The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars by Jeremy Simmonds Read Free Book Online Page A

critics as well as in his brief personal life. Tenco never knew his father, who died months before his birth, leaving his mother to bring up both Luigi and his older brother alone. He struggled to settle in his studies and early career before his love of singing drove him to form bands with his friends. Tenco was never the strongest vocal performer in the pop/jazz/ballad arena in which he worked, thus it was his more marked talent as a cantautore (‘singing author’) and arranger that eventually brought him some attention on the Italian music scene. Tenco was also classically handsome, his dark, moody charm eventually wooing former Miss Egypt and, by then, highly rated singer Dalida; in 1966, their mutual label RCA introduced the pair as potential duet partners. Tenco and Dalida fell hopelessly in love and decided on a unique performance for the upcoming San Remo Festival, an annual contest to determine Italy’s finest popular songs and writers: they were to perform together, each offering a version of the chosen ballad, Tenco’s own ‘Ciaoo, Amore, Ciad. The couple even announced an April wedding to garner maximum press interest. He was a passionate, ambitious newcomer; she a beautiful, talented songstress – how could they fail?
    Well, the answer perhaps lies in Luigi Tenco’s misplaced self-belief. He had talent for sure, but his temperament and high opinion of his mediocre voice would ultimately cost him. While Dalida’s rendition of the song won her applause, Tenco’s did not; Tenco, Dalida and the song were eliminated in the first round. The by-now totally wired Tenco – who had drunk heavily and taken a number of tranquilizers before his performance – flew into a rage and, against Dalida’s wishes, began berating the judges as corrupt and the whole festival as meaningless. Unable to deal with such public rejection, Tenco snubbed the subsequent dinner, stormed back to their room at the Hotel Savoja and locked himself in. By 2.15 am Dalida, who had attended the celebrations, returned, concerned that she was unable to summon her lover. She found Tenco splayed out across the floor, with a gun at his side. An almost illegible note ‘explained’ his frustration at the world and his desire to ‘show them all’ – but Dalida wasn’t convinced by the handwriting. Why would Tenco take his own life because of what to her seemed little more than a setback? Until her own death, Dalida remained convinced that he had been the victim of a conspiracy; indeed, she was to suffer an extraordinary series of partner suicides, three of her lovers taking their own lives before, sadly, she too followed suit ( May 1987).
    Popular Italian singer and 2002 San Remo Festival discovery Valentina Giovagnini died in a Siena car accident in January 2009.
    FEBRUARY
    Friday 3
    Joe Meek
    (Robert George Meek - Newent, Gloucestershire, 5 April 1929)

    How a producer with the vision of Joe Meek made it happen in the staid world of late-fifties UK recording is nothing short of a miracle. That this maverick’s life ended in the shocking, dramatic way that it did is, however, more in keeping with the script.
    One of three brothers brought up in rural Newent, Robert George ‘Joe’ Meek was not an outdoor type like his older siblings, preferring to spend time in a garden shed dabbling with wireless sets and gramophone equipment than climb trees. A boy with tastes that generally separated him from his peers, Meek – perhaps showing more business nous than at times during his adult life – would charge locals to watch him perform musical plays as a variety of characters, both male and female. The knock-on from these interests saw him engineering hit records at IBC for Lonnie Donegan (‘Cumberland Gap’) and Frankie Vaughan (‘Green Door’) by the age of twenty-five – despite being completely tone deaf. Wishing in vain to utilize effects such as homemade instrumentation, foot-stomps instead of bass drums and reverb in his records, Meek