Laughter. It’s the first thing you hear on a phone call with Death. The median age in the band is a nick past 60 years old, but hearing the guys chatter on the end of a fuzzy connection would lead you to believe that they’re just out of high school. Death — who many consider to be the forefathers of punk — make fun of each other’s age (drummer Dannis Hackney is “old enough to know” according to his brother Bobby Hackney) and don’t sound the least bit tired despite having toured Europe and South America recently.
As they happily check in from their band’s office in Jericho, Vermont, it’s easy to forget how so much of the Death’s recent success almost never happened.
Sixteen years ago, David Hackney — who founded Death with his brothers Bobby and Dannis — died after a battle with lung cancer. His passing came 23 years after Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten released Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and 36 years after the Hackney brothers’ father sat them down in front of the television to watch The Beatles kick off the British Invasion with an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. John, Paul, George and Ringo were seen by an estimated 73 million Americans that night. No one — except for maybe David, who found a discarded Vox guitar in an alley the day after that televised Beatles set — could have predicted how those three black kids from Detroit would unceremoniously create the prototype for a new style of music that would change the world forever.
“David was the first one that really got into playing an instrument,” Dannis Hackney, 63, told CL. “He was a lot like our dad in that he was a visionary. David was always looking to the future and telling people, ‘this is going to be important.’” Dannis says his brother would force the band to listen to the Lichtenstein orchestra and Alice Coltrane. The boys loved it, and they loved other stuff like Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent and The Stooges. David had the idea to move move Death away from the R&B they were playing and pivot towards a more hard-rock sound that tipped its cap to acts like Alice Cooper and The Who.
“The Detroit sound definitely influenced us, but David had this intuition about rock 'n' roll and fully embraced it,” Dannis said. “It got to the point that he would respond to everything by saying ‘rock and roll man.’ It was literally his answer to everything — he equated rock and roll to life.” In 1976, that obsession would manifest itself in a 7-inch single pressed under the banner of Death’s own Tryangle Records. A Bobby Hackney-penned song, “Politicians In My Eyes,” is on the A-side.
“They could care less about you. They could care less about me,” Bobby proclaims on the track while pulsating bass lines and distorted guitar blasts ring out behind him. “Reaching out, shaking hands. Making friends and other plans. Some will rise, some will fall. Some won't even answer calls. Politicians tell me why, can't you hear the people cry?”
“I wanna thank Donald Trump for making that song one of the most played Death songs,” Dannis said about the cut, which remains relevant three decades after it was put to lathe. “We had a resolve even back in the day when we were writing that song. Nobody should define their life by what the politicians say.”
For some reason, the message didn’t connect back in the day. Death got funny looks when they played live in clubs where crowds expected more of the Motown they’d been hearing on the regular. There’s even a story about Clive Davis hearing a demo and then asking the band’s friend, Stax producer Don Davis, if they would change the name. Clive Davis, a modern day music A&R giant, doesn’t remember the record coming across his desk, but the Hackneys do.
“That’s when David got a little angry,” Dannis told the New York Times in 2009. “He told Don to tell Clive, ‘Hell no!’” Consequently, Death actually didn’t achieve any kind of commercial success until Drag City records released lost demo tapes seven years ago. Today, there’s a 98-minute documentary about the band, and that 1975 single goes for about $900 according to Discogs.com, an online community devoted to cataloging physical releases of music. The band is also part of the Smithsonian African American History Museum in Washington D.C.
While David isn’t around to experience Death’s newfound success, his spirit is all over a tour that hits St. Pete’s Local 662 on February 10. In 2015, Death released N.E.W., which features songs that were built on a “wealth of Death songs” composed partly by David in the ‘70s. A completely new track “Cease Fire,” addresses the violence going on all over the world, and Dannis says that their shows have been attended by fans of all ages and ethnicities.
“We are connecting, 35-year-old music is connecting with young people of the world. It’s amazing,” Bobby said. “If you have a son I would [say] bring your son to see the movie. If your dad is still living then I would hope you would bring him to see the show.” In talking about his late brother David and how much he thinks of him while he’s playing onstage, Dannis closes with a story about Bob Marley’s death.
“There have been interviews with Bunny Wailer where he says that it many ways Bob’s death allowed his music to really live. Bob's message is why he lives now,” Dannis explained. “At the time, I couldn’t fully see David’s ideas and message because he was alive in front of me, but now it’s all very clear — it’s rock and roll, man.”
This article appears in Feb 9-16, 2017.