Concert promoter Andrew Miller, who was also a founder of the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy fundraising committee, died peacefully in his sleep last Thursday, it has been confirmed.

Miller began his career in the music business in the 1970s as an agent, before setting up his own live music company, Andrew Miller Promotions, in 1975, through which he promoted concerts for the likes of Supertramp, Gallagher & Lyle, Joan Armatrading, Meatloaf, Nana Mouskouri and Barry Manilow.

His involvement with the British Nordoff Robbins charity began at around the same time, and he went on to co-found and then chair for 24 years a fund-raising committee which raised millions for the ground breaking music therapy organisation, and ensured its work was known, admired and supported by the entire UK music industry.

Perhaps Miller’s best known fund-raising initiative was the Knebworth 90 concert in 1990, that featured performances from previous winners of the Silver Clef Awards his fund-raising committee had created.

Paul McCartney, Status Quo, Genesis, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Tears For Fears, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, and Cliff Richard and The Shadows all helped ensure it was a landmark event, which raised over £6 million, shared between Nordoff Robbins and The BRITS Trust, who were able to realise their plans to launch the BRIT School For Performing Arts because of the cash boost. Content recorded at the event continues to generate revenue for both charities.

Andrew is survived by his wife Anna and his two daughters Faye and Emily.

Michael Davis, bass player with American rock legends MC5, has died after suffering liver failure, his wife confirmed this weekend.

Davis joined MC5 in Detroit in the mid-60s when they were still developing their sound, and played on the band’s three albums, ‘Kick Out The Jams’, ‘Back In The USA’ and ‘High Time’, released in 1969, 1970 and 1971 respectively.

He was forced out of the group in 1972 as he struggled with heroin addiction, though the band quickly fell apart after his departure anyway. Aside from a time in jail for drug offences, Davies pursued a number of other musical and visual art projects over the years, playing with both Destroy All Monsters and Blood Orange for a time, before reuniting with the surviving MC5 members for a reunion in 2003/4.

In 2006 Davis suffered injuries in a serious motorcycle crash, and after that was inspired to form a non-profit organisation with his wife Angela called The Music Is Revolution Foundation which supported music education programmes in schools, especially for those students who struggle in the school system.

He died at the Enloe Medical Center in California on Friday after receiving a month of treatment for liver disease. He is survived by his wife, their three sons, and a daughter from a previous marriage.

Whitney Houston died in the bathroom of a Beverly Hills hotel ahead of a Grammys party this weekend, aged 48. It brought to an end a life of both phenomenal highs and lows.

Houston was surrounded by talented female vocalists from birth, her mother Cissy Houston also a singer, while her godmother was Aretha Franklin and cousins Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick. That said, the 20 year old Whitney was pursuing a career as a model when record label veteran Clive Davis signed her to his Arista Records in 1983. Davis closely guided Houston through the first two years of her musical career, partnering her with the right producers and songwriters to create the critically acclaimed chart topping debut album ‘Whitney Houston’.

Follow-up ‘Whitney’ confirmed Houston’s status as one of America’s biggest pop stars, arguably achieving greater crossover appeal than any of the black female singers who had gone before her, and paving the way for a new generation of female artists that followed her. Though despite the critical acclaim and commercial success, some criticised Whitney’s music for being too pop, and lacking the soul of some of the older singers who inspired her. Perhaps in response to that criticism, Houston worked with some more credible producers on album three, which had a less blatantly pop sound, though which sold fewer copies as a result.

Nevertheless, Houston’s career high was yet to come. After wowing the nation with her rendition of America’s national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl, Houston hit a new high with the release of ‘The Bodyguard’, the film which saw the singer turn her hand to acting for the first time, as well as topping charts worldwide with the movie’s signature tune, Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’. More successes in both film and music, and a successful first venture as a producer, duly followed in the next few years.

However, as the 1990s proceeded, and Houston’s career started to wane from its ‘Bodyguard’ peak, stories of drug addiction began to circulate, and the media spotlight started to increasingly fall more on the private lives of both Houston and Bobby Brown, her husband since 1992. In 2000 marijuana was discovered in the couple’s luggage as they passed through security at a Hawaii airport, and concern grew as Houston became increasingly unreliable. So erratic had the singer become, she wasn’t involved in Davis’s induction into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame, and she was fired from a planned appearance at the Oscars by that year’s musical director Burt Bacharach.

Nevertheless, she signed a new six album deal with Arista in 2001, but her performances were becoming less strong and she looked increasingly ill. In 2002 she admitted to taking drugs in an interview, though denied smoking crack. Her new albums received mixed reviews and only modest sales, and her reputation took a further nose dive when she appeared in her husband’s rather bizarre reality show ‘Being Bobby Brown’. The couple’s marriage also hit the rocks, with separation in 2006 and divorce in 2007.

In 2009 Houston admitted again in an interview her past drug taking, and the level it had got to, in part blaming Brown for her self-destructive lifestyle. Revealing she had been through rehab, there were hopes that Houston was on the mend, and her 2009 album ‘I Look To You’ was her best selling since ‘The Bodyguard’, though it didn’t reach the heights some expected. Subsequent live shows were at best mixed, occasional glimpses of the voice that once thrilled only emphasised the toll years of drug abuse had taken on her more general vocal abilities.

