Departed During 2022

[FD2]

'The One That Got Away' was a surprising hit, comparatively soon (12 years) after the War. In its way it may well have helped attitudes to Germany and made people think that maybe not all Germans were Nazi supporters.

[Wodrick]

Meatloaf 74 RIP

[TheGreenGoblin]

Saw him play, both times in De Montford Hall in Leicester... great concerts...

Very reminiscent of late school, pre army call up days/daze... the days of love, life and innocence

[TheGreenGoblin]

Apropos Meat loaf I didn't realise that Jim Steinman had departed this vale of tears last year...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/ ... tic-energy

[tango15]

So Meat Loaf is brown bread.

I remember him mainly for this: https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/meat ... 80737.html.

That Jetstream must have been going like a bat out of hell...

[PHXPhlyer]

Rock star Meat Loaf was on board a plane which skidded off a runway. His privately-chartered jet, which had flown from Hamburg, was landing at Manchester Airport when the incident took place.

The US singer, 53, and the 12 other people on board were unhurt.

Eastern Airways said: 'Our Jetstream 41 landed normally but left the runway when close to taxiing speed.'

Meat Loaf is due to perform in Ireland on Saturday. The rocker - real name Marvin Lee Aday - is best known for his hit Bat Out Of Hell.

Worthy of a Daily Mail Aviation Incident Award.

In many interviews Meat Loaf said that he expected to die on stage while performing.
When I saw him a few years back with my younger daughter she commented that he looked like he was about to die. A few months later he did collapse on stage, but recovered.

PP

[FD2]

Watching Meat Loaf in interviews and performing was a real pleasure. He came across as an intelligent man with principles and a great stage persona.

He has earned even greater admiration since I read this item today:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -1987.html

What a pity he didn't follow through and throw the oaf into the moat. It seems as though all Andrew's chickens are coming home to roost - after the teddies, curtains gap disclosures etc - what a shame.

[G-CPTN]

AFAICT, Meat Loaf died after contracting Covid.

How can that be?

[FD2]

Good point. Apparently he never wore a mask or disclosed his vaccination status but was overweight right through his life.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Good point. Apparently he never wore a mask or disclosed his vaccination status but was overweight right through his life.

He was also a pretty good actor I thought. His turn as Eddie in 'The Rocky Horror Show' aside, he appeared in cameos in other films as well, the best of these being the testicular cancer patient whose treatment has made him develop large breasts, in the film 'Fight Club'. In a scene full of a pathos, he seemed to upstage Edward Norton, who is no mean actor himself.

[TheGreenGoblin]

His privately-chartered jet, which had flown from Hamburg, was landing at Manchester Airport when the incident took place.


Eastern Airways said: 'Our Jetstream 41 landed normally but left the runway when close to taxiing speed.'


Worthy of a Daily Mail Aviation Incident Award.

PP

Akin to the sound gag in the film 'Airplane', where the sound of thundering or over speeding props is always heard in what was ostensibly a 707 jet!

One of the funniest films I think I have ever seen.

[FD2]

It's not reserved for comedy films GG. I'll try and remember the title of the documentary which shows a squadron of Sea Kings in formation accompanied by the sound of six piston engined Whirlwinds!

[PHXPhlyer]

Don Wilson, surf music pioneer , dies at 88
With hits like "Hawaii-Five-O," Wilson and his bestselling instrumental band, the Ventures, helped to create the sun and sand sound, even if it was mostly unintentional.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries ... -rcna13242

Rhythm guitarist Don Wilson, co-founder of surf music staple the Ventures, has died at age 88, his family said Saturday.

He passed peacefully of natural causes in the early morning with his four adult children at his side in his native Tacoma, Washington, his family said in a statement.

"Our dad was an amazing rhythm guitar player who touched people all over world with his band, the Ventures,” son Tim Wilson said in the statement.

Wilson was the last of the band's surviving original members.

