Alan Merrill
Musician who penned Joan Jett’s hit song I Love Rock’n’roll
ALAN MERRILL, who has died of Covid-19 aged 69, was a singer and songwriter who became one of the first western pop musicians to become big in Japan; later, in the UK in the mid-1970s, his band Arrows scored several hits, while one of their B-sides, I Love Rock’n’roll, went on to be a chart-topper for Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.
He was born Allan Preston Sachs in the Bronx, New York, on February 19 1951; his mother was the jazz singer Helen Merrill, his father the saxophonist and clarinettist Aaron Sachs.
He went to Aiglon College, a private boarding school in Switzerland, then schools in New York and Los Angeles, and studied at Sophia University, a Jesuit research institute in Tokyo.
In the early 1960s he began playing in Greenwich Village with various bands. He successfully auditioned for the Left Banke, who had had a transatlantic hit with Don’t Walk Away Renee, but the band dissolved before he could join. He returned to Japan, joining a band of other foreign musicians, The Lead. They had one hit but fell apart when two of them were deported.
Merrill adopted his mother’s surname, as it sounded better in Japanese than “Sachs”, and launched a solo career. He became the country’s first foreign star, acting in a soap opera, modelling, and appearing on the Saturdaymorning teen show Young 720. Alongside two home-grown superstars,
Hiroshi “Monsieur” Kamayatsu and Hiroshi Oguchi, he went on to form Vodka Collins, who became Japan’s biggest glam rock act.
Moving to London, in 1974 he formed Arrows, who became part of Mickie Most’s RAK empire. With Merrill on bass and vocals they reached the Top Ten with the Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman song Touch Too Much.
That proved to be their biggest hit, but another release the following year had the greater impact. Merrill wrote I Love Rock’n’roll, with Arrows’ guitarist Jake Hooker. Produced by Most, it was put on the B-side to Broken Down Heart, but was soon re-recorded and flipped to the A-side.
It was, said Merrill, “a knee-jerk response” to the
Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock’n’roll (But I Like It):
“I almost felt like it was an apology to those jet-set princes and princesses that he was hanging around with – the aristocracy, you know. That was my interpretation as a young man: OK, I love rock’n’roll.”
The band performed it on the television show 45, as a result of which Arrows were given their own series. When Joan Jett was touring with the Runaways she saw Arrows performing it on the show, and recorded a version with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on drums and guitar. But it was not until 1982, with the Blackhearts, that she released another version, which shot to the top of the Billboard chart.
As for Arrows, the success of having their own TV show, which ran to two series, was undercut by a contractual dispute that meant they could release no new music, and in 1977 they split.
Moving back to New York, Merrill worked with Rick Derringer and later joined Meat Loaf ’s backing band. He had a recurring role in the children’s adventure series Encyclopaedia Brown, and in 1990 reformed Vodka Collins after the successful re-release of their debut LP.
He made a string of solo albums, while in 2015 Homes Under the Hammer used two Arrows songs. In 2017 Eminem’s No 1 album Revival included the song Remind Me, co-credited to Merrill, with samples from I Love Rock’n’roll.
In 1977 Alan Merrill married the model Cathee Dahmen; she died in 1997. They had a daughter and a son.
Alan Merrill, born February 19 1951, died March 29 2020