Where Are They Buried? (62 page)

Dennis’s widow insisted that a burial at sea had been his desire but, as such a burial is reserved for deceased naval personnel, a special dispensation permit had to be requested from the U.S. government. The permit was granted and Dennis was so interred.

After Brian drifted into seclusion from the Beach Boys (and the world) and Dennis died, brother Carl became the last active Wilson in the band. Carl had always been overshadowed by his brothers’ attention-grabbing lifestyles, and his lead guitar, which drove the band’s concert sound, was consistently underrated. But with the departures of Brian and Dennis, Carl earned his deserved prestige. With his guitar, his melodic anchoring vocals, and his diplomatic presence, he led the band through an endless parade of sun-and-surf Beach Boy nostalgia tours during the eighties and nineties.

In February 1998 Carl died of lung cancer at age 51, and was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
This little cemetery holds numerous celebrities and is peculiarly located behind the office complex at 10850 Wilshire Blvd., just about a half-mile east of I-405.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn left at the office and, after about 50 feet, you’ll find Carl’s marker five rows into the grass on the left.

Today, Mike Love fronts a band billed as the
Beach Boys
while Alan Jardine heads up another touring group called
The Beach Boys Friends and Family
. Many still line up for the opportunity to see the last vestiges of the Beach Boys perform as through they were still the 1960s rock and roll juggernaut.

SEPTEMBER 30, 1947 – SEPTEMBER 16, 1977

Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex were an important part of the glitter-rock scene that in many ways prefigured punk rock. Inspired by the work of J.R.R. Tolkien—unicorns and gnomes figured prominently in their song lyrics—the band was originally a hippie acoustic duo with percussionist Steve Took and Marc on guitar. But in 1970 the band expanded to a quartet and went electric, and success beyond their wildest dreams ensued. T. Rex became huge in England, logging eleven consecutive top-ten hits, most of them from the albums
The Slider
and
Electric Warrior
.

Later, as the mania surrounding T. Rex ebbed, the band struggled through a few incarnations and, though Marc became disillusioned at times, he remained committed to the band even as he developed other interests; by the mid-seventies he was writing a weekly column for an English music magazine and hosting his own TV talk-variety show as well.

One evening, Marc and his girlfriend Gloria Jones went out for dinner and a few rounds of assorted adult refreshments. When it was finally time to head home around 3:30 a.m., they jumped into her purple Mini 1275 GT (Marc had never learned to drive) for what should have been an unremarkable drive. But along the way, Gloria lost control of the car, its passenger side was smashed into a sycamore tree, and Marc was killed instantly. He was 29.

Marc was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in London and is remembered there with a rose bush and a bronze plaque. He shares the site with his parents, under the Feld name (his legal
surname) and you can find it at the Keats Rosebed, plot number 46087.

By the way, Steve Took, T. Rex’s first drummer, choked to death on a cherry pit in 1980, and is buried nearby in Kensal Green Cemetery.

MAY 31, 1948 – SEPTEMBER 25, 1980

Bonzo, as John Bonham was affectionately known, was an icon of the 1970s rock and roll scene, known for his thundering drumming in the hard-rock band Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin itself had come together after the Yardbirds’ rapid breakup left guitar-hero Jimmy Page in a bind; he was contractually obliged to perform ten concerts, but he no longer had a band. So Page called a few friends together—drummer John, frontman Robert Plant, and bassist John Paul Jones. The ten gigs were quite well received and the foursome decided to stick together. After a half-dozen smash albums and a few hit singles, including the rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin was the hottest rock act anywhere. But it wouldn’t last.

Besides being renowned for his drumming talents, John was also known as an avid consumer of daunting quantities of alcohol, and this proved his undoing. During a night of heavy partying at Page’s home in Windsor, England, legend has it that John consumed some forty shots (!) of vodka, then passed out. In his extravagantly inebriated state, John failed to rouse even as his stomach ejected its contents. Consequently, in the plainest terms, John choked to death on his own vomit.