The Ventures have sold more than 100 million records and are the best-selling instrumental rock group in history, according to the band's and Wilson's websites. Among the band's most notable and familiar records is its version of the theme to television's original “Hawaii Five-O” show and its trademark, left-breaking wave.

Despite being based along a stretch of Puget Sound that's nearly 100 miles from icy ocean waves and nearly 2,700 miles from surfing's birthplace in Hawaii, Wilson and construction coworker Bob Bogle, both budding rockers, founded the band in the Pacific Northwest in 1958.

That was the year before the movie “Gidget” helped surfing culture explode across the nation and three years before the Beach Boys started harmonizing about beach life from its Hawthorne, California, base. The Ventures even predated Dick Dale’s early 1960s evolution from country musician to “king of surf guitar.”

Dale has described his screaming licks as so rhythmic that it’s “like I’m playing drums.” Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that Wilson had anchored the Ventures with rhythm guitar.

When he inducted the Ventures in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty said, "The sound of it became surf music, and the audacity of it empowered guitar players everywhere."

Wilson seems to agree with that statement. He's argued in the past that the Ventures were adopted by the '60s surfing craze, not vice-versa.

In a 2020 email interview with People to publicize the release of his documentary, "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars," produced with the help of family, the band's co-founder said, "We never set out to be a surf band."

"Honestly, I love playing surf music — it's very fun and it makes you feel good," Wilson said. "But we never really considered ourselves a surf band. It was just all these things coming together — the surf culture, the electric guitar, Americana — when we were coming up in the early 1960s."

Still, the act wasn't above capitalizing on the craze. Wilson and Bogle later performed and recorded a version of the Surfaris' classic, "Wipe Out."

Wilson, a fan of country and Western, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and Tommy Dorsey, began plucking chords on the ukulele -like Spanish tiple as a boy. After high school he served 19 months in the U.S. Army. When he returned, he gravitated to guitar, like many in his generation.

It's been said the Ventures first formed about 30 miles north of Wilson's hometown, although Tacoma and Seattle news media have each claimed the band as its own.

The band-endorsed book, "The Ventures Essential Albums Discography," said Wilson's mother, Josie Wilson, helped the duo record their first music.

Wilson and Bogle used the name the Versatones for their initial gigs but, according to the book, they discovered that name was taken. They settled on the Ventures to represent the duo venturing into a new career.

The duo was joined by yet another guitarist, the late Nokie Edwards, who is credited more than anyone else with the band's surf guitar sound. With the Oklahoman's influence, the Ventures' version of jazz guitarist Johnny Smith's "Walk Don't Run" reached the singles pop chart in 1960 and eventually rose to No. 2.

Bogle played bass and guitar. Mel Taylor on drums and Gerry McGee on yet another guitar rounded out the group, which found a niche in instrumental tracks.

When the group performed "Walk Don't Run" on Dick Clark's eponymous television show in 1960, he introduced the tune, with its go-go drums and familiar surf melody as "probably the biggest instrumental record of the day."

The band survived changes in its lineup and even deaths by moving on with new members, including drummer Leon Taylor, who joined in 1996 to fill the shoes of his late father, Mel. Wilson kept performing with the touring act until his 2015 retirement.

With his passing the Ventures may have ridden their last wave.

"He will have his place in history forever and was much loved and appreciated," son Tim said. "He will be missed."

PP

[Woody]

Amazing how many people he actually wrote for

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60154371

[FD2]

My big heart throb at the age of 13, when she played Weena of the Eloi living 800,000 years in the future and Rod Taylor's love interest as he went on the kill the beastly Morlocks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_ ... 1960_film)


Yvette Mimieux, actress and writer typecast in ‘glamour’ roles but whose talents were under-rated – obituary

The critic Pauline Kael thought Yvette Mimieux, star of The Time Machine and Skyjacked, ‘a much better actress than the parts she gets’
By Telegraph Obituaries 28 January 2022 • 1:14pm

Yvette Mimieux, who has died aged 80, was a blonde, blue-eyed American actress launched as a teenage sex symbol in a furry loincloth in a 1960 film adaptation of H G Wells’s The Time Machine.

