Interview with Bassist Bobby Hackney of Death

Death in Rehearsal, 2015. L-R Bobby Hackney, Dannis Hackney, Bobbie Duncan. [Photograph copyright Kevin Hurley]

[Originally published in Austinist, 2009] Death were a rock band active in Detroit beginning in the early 1970s and consisting of brothers David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney (David Hackney died in 2000). Their only proper release at the time was a self-published single; with archival recordings unearthed and released in 2009, the story of Death emerged and is still being told — they reunited and recruited guitarist Bobbie Duncan of Lambsbread to play concerts, festivals, and record new material. A Band Called Death (2012), a feature documentary about the group, is well worth seeing. This interview was conducted in 2009 in advance of their performance at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas.

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Can you recount the beginnings of the Death story, how you got into music and how the band formed?

Well, we basically started as a band in 1971 – we were amateurs and had a cousin that used to play with us over the summers, so we were a four-piece. He could only be with us on vacation, so we got accustomed to being a three-piece the other nine or ten months of the year. Around 1973, after playing funk and blues, R&B behind singers and so forth, rock and roll exploded on us.

As far as growing up in Detroit – and I don’t know what part of Detroit you were growing up in – but one usually assumes that, among African American musicians, the likelihood that they’ll be playing rock and roll is less than, say, Soul music, jazz or improvised music.

That’s precisely right. Where we grew up was the east side of Detroit, which was predominately black and in Detroit you expected the music of the day among black communities – the Isely Brothers, Earth Wind & Fire, James Brown and that type of stuff. That was the music we were encouraged to play over rock and roll, and that’s probably also why our music has a bit more of an edge to it. We were going through so much rejection at the time and being discouraged from playing our music – at the time, if you suggested to my brother David (guitarist), that he should play something other than rock, he’d try to kill you with one of his power-chords or something.

What were among the things that either creatively or personally led you to play rock music? Was there a catalyst or was it a building of various factors?

My mother’s boyfriend at the time was a security guard, and he had access to every rock arena in Detroit. Sometimes he was stationed at the Olympia Stadium, sometimes at the Cobo Arena, the Sonic Auditorium or the Ford Auditorium. We would get in free to all of these incredible shows. My brother Dannis, a drummer, used to love to go see the Pistons play when Dave Bing was with them. While the Pistons were at Cobo, Alice Cooper was also playing, and he wandered over to the other side of the arena and saw the music. He went back over to grab our mom, and she thought it was very weird. When he came back from that show, he said “you guys have to hear this music, and we have to learn to play it. Rock and roll is what we should be doing.” 

Our experience with the music up to that point had been the Beatles and a little bit of Jimi Hendrix (by ’72-’73, every guitarist in the black community wanted to be like him). Of course, if you didn’t know who the Beatles were at that time, you had to be living under a rock. When Dennis saw the show and told us about it, it took a little convincing. But when my mom’s boyfriend took David to see the Who, that sort of changed things for him – it was 1973 during the Quadrophenia tour. Pete Townshend had all these speakers surrounding the Cobo Arena, and David was very impressed by the way he played chords and so forth. As we were a trio, we were impressed by anyone who could pull it off onstage with just three pieces – groups like Grand Funk Railroad, Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, Hendrix’ trio, and the Who. 

Thinking of the Who, there was also an operatic or theatrical sensibility that also entered Death, right?

Yeah, that was through David and hearing Quadrophenia. It was so orchestrated, and David thought that was one of the most brilliant albums he ever heard. He was telling us that this was the direction of the music – that rock and roll would be orchestrated, and that it was how Hendrix had seen his music before he died. With Tommy and so forth, that really influenced David to a more operatic approach, and he began to write a rock opera around the theme of Death. We were looking for a name for our band at the time, and he suggested that we name it Death – of course, that took a little convincing until he explained to us that he was trying to spin the idea of “death” from a negative thing to something positive. We were in once that became clearer.

As your recorded legacy becomes a bit more detailed, it’s clear that some of the songs are stripped down to their barest essence while others are more fleshed out with a grander sense of form.

Well, I think that the real standout song that David wrote and that I put the lyrics to was “Let the World Turn,” because that goes through so many variations, from very soft to a very operatic crescendo and then very driving rock rhythms. There are a lot of components there, and David said that it was his “mini-opera.” That was the beginning, or the doorway to his concepts and where he wanted to take the music.

So the idea of the music as being stripped-down, and especially dovetailing with other bands at the time like MC5 and the Stooges, who would eventually be called “punk” –

People say that we were predating punk, but I don’t know about that. To me, we were just playing hard-driving rock and roll music. You have to remember that at the time, the word “punk” was considered a fighting word.

It seems like the essentialist quality would have been less important, especially had Death continued and those songs perhaps been re-recorded.

