Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988).

Untitled, 1982. Thanatos, anyone?

Career: visual artist and musician. Cause of death: heroin overdose, possibly compounded by intravenous coadministration of cocaine.

The prodigious talent of Jean-Michel Basquiat first surfaced in the SAMO tag on the walls of Lower Manhattan. His work as SAMO garnered some media attention due to their unusual deployment: his scrawled & copyrighted SAMO moniker (referring to his slang for 'same old' dirt weed) alongside cryptic lines of street poetry: "Life is confusing at this point. SAMO©" "SAMO© for the so-called avant-garde." The bomb SAMO IS DEAD signalled the end of this period of Basquiat's work.

Subsequently, the down-and-out multilinguial Basquiat formed a band with the still virile and ridiculously multi-talented bastard Vincent Gallo. This project, called Gray, made wicked post-punk experimental electronic ambient klang whee that featured on the most excellent film Downtown '81, a film document of the early-80s Lower East Side art scene made by the Lower East Side art scene for the members of the Lower Eat side art scene plus I suppose those who wanna be the Lower East Side art scene. Like Madonna, with whom Basquiat dated for a bit.

Basquiat's profile slowly built to the point where he was associated with the Neo-Expressionist movement, regularly exhibiting with artists such as Julian Schnabel, who would make a film about Basquiat after his death. In 1982, he met Andy Warhol, and the two would collaborate for the next two years, until Warhol's death/simulacral precession beyond the horizon of mortal presence.

At his pinnacle, he rubbed shoulders with David Bowie, these shoulders clad in $1000 Armani suits which he painted and partied in, paint-splattered, elegantly wasted, having laid claim to the dubious honour of first international art star of African descent. Dubious because such an honour is surely bestowed by canon-making/purchasing wealthy white men, as per.















After Warhol, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his heroin addiction and depression became more severe. A shortlived sobriety trip to Hawaii was of no avail. The young talented hotheaded Basquiat died of a heroin overdose (possibly a speedball*) in his SoHo New York studio.

*Speedball: usu. intravenously administered admixture of heroin and cocaine. It's like when you mix raspberry and coke(-a-cola) from the soda fountain into one tall, iced hit of a softdrink draught for that added tastebud-busting whee. 

Chris Bell

Christopher Branford "Chris" Bell (January 12, 1951 – December 27, 1978).

Original line-up of Big Star. Chris Bell, second from left.

Career: musician. Cause of death: auto accident.

Chris Bell left Alex Chilton's power pop group Big Star in 1972, continuing to struggle with depression stemming partly from his repressed homosexuality and his dependence on heroin which he tried to deal with through a strong belief in Christianity. Neither of these three vices killed him, though.

Bell died in the middle of the night after he lost control of his Triumph TR-7 sports car on his way home from his father's restaurant in East Memphis, Tennessee. His car struck a wooden light pole on the side of the road, killing him instantly. The TR-7 is generally praised for its good handling, if suffering from slightly heavy turning. One can only speculate whether repression viz a viz homosexuality, heroin dependence, post-prandial slumber, or a misplaced belief in divine provenance are compounding factors in this accident.

Yonder TR7: good handling, chick magnet, but heavy on the wheel.

Bell's funeral, held the next day, was the birthday of former band mate Chilton, who as of 2010 is recently deceased. We looked very fine / As we were leaving. RIP.

Eye on the road, Bell.

D. Boon

Dennes Dale Boon, April 1, 1958 – December 22, 1985.

How not to drive safely (still from Minutemen doco, below)

Career: punk musician. Cause of death: ejection from motor vehicle.

The first post, I think, where membership in the 27 Club was gained by force majeure, rather than drugs, booze, or soul reclamation upon fulfillment of Faustian pact. Thus, a uniquely inflected entry into the always already melancholic 27 club canon.

D. Boon, the guitarist and vocalist for most excellent cowabunga Californian punk trio The Minutemen, took his name from his slang for cannabis, weed, shit, green, trees, sticky icky, dope, D, but also because it sounded like Daniel Boone and E. Bloom, the Blue Öyster Cult's vocalist and guitarist.

Boon, right: munchies. Fattening, but not acutely fatal.

On tour, Boon was suffering from a fever, lying down in the back of the tour van with no seatbelt. Bad idea. In the Arizona Desert, perhaps in a cosmically unlikely patch of black ice or perhaps due to a mirage the van veered off the road. Upon crashing, gravity's rainbow took control of the prone Boon's body, flinging it like a slightly overweight ragdoll out the back van doors. Breaking his neck, he died instantly.

The band, which had formed in the wake of Mike Watt encountering Boon prophetically falling from a tree (see video), immediately dissolved.

The Minutemen - We Jam Econo Trailer

Dave Alexander

David Michael Alexander (June 3, 1947 – February 10, 1975).

Career: rock musician. Cause of death: pancreatitis, compounded by alcohol abuse.

"What happened to Zeke?
He's dead on Jones, man.
How about Dave?
O.D'd on alcohol."
- Iggy Pop (& David Bowie).  'Dum Dum Boys', The Idiot (1977).

So begins Iggy Pop's paean to his lost stooges, namechecking Alexander amongst the fallen.

Dave Alexander was the bassist in the Stooges, credited as the primary composer of the music for the Stooges songs "We Will Fall", "Little Doll", "Dirt" and "1970". Fired from the band in 1970 after turning up for a big gig too drunk to play, he died of pulmonary edema in 1975 after being admitted to a hospital for pancreatitis aggravated by heavy drinking.

