Sky Saxon (born Richard Marsh) passed away this morning, June 25, 2009. As any garage fan knows, he was singer for the Seeds, the prototypical ‘garage’ band of all time.
I saw him in concert a couple times, once circa 1994 at a free show in San Francisco. He had a pick up band and was pretty out of it. The band tried to get him to sing “Pushin’ Too Hard” but he would only repeat a chant “Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out here”. Well, it was Mothers Day. A few years ago he came to Brooklyn, looking great in a white suit to match his beard and did a fine show with a new group that actually knew the material. I wish I’d taken the request to put him up for a few days.
Many of the Seeds early records on GNP Crescendo have been in print almost continuously since their release. Less well-known are two singles Sky made with a revamped Seeds lineup for MGM in 1970, the incredible “Bad Part Of Town” / “Wish Me Up” and “Love In A Summer Basket” / “Did He Die”. It’s a little vague who’s playing on these, but Patrick Lundborg gives a possible lineup of Sky Saxon, Daryl Hooper, and Richard Barcelona, with a few others only remembered by their first names, Chip, Rob, John.
Sky’s story is told piecemeal on the web. The ‘official’ skysaxon.com website is one place to start, but it lacks detailed info on his career. For info on his later recordings, including “Bad Part of Town” I recommend the Lama’s write up here.
“I ran out of gas one day, so I took Michael Jackson’s album in, and all I could get was a dollar” – Sky Saxon, ‘Rolling Stone’ #456, September 12, 1985.
It’s sad how little people are mentioning this on other blogs. I thought it would be all over the place. I almost got to see him at the wilderbeat weekender 6 years ago but he got cancelled for some reason.
i guess we won’t be seeing endless tributes to Sky on MSNBC anytime soon…which is a damn shame. can you imagine?…
Yes, it’s been sad to see Saxon’s passing get lost in the shuffle of all the recent ‘celeb’ deaths.
When I heard about Sky Saxon dying, after just hearing about Michael Jackson the same day, the first thing I thought of was that quote from Rolling Stone, from (I think) some kind of ‘Where are they now’ feature.
My fuzzy memory says that he was in Hawaii, taking the ‘Thriller’ LP into a used record shop in Kailua, Hawaii, the other side of Oahu from Honolulu.
The memory stuck ‘cuz I’d been in that store. (what else does a record collector do on vacation in paradise?)
Back in the day, SKY was our MICHAEL JACKSON.The bands i played in back then we always did all of THE SEEDS catalogue. REST IN PEACE SKY