THEY ALSO SERVED

GUITARIST AND VOCALIST SHELDON REYNOLDS (below, b.1959) toured with Millie Jackson before joining funk-soul outfit Sun in 1980. He later recorded two LPs with The Commodores, including 1985’s Nightshift, before joining Earth, Wind & Fire in 1987. He recorded five LPs with the group, during which time he was nominated for a Grammy for the 1993 song Sunday Morning. He also played with Smokey Robinson and was a contributing editor to Astronomy magazine.

A WINNING COMBINATION of catholic taste, witty hipsterbaiting and perspicacity lightly worn was the hallmark of writer PETE SILVERTON (b.c.1952) who has passed after a long illness. A features editor at Sounds, a contributor to many music papers and later a Fleet Street staffer, his reportage on the Anarchy tour for Sounds was ultra-vivid, his MOJO feature that asked Who Put The Bomp? one of this magazine’s most memorable. BASSIST AND COMPOSER BILL LEE (b.1928) was widely known for scoring four of his son Spike Lee’s early films, She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do The Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues. He was also a jazz musician, performing and recording with Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, Simon & Garfunkel, Harry Belafonte and more: another session was for Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. “Everything I know about jazz I got from my father,” Spike Lee told the New York Times in 1990. “I saw his integrity.” DRUMMER DICKIE ‘BE-BOP’ HARRELL (b.1940) was an original member of Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, adding a pounding beat and screams to Be-Bop-A-Lula, a US and UK smash in 1956. He also played on songs including Race With The Devil, Who Slapped John? and Bluejean Bop. Though a Blue Cap for a little over a year, he retained the admiration of names including Robert Plant and Bob Dylan. He later toured the rockabilly circuit and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. ILLUSTRATOR FRANK KOZIK (below, b.1962) helped define the iconography of ’90s alt-rock. Simultaneously cute, comic and subversive, the posters and record sleeves created by the Spanish-born American graphic artist and Man’s Ruin label boss numbered key desert rock LPs like QOTSA’s self-titled debut and large, collectible silk-screened imagery for bands such as Melvins, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes and Neil Young. Later, his company Kidrobot designed toys including Labbit the smoking rabbit, and successful collaborations with DC and Marvel comics. GUITARIST JOHNNY FEAN (b.1951) helped revolutionise the Irish music scene as part of Celtic rock pioneers Horslips. Joining in 1972 for debut LP Happy To Meet – Sorry To Part, the Limerick native figured in all versions of the band over the next half-century; his gnarly, reel-like riff on Dearg Doom exemplified Horslips’ fusion of folk and hard rock. Even during band hiatuses, Fean’s devotion to the sound was unstinting; an ’80s UK sojourn found him in a tribute band, Spirit Of Horslips.

BASSIST CHAS NEWBY (b.1941) played four gigs with The Beatles over two weeks in December 1960. Suggested by his former Blackjacks bandmate Pete Best, he replaced Stuart Sutcliffe after the group returned from Hamburg. He declined to join the band full-time and after obtaining a master’s degree in chemical engineering, became a maths teacher. He occasionally played with Best, and since 2016 had performed in a re-formed line-up of The Quarrymen. DRUMMER ISAAC ‘REDD’ HOLT (b.1932) was a member of The Ramsey Lewis Trio, whose live recording of The In Crowd was a smash in 1965. The following year he left to form the Young-Holt Trio with bassist Eldee Young: as Young-Hold Unlimited, they sold a million with Soulful Strut in 1969. Holt also collaborated with Earl Bostic, Ken Nordine, James Moody and others. His last album was 2019’s It’s A Take!. FIDDLE PLAYER SÉAN KEANE (b.1946), born to a musical family in the Dublin suburb of Drimnagh, was a long-serving member of Irish folk titans The Chieftains.

He won six Grammys with the group as well as pursuing a solo career, and recorded a number of LPs with The Chieftains’ uilleann pipe player Liam O’Flynn. Following the death of band leader Paddy Moloney in 2021 the group stopped touring, but reunited for a special performance in honour of US President Joe Biden in County Mayo in April, Keane’s last public performance. GUITARIST, multiinstrumentalist and record engineer ROB LAAKSO (b.1979) was best known as a member of Kurt Vile And The Violators. Born in Massachusetts, Laakso joined fuzzpop band The Swirlies while at college in Boston and also played with New York indie-rock outfit Mice Parade. A talented engineer who had worked for Google, Adidas and Apple, Laakso replaced Adam Granduciel in The Violators, who had left in 2011 to form The War On Drugs. He died following a battle with bile duct cancer. Vile hailed him as a “Musical genius. Recording whizz. Best husband and father.” PHOTOGRAPHER/ACTOR ARI BOULOGNE/ PÄFFGEN (below, b.1962) was the troubled son of Nico and, he claimed, French screen star Alain Delon, who he resembled to a striking degree. As well as appearing in Warhol films as a child when his mother was a Factory habitué, he appeared on the sleeve of her 1970 LP Desertshore, and sang the haunting Le Petit Chevalier. The cause of death is thought to be a heroin overdose. COMPOSER GEORGE LOGAN (b.1944) found British success with comedic musical drag act Hinge And Bracket. With Logan as piano-playing Dr Evadne Hinge opposite Patrick Fyffe as singer Dame Hilda Bracket, they were an apparent favourite of the Queen Mother, and appeared on radio, TV and albums including 1980’s Hinge And Bracket At Abbey Road. Logan retired the character when Fyffe died in 2002, but brought her back in 2016 for comic opera The Dowager’s Oyster.

Jenny Bulley, Chris Catchpole, Danny Eccleston, Ian Harrison and John Mulvey