I have to attribute the recording quality to the genius of Brian Spears and Don Davis of the legendary Groovesville Productions in Detroit. Brian signed us after hearing our demo tape, though Don was skeptical of the name. We had known that he had produced music by Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics and a lot of Motown and Stax stuff, so we were worried that he might come in and cross over our stuff. When he first heard us, though, he said “I’m not going to mess with you guys – just go in, I’ll give you the best engineers I have, and we’ll see what you come up with.” He let us self-produce the music, though they did tutor and mentor us a bit in the studio to make sure everything was all right. He didn’t say anything like “this part should have horns, this should have strings,” you know.

That’s partly why it sounds so raw; we had two engineers at United Sound – Jim Viti and a guy named Mike, who recorded Rare Earth, the Rationals, Bob Seger and MC5. By the time we signed up with Groovesille, United Sound had oriented itself toward rhythm & blues and hadn’t recorded rock in a couple years. We were a breath of fresh air to those guys, because we let the equipment breathe – if you know what I mean. Don would come in every once in a while because he was concerned about his monitor speakers.

How old were you at this time?

I was seventeen, going on eighteen, when we started the sessions at United Sound. 

So you were not playing gigs as much at this point?

We started out playing garage shows; at that time, you needed a union card or you had to be eighteen to play clubs. We played a little bit in Ann Arbor where the rockers hung out, but at that point it was really about the record, especially in Detroit. If you were in Detroit, and you were well-known with a record out, you were a big thing.

Was there an impetus then that if you were known, it would take you away from Detroit, or was it a local-centric thing?

We never wanted to leave Detroit; when we left it was by chance. If you were playing rock and roll between 1973 and 1975 you were on a wild ride, until it got stopped by disco. That was in 1976 and that had to be the most dismal year of rock and roll ever. It was especially rough for us because we’d separated (mutually) from Groovesville. We weren’t riding around in a Cadillac, playing on expensive equipment or going in and out of the studios anymore. On top of that, disco was the main thing, and that’s when we put out the single for “Politicians in My Eyes” in an edition of 500. It was hard to get any airplay; the radio stations wouldn’t play our record unless it was late at night or early in the morning, and we only heard it once. Up to that point, you could take a record to a DJ and have it played, so we were confused. One DJ, Steve Dowd, explained it to us. He worked at a station called WAVX in Detroit and later moved to Chicago, and he was part of the legendary burning of disco records at Comiskey Park. Anyway, he told us that things were changing in the industry and that the DJs couldn’t pick their own music. The power had been taken from them and put into the hands of the corporate stations. In 1976, we saw that it was a low time and even good artists were jumping onto the disco bandwagon.

There had been some sniffing around by larger labels, right?

What had happened with Groovesville and United Sound, Don Davis was also recording songs with Gladys Knight, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. (as a matter of fact, we met them in Studio A when they were laying down the vocal tracks to “You Don’t Have To Be In My Show.”), so he had business with major labels across the country. He shopped masters around to labels in LA, New York, Memphis and overseas.

He was playing multiple roles, then, like producer, A&R guy and label owner.

Yes, that’s what he did, and he had a team of engineers – it was an awesome operation and we learned so much from being signed up to his organization. He shopped our music around to bigger labels, and yet nobody bit. He was friends with Clive Davis, who was between Columbia and Arista at the time and legend has it that we were turned down by him for one of those labels. 

At least Arista did have some interesting stuff like Anthony Braxton and the Grateful Dead in their mid-70s catalog.

Yeah, Clive happened to hear one of the Death tapes and was interested, but he didn’t like the name. We were summoned into Brian Spears’ office and he informed us of the conversation that Don and Clive had. He said that if we were willing to change our name, we might have a deal. David told Brian to tell Don Davis to tell Clive Davis to go to hell [laughs] – and that was that. It all happened around 1975.

After this, how much continuation was there of Death as we know it?

We were young and cocky and didn’t know how to articulate the scope of the music that we had written. Being teenagers, we’d do what any other rock and rollers would do in Detroit in the 70s: tell someone to go to hell. Don had business on the table regarding other artists, some of which were Grammy-winning, and he didn’t want to rattle any chains over a black rock band called Death that was hard to sell. So guess who got thrown off the ship!

So in 1976, we agreed mutually that it wasn’t working – record companies then wouldn’t fire you, they’d just shelf you and not give you calls for sessions or advances. Finally, we all sat down in his office and agreed that it wasn’t going to happen. We had five more songs that we wanted to do, and so forth – we had all of the masters. When we left, we were able to get those and that’s how we put out our single.

In retrospect, that was really good because a lot of labels wouldn’t have done that.

It’s unprecedented – I’d never heard of a label doing that. We planned on releasing the whole album, but things didn’t work out. There was the Carter-era recession, disco, rock and roll was wearing out in Detroit, and it was a bad year. Even the rock shows were few and far between. We could see that the landscape was changing; we’d lost the label prestige but we did have our talent and our shirts on our backs. A relative who lived in New England came to see us and said “why don’t you come to New England and cool your heads for a couple weeks.” We were like, “what did they do with the old one?” We thought he wanted us to fly across the ocean! We were only supposed to come out for a two-week vacation, but it’s been thirty-some years, I’ve raised a family and I’m still on vacation! [laughs]

What made you choose Vermont in particular?