With delicately pretty Hollywood looks that occupied “some vague region far west of Bardot and just east of Tuesday Weld” (in the words of one admiring critic) she debuted as a damsel in distress opposite Rod Taylor as Wells’s Victorian inventor in what became a classic big‑screen science fiction adventure.

At 17, she was underage when filming began, and ignored the rules about not working a full schedule. The cover of Life magazine pictured her under the headline “Warmly Wistful Starlet”. The following year she was cast in the teen sex comedy Where the Boys Are and in 1962 she was the beautiful but childlike daughter in Light in the Piazza with Olivia de Havilland and George Hamilton.

She continued to be cast as a sex kitten, making six films – many in eye-catching swimsuits – before she was 21. “I suppose I had a soulful quality,” she said. “I was often cast as a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role.” Although touted by MGM as a possible Lara in Dr Zhivago, from the mid-1960s she appeared in forgettable pictures including the Disney comedy Monkeys, Go Home!, The Caper of the Golden Bulls and The Neptune Factor.

Fearing that her screen career had peaked, she enrolled at UCLA, studied archaeology, took up writing and painting, and travelled the world. Discouraged by the lack of interesting roles for women, she began writing her own screenplays, some of which she sold to television.

The doyenne of American critics, Pauline Kael, thought Yvette Mimieux “a much better actress than the parts she gets”. Making a modest big-screen comeback in the 1970s, she took on the role of a falsely imprisoned woman victimised by a sadistic guard in Jackson County Jail (1976) with Tommy Lee Jones; this low-budget “drive-in movie” has since developed a cult following and in 1996 was selected by Quentin Tarantino for his film festival in Austin, Texas. Yvette Mimieux liked to play chess between scenes. After her last picture, with Joan Collins in Lady Boss in 1992, she started a business selling embroidery based on Haitian designs.

Yvette Mimieux in a publicity still issued for the exploitation movie Jackson County Jail (1976); it developed a cult following Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty

She always sought to protect her privacy. “I decided I didn’t want to have a totally public life,” she said in an interview. “When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no.”

Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born in Los Angeles on January 8 1942 to a French father who was an occasional film extra, and a Mexican mother. She modelled as a teenager, before being spotted on horseback by a film publicist. When the director Vincente Minnelli saw her in a play he cast her in his melodrama Home From the Hill (1960) but she failed to make the final cut, and her first notable role was in Platinum High School (1960), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer.

Signed to MGM after the success of The Time Machine, she was cast in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), an expensive flop; took a small part in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963); and the following year guest-starred in Dr Kildare alongside Richard Chamberlain, becoming, incidentally, the first person on American television to bare her navel.

In 1972 she co-starred with Charlton Heston as an air hostess in John Guillermin’s Skyjacked, but she had begun writing – journalism, poetry and short stories – as well as painting landscapes in Japan and working on archeological digs in Indonesia.

Increasingly she was disillusioned with the parts she was offered: “The women they [male screenwriters] write are all one-dimensional. They have no complexity in their lives… It’s all surface. There’s nothing to play. They’re either sex objects or vanilla pudding.”

When she wrote a thriller, she took the script to the producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, who made it into a television film, Hit Lady (1974). In another TV movie, The Legend of Valentino (1975), she turned in a vivid performance as Natacha Rambova, the flamboyant designer who married the silent screen idol.

Skyjacked (1972): Mike Henry, Yvette Mimieux and Charlton Heston Credit: FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images

She was again on the big screen in The Black Hole (1979), Disney’s $20 million venture into sci-fi drama, and in Forbidden Love (1982) she played the Older Woman (“wasn’t it only yesterday she was the Younger Woman?” mused one reviewer), a divorced hospital administrator having an affair with a baby-faced doctor (Andrew Stevens). “Mimieux, as a loving pan up her bikini-clad body demonstrates, still looks dandy,” wrote the same critic.

