Death comes to everyone

LIFE AFTER DEATH Bobby Hackney, center, has a son, Bobby Jr., who covers Death tunes in Vermont clubs with his band Rough Francis.

Photo: Tammy Hackney

In 1974 Detroit, three talented siblings aged 18 to 23, young black men, form a band and cut a record. Nobody hears it. It’s a common tale, so far. But, unlike so many similarly forgotten soul combos, the trio in question dubbed itself Death and kicked out blistering Motor City hard rock.

“People thought we were crazy,” says former Death bassist Bobby Hackney. “James Brown, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Motown sound, the Philadelphia sound—this is what our black community was into.” Meanwhile, the Hackney brothers—unbeknownst to them—were building the bridge between classic rock and punk music. Now, 35 years later, Death finally gets its due: Local indie institution Drag City has put the group’s only output, Death…for the Whole World to See, in print for the first time.

“We were this all-black band, signed up to Groovesville, a black rhythm and blues label. They had no idea how to promote, sell or market us,” Hackney tells us over the phone from his home outside Burlington, Vermont, where the brothers all moved in 1977. “At the time, there weren’t very many white producers or white record companies in Detroit willing to take a risk on three black guys from the inner city playing rock & roll.”

It was a bouncer who introduced the boys to the noise. The Hackneys’ mother dated a security guard who worked at the city’s rock venues—Cobo Arena, Ford Auditorium, Olympic Station. Mom’s boyfriend got the kids in for free to see Iggy and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, the Who and MC5. Inspired, the three picked up instruments—Bobby on bass, Dannis on drums and David on guitar—and began jamming in the garage.

For the era, the siblings’ rock & roll was strange, their ideas youthful; you can hear the guys pulling at the seams of the sounds they imbibed at those hard-rock gigs, beginning something new, raw and aggressive. Death pressed a limited 1,000 copies of a single, “Politicians in My Eyes.” That song, more so than the scant other six recorded by the band, carries the latent punk sensibilities that would soon explode on both sides of the Atlantic. In its verses, Bobby’s vocal delivery, with spastic new-wave angularity, smacks of Bad Brains frontman H.R.—though the Washington, D.C., Rastafari hardcore icons would not form for another four years. The song’s anti-Vietnam politics, too, predate the sentiments yet to come from the punk underground. “We were all just worried we were going to get drafted,” Hackney says.

With disco music on the rise, Death’s survival seemed less and less likely. DJs liked the single, but the group couldn’t get airplay; the only way to get a track into radio rotation was to have a record deal. “We had just left Groovesville productions,” Hackney explains. “Don Davis, the owner of Groovesville, almost had us a contract with Clive Davis of CBS. But Clive Davis wanted us to change the name of the band.” David, the group’s writer, adamantly stood behind the moniker. The deal with Davis—who had signed Janis Joplin, Aerosmith and Earth, Wind & Fire—soured, and the band was on its own. In 1977, all three made the move to New England. Bobby and Dannis played on together in the regionally successful reggae act Lambsbread. David died in 2000.

“The whole reason for not changing the name was because David had a whole concept. David was working on a rock opera about the concept of death. He was going to spin it from negative to positive,” Hackney says. “We asked him, ‘Why do you wanna call the album Death…for the Whole World to See?’ He said, ‘?’Cause nobody gets outta here alive.’?”

Drag City released Death…for the Whole World to See earlier this week.

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