Alexander, second from right.

He has since been eulogised by Dave Watt of the Minutemen, whose guitarist D Boon is also a 27 Club member.

Robert Johnson

Robert Leroy Johnson, May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938.

Possibly not Johnson. 

Career: bluesman. Cause of death: possible strychinine poisoning, possible reclamation of soul by the Devil.

After playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town near Greenwood, Mississippi, Johnson was spotted flirting with the wife of the juke joint's owner.  The two drank together, but the bottle of whisky had been poisoned by the cuckolded proprietor. Sonny Boy Williamson advised Johnson to "ne'er drink from an bottle offered open", but Johnson merely replied "Don' ne'er knock no bottle from my han'", and continued on to a second poisoned bottle.

Whether due to the simple fact that whisky is alcoholic or to the fact that the whisky had indeed been laced with rat poison, Johnson began to feel ill, and was helped to his lodgings in the small hours.  He was wracked by convulsions and pain, symptoms consistent with strychnine poisoning, for three days until he succumbed.

But could these convulsive pains be the symptoms of the soul being tugged from its mortal coil by the long, BBQ-utensil-like fingers of the Devil or at least a devilish henchman such as Mephistopheles or perhaps the puppeteering of a non-Judaeo-Christian deity such as Papa Legba, the Vodou Loki-like trickster intermediary associated with crossroads and divine communication? Perhaps.

A non-black Mephistopheles still getting sus looks from whitefolk.

Legba, ostensibly. Possibly a simple dildo salesman.

The legend goes that young Johnson was struck by the breath of inspiration, as it were, to sek his greatness in blues. "Instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad the plantation where he lived, at midnight,  he was met by a large black man (Devil/Mephistopheles/Legba/errant guitar-tuner), who took the guitar and tuned it. The dude played a few songs before returning the guitar to Johnson, sealing a Faustian pact in which Johnson's soul would be exchanged for the ability to create the blues like no one else. It appears the contract was fulfilled at age 27.

Gibson rests on Johnson RIP.

No one knows where Johnson is buried, which hasn't prevented large record companies staking out various plots with large cenotaphs etc.

Some folks like water / Some folks like wine / Well I like the taste / Of straight Strychnine

Brian Jones

Brian Jones, 28 February 1942 - 3 July 1969.

Fingers weren't the only things Jones put up his nose.

Career: Rock musician. Cause of Death: misadventure, probably complicated by drug & alcohol abuse, possibly murder.

Winnie-the-Pooh looks before he leaps.

Estranged from the Rolling Stones, Jones met his death in the swimming pool at Winnie the Pooh writer A A Milne's Cotchford Farm cottage. 

Last seen by a schoolgirl appearing "bloated, with deep-set eyes" Jones was found at midnight motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm. The coroner's report stated "death by misadventure", and noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.

Jones' Swedish girlfriend insisted that when Jones was fished from the pool he was still alive, and has accused a builder at the cottage of Jones' murder. The builder, Frank Thorogood, allegedly confessed to the murder on his deathbed to the Rolling Stones' driver, Tom Keylock, who later denied this. Many items, such as instruments and expensive furniture, reportedly were stolen from the home after Jones's death.

Jones was reportedly buried 12 feet deep in Cheltenham Cemetery (to prevent exhumation by trophy hunters) in a lavish casket sent by Bob Dylan. This is twice the normal depth and deep enough to bury two quite tall men standing up, even if one was standing on the other's shoulders.

Mick Jagger has acted as an apologist for accusations that Jones' drug-augmented lifestyle lead to his drug-augmented death-style, stating "Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you."

Jones and Keith "Cannot Be Killed By Conventional Weapons" Richards: poolside. 

Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix, November 27, 1942 - September 18, 1970.

Bud?

Career: rock musician. Cause of death: asphyxiation by aspirated vomit following drug and alcohol use. Possibly murder.

The death of Jimi Hendrix is shrouded in haze, of a shade more wine-coloured than purple. As the canonical report goes, Jimi's girlfriend Monika Dannemann took the Greatest Electric Gitsman in Rock History back to her Notting Hill flat where, unbeknownst to her, he took 9 pills of her prescribed sleeping pills, a nasty brand of Secobarbital nastily named Vesperax. These German sleepers were far stronger than the pale-as-milky-tea British barbiturates that Jimi had become accustomed to – 9 reds on top of the large amount of red wine he had also ingested at that night's party and he was overcome, a comatose vomit consisting mostly of said wine flooding his already sluggish lungs. It's a classic rock death and a classic demonstration of the adage "wine auf beer ist fine, wine auf massive dose of downers ist nein".

Jimi's arrest photo: that hash and heroin isn't mine.

Again, as with Brian Jones, items were missing from the scene of death. And again, there's been rumours of murder. Former Animals roadie James "Tappy" Wright has claimed that Hendrix's manager Mike Jeffery admitted he'd had Hendrix killed because the rock star wanted to end his management contract.

A sad and twisted hex bookends the Hendrix saga. Dannemann, whose vague and contradictory recollections of Jimi's last night muddied the already dirty water and brought her scorn from suspicious legions, had been facing a libel case brought against her by Hendrix's long-term English girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. In Dannemann's words, Etchingham "was trying to put the finger on me". In 1996, in a Mercedes and faced with the voodoo child of Jimi's decades-ago death, a retiring and broke Dannemann gassed herself to death. 

Lucky Lager?

Visit the site of Hendrix's aspiration/asphyxiation in London:

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