On Saturday, June 7, 1969, the brand new band shaped by Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and a relatively unknown 22-year-old bass participant from Leicester performed a free live performance in London’s Hyde Park.
Going by the identify Blind Religion, they hadn’t but launched an album (their massively anticipated and hyped debut was nonetheless two months away) and it was their first ever gig collectively, however the band the music press had tagged with the brand new phrase ‘supergroup’ performed to 100,000 folks.
The shy bass participant in the back of the stage was Richard Roman ‘Ric’ Grech. He had been poached from ‘underground’/progressive rock band Household to hitch the three stellar different musicians in Blind Religion.
20 years later, Grech – famend as one of many most interesting bass gamers and musicians of the late-60s rock period – died penniless in hospital, from kidney and liver failure after years of drug and alcohol abuse. He had been dwelling in a flat in Leicester, surviving on Invalidity Profit. He was 43 years outdated.
Grech was seven when he began to play the violin. He was good, his father informed the Leicester Mercury newspaper. “However when he heard The Beatles he didn’t need to play the violin, he wished to play the guitar. I purchased him one. And that was that.”
Grech shaped The Xciters, which included vocalist Roger Chapman, however then left to hitch The Farinas in 1965. The Farinas, now with Chapman on board, morphed into Household.
It was throughout his Household days that Grech first began to experiment with medicine.
“When you get entangled with heroin it rips you aside,” he mentioned in a uncommon interview. “The very first thing I did within the morning was take a repair… I don’t know why I began. I suppose it was to beat my insecurity. I by no means knew what was going to occur subsequent. My life was so quick.”
By 1969, Grech was out of Household and in Blind Religion. He later admitted that was the 12 months he first began taking heroin. “My life was ruled by the necessity to rating. I used to borrow from everybody and anybody to pay for the stuff.”
Blind Religion lasted one album and one 12 months. Grech went on to play with Winwood within the re-formed Site visitors however was sacked after two albums due to his drug use.
He started a promising new nation rock challenge with Gram Parsons, however music from the classes was by no means launched. Gram’s premature demise from an overdose in 1973 reportedly affected Ric badly.
He went on play classes for the Bee Gees, Muddy Waters, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Laine, however the medicine made him more and more unreliable.
He overdosed twice: as soon as in 1974 at a Hollywood celebration after a near-fatal cocktail of cocaine and heroin, then once more two years later.
By 1984 he was again dwelling in Leicester, getting by on profit and making an attempt to wean himself off heroin.
In 1987 the Leicester Mercury reported that Grech was banned from driving and fined £220 after admitting being thrice over the alcohol restrict and pointing a beginning pistol at one other driver. He requested magistrates if he may repay the fantastic at £4 per week.
“The royalties cease coming in, the telephone stops ringing and the limos cease ready exterior your own home,” he mentioned.
In 1989, 20 years after Blind Religion, docs warned him that if he didn’t cease consuming he can be useless inside six months. It was like waving a purple rag at a bull, mentioned his ex-wife, Jenny.
“When he heard that, he simply mentioned he was going to hit the tequila,” she mentioned. “He was informed if he didn’t cease consuming he wouldn’t final six months. With an individual like Ric, that was all you needed to say. He wished to exit in model.”
Ric Grech died within the Leicester Normal hospital on March 16 after his kidneys and liver haemorrhaged. He was buried underneath an oak tree at Gilroes Cemetery in Leicester, in the identical grave as his mom.
