DANNY JOE BROWN, 53
Molly Hatchet's former singer
BY OLIVIER STEPHENSON
Danny Joe Brown, former lead singer of the Jacksonville-based Molly Hatchet band in the 1970s and '80s, died Thursday of renal failure at home in Davie. He was 53. A diabetic since he was 19, Brown had been hospitalized for the past five weeks, according to his stepfather, Charlie Langley of Davie. Bass player Riff West, who joined the band in 1981, said Brown was the ''epitome of the rock star,'' and endeared all who came into his sphere.
Lead guitarists Dave Hlubek and Steve Holland formed the Molly Hatchet band in 1971, according to the website www.nolifetilmetal.com.
The band was named after a legendary 17th Century axe murderess,Hatchet Molly, who beheaded and mutilated her lovers, according to the band's biography. Brown joined in 1974. Other original members Duane Roland (lead guitar), Banner Thomas (bass) and Bruce Crump (drums) joined in 1975.
The band's sound, he said, was immediately recognizable by Brown's distinct voice -- a deep, raspy, throaty growl. West, who knew Brown many years before they played together in the band, said, ``Danny was the voice and soul of Molly Hatchet.'' The band followed in the tradition of what became known as ''Southern Rock'' -- a mixture of blues, rock 'n' roll, country and gospel -- with such groups as the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Charlie Daniels Band.
The group's first album, Molly Hatchet (1978) went quickly to platinum. Its second album, Flirtin' with Disaster, was a bigger success, selling more than two million copies. The strain of constant touring finally took its toll on Brown. He left the band in 1980, and was replaced by new lead singer Jimmy Farrar.
Farrar's voice, however, was less immediately identifiable, and the band's commercial appeal began to slowly decline, according to the website www.allmusic.com, a music reference source. Brown formed the Danny Brown Band which produced the album, Danny Joe Brown & the Danny Joe Brown Band in 1981. Herejoined the Molly Hatchet band in 1982, but the group's ensuing album, No Guts . . . No Glory, was a flop.
Molly Hatchet took a hiatus in 1985 and returned four years later with its album Lightning Strikes Twice. The album did not do well, and the group disbanded shortly afterward.
Visitation will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday at Panciera Memorial Home,
4200 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.
― darin (darin), Monday, 14 March 2005 18:00 (twenty years ago)
RIP, but I still can't help but think of this:
The Onion * 17 November 1999
JACKSONVILLE, FL--The nation's celebrity-biography industry is reeling following Monday's admission by former Molly Hatchet rhythm guitarist Billy Joe Reeves that the rock band's so-called "nightmare descent into booze, sex and drugs" at the height of its late-'70s popularity was "actually not all that nightmarish at all."
"In the summer of 1979, Molly Hatchet was on top of the world. We'd just completed a sold-out tour opening for the likes of Bob Seger and Cheap Trick, and our sophomore effort, Flirtin' With Disaster, was a hit with audiences and critics alike," Reeves told Peter Briley, host of the daytime cable-access talk show Jacksonville Community Voices. "Almost overnight, we were big stars, and things started getting out of control: drugs, alcohol
and constant anonymous sex with teenage groupies."
When asked if the experience had been a living hell, a nightmare descent into booze, sex and drugs that almost cost him his life, Reeves stunned Briley with his answer.
"I really wouldn't call it 'nightmarish,' per se, no," Reeves said. "In fact, it was really fucking great. Lord almighty."
Reeves' admission has set off shockwaves within music-bio circles, sharply defying many long-held assumptions about the high price of fame.
"This revelation has stirred up no end of controversy in virtually every corner of the country's $4.2 billion pseudodocumentary industry," said VH1 Behind The Music producer Doug Farelli. "If what this man is saying is true, the very foundation of everything we have come to believe about the celebrity rise-fall-redemption arc may be suspect."
Said E! True Hollywood Story producer Ellen Donovan: "One has to ask: If the excesses of fame are not, in fact, the living hell we have come to believe they are, what else is untrue? What about the heartwarming happy ending, when, after losing all their money, they go clean, settle down and start over again with a better life? Are we to believe that's all just some terrible lie, too?"
During his headline-grabbing interview with Briley, Reeves insisted that sudden fame and fortune did not result in deep inner turmoil and suffering on the part of Molly Hatchet's members, slowly tearing them apart until the band collapsed under the weight of its members' tortured self-destruction. Rather, Reeves said, the struggle, heartache and pain
didn't kick in until well after the band had peaked.
"To be honest, if anything, it was the nightmare descent into a lack of booze, sex and drugs that really hurt," said Reeves, who has worked at his brother-in-law's bait shop since leaving Molly Hatchet in 1986. "The excesses of fame were just fine, thank you very much. It was the non-excesses of non-fame that were the hard part."
Jimmy Gaines, a back-up percussionist with Lynyrd Skynyrd from 1977 to
1981, agreed.
"The booze, the sex, the drugs... Those are three great things, and I miss them all terribly," Gaines told MTV News' Kurt Loder during a special investigative report on the controversy Tuesday. "As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to starting up a second, brand-new nightmare descent into all that stuff just as soon as I can manage it."
Despite the stir his remarks have created, Reeves is not backing down.
"Come on, I'd be high as a kite, a joint in one hand and a fifth of Jack Daniels in the other, and all I had to do was play the first four bars of 'Whiskey Man' and the panties would start dropping," said Reeves, eyeing with wistful longing the Frank Frazetta painting of a battle-axe-wielding barbarian on the cover of 1980's Beatin' The Odds. "And you're asking if it
filled me with a gnawing emptiness and despair I couldn't escape? Hell, no. Those days with Danny Joe, Duane, Bruce, Dave and Banner were pretty much the best thing that ever happened to this here good ol' boy, and that's a fact."
[The Onion * 17 November 1999]
© Copyright 1999 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 14 March 2005 18:26 (twenty years ago)