[msb-alumni] Alan Merrill, Songwriter Behind 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll' Dies at 69, or 71, on March 29, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2020 17:24:18 -0400
BlankAlan Merrill, Songwriter Behind 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll'. By Ben Sisario.
The musician, who died of the coronavirus, had an early rock career in Japan
before
helping write the song that became Joan Jett's breakthrough hit.
Alan Merrill, a guitarist and singer whose song "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" became
Joan
Jett's breakthrough hit, and who had early success as one of the few Western
rock
stars in Japan in the late 1960s and early '70s, died on Sunday in Manhattan.
The
cause was complications of the coronavirus, his daughter Laura Merrill said.
She said
he was 69, although some documents indicate that he may have been 71.
"I was just at his show a couple of weeks ago," Ms. Merrill wrote in a post on
Facebook announcing his death. "He played down the 'cold' he thought he had."
Mr. Merrill grew up in a family that was deeply connected to the music
industry. His
parents were both noted jazz musicians: His mother, Helen Merrill, is a singer;
his
father, Aaron Sachs, was a saxophonist and clarinetist who died in 2014.
As a teenager, Mr. Merrill played in rock bands, and in the 1960s auditioned to
join
the band the Left Banke as a guitarist. In the summer of 1968, Mr. Merrill
moved to
Tokyo, where his mother had been living. There he saw on television mop-topped,
Beatles-esque bands like the Tigers playing to crowds of screaming teenage
girls.
"It was like an alternate universe where everybody's Asian, but I think I can
get in
here somehow," he recalled thinking in an interview with The New York Times in
2017.
Through his mother's connections in the music business, Mr. Merrill began
playing
guitar in Japanese rock bands. He joined the Lead, whose members were all
Westerners.
It had a hit in 1968 with 'Akuma Ga Kureta Aoi Bara,' which Mr. Merrill sang in
Japanese, though he did not speak the language.
He recorded two solo albums in Japan: "Alone in Tokyo" (1971), in Japanese,
which
yielded another hit, "Namida" ('Teardrops'), and "Merrill 1" (1972), in English.
At the same time, he played with the popular glam-rock group Vodka Collins, and
acted
in a television soap opera, 'Jikan Desuyo.
But by 1974 -- after a disagreement with his talent manager, he said -- Mr.
Merrill
left for London, where he helped start a new glam-pop band, the Arrows; he was
its
singer and bassist. The group had a Top 10 hit in Britain in 1974 with "Touch
Too
Much."
A single the next year, "Broken Down Heart," was unsuccessful, but its B-side,
"I
Love Rock 'n' Roll," written by Mr. Merrill and Jake Hooker, the guitarist for
the
Arrows, would become a classic. The song caught the ear of Ms. Jett, who
recorded it
for the first album with her band the Blackhearts, releasing it in 1981. It
held the
No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for seven weeks the following year,
and --
with a few tweaks to place the song from a woman's point of view -- launched
Ms.
Jett's career as a tough-talking rock star.
"I can still remember watching the Arrows on TV in London and being blown away
by the
song that screamed hit to me," Ms. Jett recalled in a Facebook post on Sunday.
In a 2009 interview with the website Songfacts, Mr. Merrill described 'I Love
Rock
'n' Roll' as a 'knee-jerk response' to the 1974 Rolling Stones song 'It's Only
Rock
'n Roll (But I Like It),' and to Mick Jagger's elite social circle. 'I almost
felt
like 'It's Only Rock 'n' Roll' was an apology to those jet-set princes and
princesses
that he was hanging around with -- the aristocracy, you know,' Mr. Merrill
said.
'That was my interpretation as a young man: OK, I love rock 'n' roll. Allan
Preston
Sachs was born in New York on Feb. 19, either in 1949 or 1951, and grew up in
the
Bronx. His extended family also included the songwriter Laura Nyro, to whom he
was
related through a relative's marriage. He and Ms. Nyro, who died in 1997,
referred to
each other as cousins, and in his teenage years he often went to her apartment
after
school to watch her compose songs. After the Arrows disbanded in 1977, Mr.
Merrill
played with Rick Derringer and Meat Loaf, and in 1985 released a solo album on
the
Polydor label, titled simply 'Alan Merrill. Vodka Collins reunited in the 1990s
and
released three new albums, and Mr. Merrill became a fixture in the New York
rock
world, playing widely and building a reputation as a raconteur telling stories
of his
own singular career. In addition to his mother and daughter, Mr. Merrill is
survived
by his wife, Joanna Lisanti; another daughter, Allegra Soler; and a son, Allan
Sachs-Ambia.
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