John was buried at the bucolic Saint Michael’s Church Cemetery in Rushock, England, which is about 120 miles northwest of London. He was 32.

MAY 3, 1933 – DECEMBER 25, 2006

When James Brown entered the world in a one-room, Deep South, Depression-era shack, midwives thought he was stillborn. But, they noticed he stayed warm and he was revived ten minutes later, according to James himself, who oughta know. Four years later he was dropped off to live at his aunt Honey’s den of gambling, moonshine, and prostitution in Augusta, Georgia,
where he earned pennies buck-dancing for soldiers and shining shoes. Predictably, James became a delinquent of the streets which culminated in a jail sentence from which he was paroled after three years with a condition of release being that he leave the city and never return. Essentially, he was exiled, and more than twenty years later had to apply to have the probation terms nullified so he could hold a hometown concert. The city fathers changed their tune and, today, in the middle of Augusta’s Broad Avenue, stands a bronze monument to the Godfather of Soul.

A singer, songwriter, and center stage attraction, James sold an incredible 500 million records over the years and produced some 119 singles including “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Feel Good.” But even more important than his dozens of lusty and wild hits, James formed the entire musical idiom of funk which became the foundation for disco, R&B dance, and hip-hop worldwide. Never one to be modest, the Minister of Super Heavy Funk, this Soul Brother Number One, bragged in his autobiography, “I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.”

As irresistible as Brown’s powerful voice and percussive groove was, his stage act was perhaps even more extraordinary. With his twirling and flowing cape, tight pants, highly polished shoes, eye makeup, and impeccably coiffed helmet of hair, the “hardest working man in show business” transformed dance. His moves—the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, and splits—were imitated and adopted most famously by Mick Jagger and Prince, while they were admired from afar by many millions of others who chose not to try to duplicate them. Long, frenzied crescendos and a trademark routine of collapsing onstage, having a cape thrown over him and tossing it away for one more reprise, left delirious audiences shouting for more.

Though he maintained a breakneck touring schedule, James still managed to squeeze in a particularly tumultuous personal life. Fathering at least fourteen children with no less than eight mothers (four of which he married), his child support obligations at one time approached $60K per month. When the Internal Revenue Service demanded $4.5 million in unpaid taxes, his Lear jet and three radio stations were sold; on separate other occasions his estate and a collection of vehicles were auctioned by IRS officials. Confused, hallucinating, and brandishing a shotgun while high on PCP in 1987, he burst into a business seminar and then led police on a twelve-mile car chase which netted a three-year jail term. In 1998, after another car chase, he was sentenced to a 90-day drug rehabilitation program.
Arrested four times for charges of assault against his third wife, James was arrested yet again for the same infraction against a fourth wife.

At 73, James died of congestive heart failure on Christmas Day, 2006. Always the showman and dramatic to the end, hubbub of his passing swirled for months. After being lain in a gilded-in-gold coffin wearing a blue suit, white gloves, and silver shoes, James was paraded through the streets of Harlem atop a horse-drawn carriage while well-wishers by the thousands danced and sang his hits in tribute. Lying in state for two days on the Apollo Theater stage where he made his 1956 debut, thousands of fans marched solemnly past (including Michael Jackson who offered the corpse a kiss on the lips) while Al Sharpton reminded everybody, “James stood for us, the common people.”

Despite the marital woes and financial hailstorms, James left behind a fortune that by some estimates topped $100 million. Explained his longtime manager Charles Bobbitt, “People don’t realize that James always
had
money, he just didn’t like to part with it.”

Because of legal disputes and a series of paternity claims which held up his burial while trustees waited for courts to order DNA samples (two additional children were confirmed by the tests), James laid in a climate-controlled room for 73 days before being entombed in a crypt at the Beech Island, South Carolina, estate of his daughter, Deana. The word on the street is that someday he’ll either be moved to a more public location, or the estate will be opened into a Graceland type of attraction. Until either of those scenarios plays out, I’d recommend keeping your distance from Deana Brown’s crib unless you’re all about big dogs with sharp teeth and bad tempers. Ouch.