For the psychological melodrama Obsessive Love (1984) she played a demented fan stalking her favourite soap opera star, played by the British actor Simon MacCorkindale. Yvette Mimieux herself created the original story after reading about John Hinckley’s obsession with the actress Jodie Foster which led to his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.

She was thrice married: first, in 1959, to a soldier in the US Army, Evan Engber; then, from 1972, to the film director Stanley Donen, with whom she lived for a time in London at Montpelier Square, Knightsbridge. After their divorce in 1985, she married an American businessman, Howard Ruby, who survives her.

Yvette Mimieux, born January 8 1942, died January 17 2022

[PHXPhlyer]

Howard Hesseman, star of 'WKRP in Cincinnati,' dies at 81
A staple of 80s comedy television, Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever in “WKRP in Cincinnati and Mr. Moore in "Head of the Class."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries ... -rcna14133

Beloved improvisation comedian and Emmy-nominated actor Howard Hesseman, best known for his role in "WKRP in Cincinnati," died following a surgery Saturday afternoon.

Hesseman, 81, died of complications from colon surgery, manager Robbie Kass confirmed to NBC News in a statement Sunday. He added that Hesseman will be "sorely missed and always treasured."

"He was a groundbreaking talent & life long friend and long time client, whose kindness and generosity was equaled by his influence and admiration to generations of actors and improvisational comedy throughout the world," Kass said.

A staple of 80s comedy television, Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever in "WKRP in Cincinnati" from 1978 to 1982. Hesseman was nominated for the 1980 and 1981 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Fever, a disc jockey who was canned from his job in Los Angeles and was pushed to work at a radio station in the Midwest.

The role made Hesseman a counterculture icon at a time when few hippie characters made it onto network television.

“I think maybe Johnny smokes a little marijuana, drinks beer and wine, and maybe a little hard liquor,” Hesseman told The New York Times in 1979 as he readied for one of three “Saturday Night Live” hosting gigs. “And on one of those hard mornings at the station, he might take what for many years was referred to as a diet pill. But he is a moderate user of soft drugs, specifically marijuana.”

Hesseman then went on to play Mr. Moore in another 1980s sitcom, "Head of the Class," which ran on ABC for five seasons. Moore was an out of work actor who went on teach as a substitute at Millard Fillmore High School in New York City, but stayed on after connecting with the students.


During the 60s, before Hesseman was a silver screen regular, his improvisational skills took stage in San Francisco where he was part of the improv group The Committee. He also did his own stint as a real-life radio DJ.

Actor and comedian Michael McKean offered a public tribute to Hesseman on Twitter Sunday, recalling his first time seeing Hesseman in 1971 with The Committee.

"Impossible to overstate Howard Hesseman’s influence on his and subsequent generations of improvisors," McKean wrote. "The first time I saw him on stage (Troubadour, ’71, with The Committee) I saw that he was the real deal."

Other notable credits for Hesseman include roles in "This is Spinal Tap," "One Day at a Time," and "The Bob Newhart Show."

PP

[TheGreenGoblin]

Ah, I am so sorry to hear that the Doctor is dead man. Dr Johnny Fever was an icon to me and still is the driver for my profligate musical postings here... RIP Mr Hesseman






I suspect Fever motivated the ultra cool Californian Alan Pierce who made Capital 604 the counter cultural icon and thorn in the Apartheid government's side that is was from the studio back in Port St Johns as well (RIP) -

