dead
LOS ANGELES, June 10, (Agencies): Danny Kirwan, a key force in Fleetwood Mac’s bluesy threeguitar attack of the late ’60s and as a singer and songwriter on the group’s transitional albums of the early ’70s, died Friday. He was 68.
No details about his death were immediately available. The band’s founding drummer Mick Fleetwood acknowledged Kirwan’s passing in a statement for the group on his Facebook page Friday evening.
“Danny was a huge force in our early years”, Fleetwood wrote. “His love for the blues led him to being asked to join Fleetwood Mac in 1968, where he made his musical home for many years.
“Danny’s true legacy, in my mind, will forever live on in the music he wrote and played so beautifully as a part of the foundation of Fleetwood Mac ...Thank you, Danny Kirwan. You will forever be missed!”
In a 2015 story for the New York Observer, writer and musician Tim Sommer called Kirwan — “one of the great lost figures in rock history (both literally and figuratively)”.
In early 1968, at the age of 17, the South London-born Kirwan — who had showed formidable skill in the London trio Boilerhouse — joined the original Mac lineup of Fleetwood, guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer and bassist John McVie. In its earliest incarnation, the group was a leading light of the English blues scene.
His first recorded work reached the US on the 1969 compilation album “English Rose”, which included the band’s chart-topping UK instrumental “Albatross” and its B side, Kirwan’s composition “Jigsaw Puzzle Blues”.
He held his own opposite Green and Spencer on the subsequent singles “Oh Well”, “Rattlesnake Shake” and “The Green Manalishi”, and his playing powered the classic 1969 set “Then Play On”. A frequently bootlegged live recording of the three-guitar lineup captured at the Boston Tea Party in early 1970 showed off Fleetwood Mac’s considerable concert firepower, also on display in a BBC performance of “Oh Well” from 1969.
However, at around the same time, while on tour in Germany, the group attended a party where Kirwan and Green reportedly took LSD laced with a powerful ingredient that, according to Fleetwood and McVie, apparently caused significant changes in their behavior for years to come. The tormented Green left the act soon thereafter, and the quartet lineup (augmented by keyboardist Christine McVie, who soon joined the band as a full member) issued “Kiln House” in the fall of 1970. The collection was highlighted by Kirwan’s rolling composition “Station Man”.
Spencer became the next significant defection, bolting for an association with the religious cult Children of God, and he was replaced by American singersongwriter-guitarist Bob Welch. Kirwan and Welch split the writing difference on a pair of elegant and underrated LPs, “Future Games” (1971) and “Bare Trees” (1972), to which Kirwan contributed such ethereal tunes as “Sands of Time”, “Bare Trees” and “Child of Mine”.
Kirwan’s escalating alcoholism led to confrontations with the other members of the band, including an altercation with Welch, and Fleetwood, who had become the acting manager of the band, fired him in 1972.
He remained active briefly, recording unsuccessful three solo albums for the British label DJM in 197579. His recording career ended at that point; his alcoholism and severe mental health problems left him homeless for several years.
He remained estranged from his former band mates, and failed to appear when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998. After Welch’s departure in 1974, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined, creating the best-known lineup of the group.
Divorced, Kirwan is survived by a son.
LOS ANGELES:
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Eunice Gayson, girl, died Friday. She was 90.
Gayson’s Twitter account posted the news, writing that she was “an amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be very much missed”.
Gayson played Sylvia Trench in the 1962 “James Bond” franchise starter “Dr No”, starring Sean Connery as Bond. She first asked Bond for his name at a card table, resulting in the iconic, “Bond. James Bond”. She reprised her role as Trench in “From Russia With Love”.
James Bond movie producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli also remembered Grayson on Saturday in a tweet posted to the James Bond official Twitter account.
“We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first ‘Bond girl’ who played Sylvia Trench in ‘Dr No’ and ‘From Russia With Love’ has passed away. Our sincere thoughts are with her family”.
Originally, Gayson was intended to play M’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny, but Lois Maxwell landed that role instead.
After her role in the James Bond films, Gayson went on to appear in TV series “The Saint” and “The Avengers”. Her career began on stage as Frau Schrader in a production of “The Sound of Music” at the Palace Theatre, and she portrayed Margaret in the Hammer horror film “The Revenge of Frankenstein” in 1958.
KIEV:
Kirwan
Captured
the first ever Bond
Ukrainian director Kira Muratova, one of the Russian-speaking world’s most respected filmmakers, has died at the age of 83, Ukraine’s state film agency announced on Thursday.
The award-winning director and screenwriter, who received a special jury prize at Berlin Film Festival in 1990 for her film “The Asthenic Syndrome”, died late on Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, where she had lived and worked for many years.
“She was a very talented film director, she personified an era, her views on the world were applauded by critics”, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook, adding that Muratova “will remain in our hearts”.
Muratova was born on Nov 5, 1934 in the city of Soroca, which was then part of Romania but later became part of the Soviet Republic of Moldova, in a family of active Communists.
She graduated from the renowned VGIK film school in Moscow in 1959 and went on to work with famous Soviet actors and entertainers, including Russian singer-songwriter, poet and actor Vladimir Vysotsky and theatre director Oleg Tabakov.