Sortie en vinyl le 14/09/09
“Mommy, what’s ‘DEATH’? The band, I mean” was the last coherent thing my grandfather ever said. To answer this question, we spoke with BOBBY HACKNEY, of DEATH!
ME: BOBBY, can you give us some background about DEATH?
BOBBY: Brothers David, Bobby and Dannis Hackney started making music together in 1971, when David, the eldest, was 19 and Dannis, the youngest, was 16. Like many young African-American musicians, our primary influences were soul and funk music. This changed after seeing IGGY AND THE STOOGES live. We started listening to more rock, stuff like ALICE COOPER and LED ZEPPELIN. When THE WHO’s “Quadrophenia” came out, David became convinced that nothing was more important than rock and roll. In 1974, we put together a demo tape with the most rocking name we could think of: DEATH.
ME: Inspired by some of classic rock’s heroes, DEATH was actually more like the MC5, riff-rocking with minimal leads at maximum heat, a la Fred “Sonic” Smith, Non? And I understand the freshness of your sound gained you some late-night play at the AOR rock station W4 (WWWW, get it?).
BOBBY: All true! Determined to go further, DEATH secured an audition with Don Davis, whose chart-topping work with Stax acts JOHNNIE TAYLOR and THE DRAMATICS made him a local celebrity. What DEATH offered was a far cry from the polished soul music that Davis produced, but the ferocious energy with which our younger selves played our original songs Davis found remarkable. Davis booked us into his United Sound Recording Studio, one of Detroit’s main destinations for aspiring blues, R’n’B and soul musicians.
So there you go! Their time in the studio was overseen by engineer Jim Vitti, whose work with Parliament/ Funkadelic seems to have informed his decision to record Death in raw fashion with little polish, showcasing the organic power relationships within the trio. The songs recorded there make
up …For the Whole World to See, which today blasts from the speakers as a fresh and inspired early entry in the category of punk rock.
Death had a single pressed, “Politicians in My Eyes” b/w “Keep On Knocking,” selling them at their shows and on the street. Things weren’t really going anywhere when they heard from Columbia Records’ president Clive Davis. He was interested, but he had one demand — they’d have to change their name. David, acting as the band’s leader, would have no part of it, a decision that ultimately brought an end to Death. Moving to New England, David, Bobby and Dannis reconnected with their faith, forming the Christian Rock-N-Roll band The 4th Movement, whose self-released early-80s album joined Death’s 45 as a sought-after obscurity for the next generation. 2009 is the time that Death is finally here …For the Whole World To See.