DECEMBER 7, 1942 – JULY 17, 1981

Harry Chapin was one of America’s best-loved troubadours, and he wove poignant tales of common people, lost opportunities, and life’s cruel ironies and hypocrisies. He had only two pop hits, “Taxi” and “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Both were in his self-described “story song” style, a narrative form of songwriting similar to talking blues.

Though widespread commercial success always eluded him, it doesn’t seem that he was ever in it for the money anyway. A charitable performer who pioneered the idea of benefit concerts—half
of his shows were for charitable causes—Harry’s principal commitment was to end world hunger.

While driving near Exit 40 on the Long Island Expressway one summer day in 1981, Harry turned on his emergency flashers and was slowing and changing lanes when his car was struck from behind by a tractor-trailer rig. The collision set his Volkswagen on fire and, though the truck’s driver dragged an incapacitated Harry from the flaming wreckage to safety, Harry was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Though it was generally reported that Harry died of his burns or other injuries suffered in the collision, his burns were superficial and his injuries may not have been life threatening. Instead, Harry actually died of a heart attack, and it’s now believed that this is what prompted him to slow his car and attempt to pull to the side of the highway.

At 38, he was buried at Huntington Rural Cemetery in Huntington, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
The cemetery in Huntington is on Route 110, on the left if you’re heading north, five miles from the Northern State Parkway.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, bear right at the office, continue straight through the four corners, then go left up the hill. Turn at the next two lefts, then stop when the road bends to the right. On the right is Section 6L and Harry’s grave, marked with a large boulder, is in the middle of this section. This boulder was transported from Harry’s boyhood home where, in his youth, he learned to play guitar while sitting on it, or so the legend goes.

Incidentally, Harry’s causes have not been forgotten, and the Harry Chapin Foundation has since raised millions for the many anti-hunger groups and other charities he supported. In a gesture of gratitude, the open-air theater in East Meadow, New York, where he was to have performed a benefit on the day he died was renamed the Harry Chapin Lakeside Theater.

JANUARY 11, 1942 – JUNE 18, 2011

During the early 1960s Clarence Clemons attended what is now the University of Maryland on scholarship for both music and football, and he excelled at both. But when he crashed his Buick
Riviera into a tree and badly injured his knee the day before a scheduled tryout with the Cleveland Browns, his pro football aspirations were permanently squelched. Over the next few years he spent his days working as a youth counselor for troubled kids, while at night he perfected his rich and soulful saxophone style at bars up and down the Jersey Shore.

In 1971, he became part of Bruce Springsteen’s backing band, though they weren’t yet known as the E Street Band, and the duo’s first encounter became part of the band’s lore. In most tellings, on a night that a terrific thunder-and-lightning storm was crashing onto Asbury Park’s boardwalk, Clarence entered a bar where Bruce, an unknown and struggling musician, was holding court on an improvised stage with his guitar. The wind caught the door and (both of them swear this part is true) it was blown from its hinges and tossed down the street. Bruce was startled by the towering shadow at the door but nonetheless motioned for Clarence to come up and play along, and they immediately clicked. “I swear I will never forget that moment,” Clarence recalled years later. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”

For the better part of the next four decades, Clarence played a central part in Springsteen’s music, providing a tapestry and a texture that shaped it. Complementing the group’s electric guitar and driving rhythms with muscular yet melodic saxophone hooks, he stamped his horn’s signature wail on many classics including “Rosalita” and “Born to Run.” Clarence’s massive size, equally huge personality, brotherly relationship with Springsteen, as well as onstage role as the straight man, helped the Big Man, as he later came to be known, evolve into one of rock ’n’ roll’s most beloved and recognizable sidemen.