DEATH WA ALKS BEHIND YOU

Barry Winton charts the creative but troubled career of prog pioneers ATOMIC ROOSTER

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, 1989, I made a call to my friend, keyboardist Vincent Crane. It had been several months since we’d last seen one another, and we made a provisional plan for a re-union, but he asked me to call him back later in the day to arrange a definite time.

A few weeks earlier he told me that he had been feeling very depressed. But on this particular day, he appeared to be up-beat and in good spirits, giving no indication whatsoever of the tragedy which was to unfold in the next 12 hours. Vincent took his own life by swallowing 400 pain-killers. He had informed his ex-wife Jean and his elderly parents that he was coming over to see me, using me as his alibi. Manic-depression, an illness he had battled for many years, had finally claimed him.

Twenty years later, I still often think of him and the legacy of great sounds this masterful keyboard player left behind. I have watched the growing catalogue of reissues which poured out from labels such as Angel Air and Sanctuary. Both labels have done a splendid job on the re-packaging and coming up with alternative bonus tracks. In addition to this, there are currently two websites; one is exclusively run by Jean as an online memorial to her late husband.

But for now let’s turn the clocks back some 44 years, to a time …

by Barry Winton
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