![]() Richard, who sang and played the piano, always said Revols was short for revolution. Rebels was the name they wanted, but Duane Eddy's band already had it. was spinning Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush and Muddy Waters, black musicians most of us had never heard of, might never have heard of if white musicians like Richard hadn't brought them to us.Īt fifteen, he and his friend John Till were playing in a local bar band, the Rockin' Revols. He'd tune in nights to radio station WLAC in Nashville, where DJ John R. Elvis, of course, and that wild man, Jerry Lee Lewis, but also white-bread versions of classics like Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" by the pallid Pat Boone. Most kids were listening to mainstream radio and, in some fashion, being changed by it. But in one critical way he was different. Growing up in Stratford in the 1950s, Richard Manuel was like a lot of small-town Canadian kids, singing in the church choir, taking piano lessons, hanging out. Ten years later, his friends and family still aren't sure why he did it, if they can accept that he did it at all. He was a month short of forty-three, a man victimized by the promises and betrayals of rock and roll. Early the next morning, after a night of booze and drugs, he got out of the bed where he lay with his wife, went into the bathroom and hanged himself. That night-it was March 3, 1986-a truncated version of The Band had played the Cheek to Cheek Lounge, a humbling comedown from the heated days when they toured with Bob Dylan and played festivals like the Isle of Wight. RICHARD MANUEL'S jumping-off point for out yonder turned out to be a motel room in a sleepy Florida town called Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando. ![]() This article is copyrighted, please do not copy or redistribute. Martin Levin: The Lonesome Death of Richard Manuel The Lonesome Death of Richard Manuel The Day the Music Died
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