Roland S Howard

[franklinmarsh]

Commiserations to Dem on the loss of Birthday Party guitarist Roland S Howard to liver cancer, at the awfully young age (well, not for rock 'n' roll) of 50.

[Craig Herbertson]

Sad. Not so young for rock but too young anyway,

www.getalyric.com/mp3/lyrics/artists/roland_s_howard-24269/

RIP

[dem bones]

"Rowland wasn't a great technical guitarist, but he invented his own thing which he was great at, and that's what made him a great guitarist". - Phill Calvertt, ex-Birthday Party drummer, quoted in Robert Brokenmouth's Nick Cave, The Birthday Party & Other Epic Adventures (Omnibus, 1996)

i'm choked. Rowland was a truly innovative guitarist, and the Birthday Party didn't really start to sound filthy/ beautiful/ threatening until he joined. i've seen the band dismissed as a noisy cult band - probably be people who never heard 'em - but a listen to The Bad Seed (Rowland's favourite) and Mutiny! ep's in particular blow that one out of the water.

don't know why i chose this clip as it's more the Nick & Tracy show - Rowland pops in and out of frame, perennial cig superglued to his lip - but here's the band giving an astonishing performance circa 1981/ 2. Mick Harvey: "We'd done two songs for the Dutch TV people. One was going to be shown one week, the other the next. They showed Junkyard, with Tracy ending up in the bass drum. They got so many phone-calls and complaints that they didn't show Big Jesus Trash Can, which wasn't quite so overt, but was equally disgusting. In a subtle way, I think Big Jesus was even worse, a kinda grinding performance.... Tracy was this great big black slug coming out of the bass drum. It was horrible."

Junkyard

Rest In Peace, Rowland (and Tracy).

[Craig Herbertson]

Great clip. Birthday party were almost exactly contemporaneous with my wee band and its interesting for me in retrospect, to remember how much further they pushed the boundarys.

Howard is dalektic - excellent stuff

Tracy Pew was an incredible bassist and that drop to the floor came at just the point where you thought you had grasped the artistic intent - a piece of intuitive magic by him. He was also an incredible loss.

As a piece of vault trivia another band I was in at university, (notorious for our three gorgeous backing singers) called 'I Giggle when I'm Tickled' was offered a gig at the Hacienda but had to turn it down. Just as well if they'd been use to acts like Birthday Party

[hugegadjit]

Very sad to hear of it - the man was an original. Glad at least he lived to see the release of his first record in 10 years, Pop Crimes. Adios Rowland.