https://soundcloud.com/3rd-ear-music/sh ... n-the-hill

Shel Silverstein's The Perfect High By Alan Pierce (RIP) Fool On The Hill

Alan Royal Pierce RIP - 21st September 1937 - 8th September 2001
California Sunshine hits Africa in the late70's. Many musicians & followers of SAfrica's alternative music - from Folk ‘n Jazz to Country, Maskandi & Hard City Rock - were revolting; depressed & angry at the 70's. Then Alan Pierce & Capital Radio 604 came to the rescue out of Port St. Johns Transkei Dec 26th 1979. Not quite Radio Freedom, but a whisper of fresh air through the short wave crackle & pop against the FM thunder of segregated state controlled radio. Despite having their signals jammed by the State (the SABC), Capital Radio 604 bravely competed with His Master's Voice; who in turn could not shut out all the programs, try as they might. On Medium & short wave, when the sun went down, 604 could be found all over Southern Africa - and you'd hear news & music that you could never imagine existed. This Shel Silverstein classic, delivered by Alan on air, is an example.
From 10pm to Midnight Allan's show - Something Else - would get through the jamming. That's how we met; on air & over the phone, early 1980, between Hillbrow Johannesburg & Port St. Johns Transkei.

Alan Pierce was always the wise ever-slim & thin elder laid-back statesman, even in those early days. Grey sideburns & lengthy thinning hair - sometimes under his braided British golf cap - underscored by a broad constant well-weathered & experience-lined smile... & that voice! That voice that he could wield like a wand regardless of whether he was advising, scolding or charming you, on air or face-to-face; extracting the potential artist & rebels out of us all. His role on earth seemed to be checking out the good in all humanity; giving people breaks & making us feel good about ourselves, whether we deserved it or not. He just blended into the bush with his cultured American (if slight) twang and a bit of SAfrican; Hey! Lekker my China & whozit my bru!

On air he was the consummate professional. And it wasn't only his thousands of listener's, the Capital Radio or the 702 followers & the wannabe jocks that he would comfort, council, confront & entertain - it was the one-on-one care & time he took whenever anybody had a problem. Or a joke.

Allan was a close friend to many 3rd Ear Music people. It was he who gave the wandering Allen Kwela & the lost Charles Comyn shelter; who championed (his onetime informal producer & all time late friend) Tony Campbell, who counselled Colin Shamley, comforted Franny Marks, hung up & out with his very close friend Art Kelly & arty the crowd at Rumours; playing pool with (the late) Rodney Barnett when all else seemed hopeless in Hillbrow & lost in Yeoville.

The measure of the man could be counted in many more ways, but it was perhaps his open defiance of the apartheid regime that stands out. He made his radio bosses cringe for their licenses on many occasions; threatened with dismissal, he wasn't bothered much - although he didn't want to hurt feelings either side of the microphone. One such 3rd Ear Music experience was how he defied the official banning order (direct from the Publications Control Board) on Roger Lucey's album “The Road Is Much Longer”... We were legally advised that the mere possession of this banned album could lead to an effective 5 years in prison, a R10 000 fine or both. But that didn't stop Alan plugging a few tracks. When Capital had to move (under mysterious circumstances) from the Transkei to Milpark in Johannesburg in the mid 80's, Tony, Colin, Rodney & on occasion myself, would sneak up into the studio just before midnight with a bottle of Jack Daniels & a Box of cigars, among other performance enhancing goodies… spinning discs & heads in sessions that were as magic as a live concert performance. Cheers Al. You are one missed ray of sunshine & a hurricane of fresh air in a country that needed you. Thanks.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Norma Waterson - Folk singer.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/ ... est-people

[ricardian]

Dr Francis Jackson CBE 1917-2022, Director of Music at York Minster for 36 years, from 1946 to 1982.
Funeral at York Minster Thu 3 Feb.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Bamber Gascoigne... University Challenge host dies aged 87.

Away from quiz shows, he wrote the novel Murgatroyd's Empire in 1972, and later hosted the documentary series The Christians in 1977. He was also part of Victorian Values in 1987 and The Great Moghuls in 1992.

The former host of University Challenge Bamber Gascoigne has died aged 87, his representative has said.

The presenter, who was the original quizmaster on the BBC show from 1962 to 1987, died at home after a short illness.

In 2014, Gascoigne inherited a 14th century Surrey estate, West Horsley Place, from his aunt the Duchess of Roxburghe, where he later built an opera house.

https://news.sky.com/story/bamber-gasco ... sf-twitter

Forever immortalised in the Young Ones.