When we came here, we just fell in love with Burlington, Vermont. It kind of reminded us of Ann Arbor, but a little more intense. There was music all over the place, two great parks where people hung out and we must have spent two whole days alone hanging out in the park and playing music. It’s a college town, so you’re surrounded by students and bars to play in. 

Musically, you went through a number of iterations – could you discuss those?

After we moved here, we still tried to retain the name Death. What happened was we tried to do a show that would introduce us to the town. David had a couple of friends who plastered the town with Death posters; the police and local people didn’t know what was going on, that some kids had moved from Detroit and were putting flyers up everywhere about Death. We opened up the door and a cop was standing there with a wad of posters, and said “we don’t start gangs around here.” He thought we were recruiting and we tried to explain that it was the name of our band. At that point we said, okay, it might be time to change the name. So we changed it to The Fourth Movement. We continued to play rock and roll, put out a single and two albums, and took it to a more spiritual level. 

Those are long out-of-print as well.

Yes, we’ll be putting them out again too, because we have the master tapes and there’s certainly a lot of interest.

I’d been enticed – I collect records – but I’ve never met anyone who has the albums. 

We put out a single locally called “North Street,” after what was the bad street at the time in Burlington. It was really well-received locally here, and that will be reissued as well. After we did the Fourth Movement and even with the spiritual slant, there were newspapers that wrote articles that said “nice music but hold the religion.” There again, it was a new level of rejection. What happened with David, being the temperamental artist that he was, he kind of pined for Detroit. He tried to convince Dannis and I to return, but we loved Burlington and had raised families by that point. We were both working and going to school, and I had become a disc jockey at WRUV. That year there was a whole fraternity of disc jockeys who did some pretty amazing things, and especially Jay Strausser who brought Bob Marley to town. So once again we were exposed to a concert that changed our lives. 

We saw Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and we saw Sly and Robbie (of Black Uhuru) do an all-dub show because Michael Rose had been busted at the Montreal airport and sent back to Jamaica. They had a sold-out show at Memorial Auditorium, and it turned into this amazing dub concert. Here Dannis and I were left as a drummer and a bass player/vocalist, and we were searching for music to play. We were appreciative of reggae because bass and drums are very important in that music, so we formed Lambsbread and didn’t look back for a while. Lambsbread was one of the most popular reggae bands in New England. Then, like a temple from heaven, Death falls back into the picture.

Could you explain how that happened?

My brother David had spread around a lot of copies of the single before we left. My son Julian had taken a year off from college and went traveling out west. He called me up one day and said, “Dad, do you realize they’re playing your music at underground parties out here?” I thought he was talking about Lambsbread and he said “no, you were in a band in the 70s called Death in Detroit, right?” The phone got so quiet because I couldn’t believe what he was saying to me. I said “yeah, that’s us.” My other son Bobby did an internet search and said “dad, please tell me you have the master tapes” and I said “yeah, they’re up in the attic.” He jumped for joy, you know.

Yeah, that single was going for almost a grand – I can imagine the talk around the internet.

Right and here we are. My sons are musicians and were inspired by the whole thing to name their band after David’s nickname, “Rough Francis.” They’ve been tearing up the town as a Death tribute band, and now they’re also doing their own music. 

Now that the Death material is available, or a good chunk of it anyway, what’s next? You’re playing concerts and that could yield significant possibilities.

We’re taking it step by step. We did a concert in Detroit in September that was a huge success, and then a second show in Chicago sold out. Right now, we’re loading up a series of appearances; there’s talk of us going abroad to Brazil, England, and Japan, but Austin and the Fun Fun Fun Fest is, of course, first. We have a catalog of unreleased stuff that we want to share with the world, so over the next couple of years there will be a lot of interesting material to take in.

Would it be prudent to bring Death back as a recording unit, or are there other ideas to deal with as well?

We’ve talked about all of that, really. We have an awesome guitarist named Bobbie Duncan, and we feel like David is channeling through him. We’ve done our “test marketing” and that’s been very successful; we have a few songs in mind that we’d like to record as Death, so there will be both old and new material to hear.

It’s a curious time, because it will either present a tribute to something that was, which people haven’t experienced, or it may grow into something completely different that doesn’t touch on the past. 

We’re as excited as everybody else to see the outcome. We’re so glad that all this has come about and we can’t thank people enough. Like what the old musicians in Detroit said, once you get with rock and roll, you may leave it from time to time but it won’t leave you. If you record something and put it down for history, people will find out and it will come back to you. I put faith in all those “follow your dream” speeches that artists hear all the time.

It’s a great story and it doesn’t happen enough that people are the recipients of such good tidings.

Thank you. We hope that we can give everybody what they’re expecting.