Prior to her death some hoped once again that Houston might manage a comeback, after she threw herself into the remake of the film ‘Sparkle’, a movie project she’d been involved in for years, and which will see her act, albeit in a supporting role, for the first time since the 1990s, as well as singing on two new songs. The film will now be released posthumously in August, and may as yet be a swan song that helps Houston’s fans remember her musical legacy over the demons of her private life.

Houston is survived by her daughter with Bobby Brown, Bobbi Kristina.

The creator and original host of long-running American music TV show ‘Soul Train’, Don Cornelius, has died at his LA home, having seemingly shot himself. He was 75.

Cornelius was working as a DJ and journalist in Chicago in the late 1960s when he first had the idea for ‘Soul Train’, which first aired on the city’s WCIU TV station in 1970. He soon had the programme networked across the US, partly by persuading big name black artists to appear, which appealed to even more conservative network chiefs, and crucially by persuading the advertising industry that they should be targeting the young black viewers which were the programme’s core audience.

Though the show was particularly ground breaking not only for being the first programme to champion primarily music emanating from America’s black community, but also for developing an audience from all parts of American life. And as some of the acts that ‘Soul Train’ had first exposed became the biggest pop stats in America, and the world, the show went from strength to strength, with its dancing audience and Cornelius as host proving as popular as the acts who guested.

As ‘Soul Train’ boomed Cornelius pursued other music business ventures, some using the ‘Soul Train’ brand, in particular the spin off awards shows. Cornelius himself continued to front the main ‘Soul Train’ TV programme until 1993, and stayed on as producer until the show’s end in 2006. Although it continued to enjoy some successes, for the MTV generation, and with hip hop becoming the dominant genre in the black community, the show had lost its edge by the 1990s, though the awards shows remained big news.

After his show finally disappeared off TV screens five years ago, Cornelius became increasingly reclusive. Public attention mainly fell on problems in his personal life, in particular when in 2009 his estranged wife filed two restraining orders, and the music mogul pleaded guilty to spousal abuse. At the time he also said he had “significant” health issues. The exact circumstances surrounding his death are not yet clear, though police confirmed he died from a self-inflicted gun shot.

Paying tribute to Cornelius yesterday, producer Quincy Jones told reporters: “Don was a visionary pioneer and a giant in our business. Before MTV there was ‘Soul Train’, that will be the great legacy of Don Cornelius. His contributions to television, music and our culture as a whole will never be matched”.

Soul singer-songwriter Etta James has died, aged 73. She had been suffering from dementia and leukaemia, the latter of which it was announced in December was incurable. She was in hospital throughout Christmas after having trouble breathing, but her condition improved earlier this month and she was discharged. However, she passed away on Friday.

Born in LA on 25 Jan 1938, Jamesetta Hawkins began singing in a gospel choir in the 1950s, before moving to San Francisco, where she met legendary band leader Johnny Otis (who also died last week) when she and two friends auditioned for him as a group, calling themselves The Creolettes, hoping to record his answer to Hank Ballard’s ‘Work With Me, Annie’, a track called ‘Roll With Me, Henry’.

Taking them under his wing, Otis suggested Hawkins perform as Etta James, giving her the stage name should would continue to use for the rest of her life, while also renaming the group The Peaches. Re-titled ‘Dance With Me, Henry’, due to fears about the suggestive nature of the original title, the group released the song through Modern Records in 1955 (although only Etta actually appeared on the recording) and it went to the top of the R&B charts.

James soon went solo but initially struggled to match the success of that first hit. However, in 1960, her contract with Modern ended and she signed a new deal with Chess Records, which proved to be a turning point. After a number of hits, both collaborative and solo, she released her debut album ‘At Last!’ in late 1960, which featured songs such as ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ and the title track, which became her signature.

She released a follow-up, ‘The Second Time Around’, the following year, and continued to enjoy success with songs such as ‘Pushover’. However, by the late 60s, her career had started to wane. In the 70s she began to struggle with heroin and alcohol addiction, and had various stints in both rehab and jail. And in 1974 she was sentenced to enrol in a drug treatment programme, which saw her spend a year and a half in a psychiatric hospital.

She released two more albums for Chess in 1978, before leaving the label the same year. Although she had been clean during that time, she relapsed and began using heroin again. For the next decade she continued to battle with her addiction and only played occasional gigs. In 1988, she went through rehab again, and signed to Island Records the following year, releasing here fifteenth studio album, ‘The Seven Year Itch’, and another, ‘Stickin To My Guns’, shortly afterwards.

In the 90s, James once again became hot property, being inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame and winning her first Grammy, and she received a further career boost in 1996 when ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ was used in a Diet Coke advert.

James continued to record and perform into her 70s, playing her final shows in 2010, though health problems meant she was forced to cancel many planned dates. She released her final album, ‘The Dreamer’, in November last year, though by this time was suffering from her leukaemia and various complications and infections related to it.

She is survived by her husband, Artis Mills, and their two sons, Donto and Sametto.

Legendary band-leader, Johnny Otis, often dubbed the “godfather of rhythm and blues”, has died aged 90.

Although born to Greek parents, Otis grew up in a predominantly black area of California, and always said he felt part of America’s black community, and associated more with its culture, once noting that “if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black”. He began his musical career playing drums in various swing orchestras before founding his own band in 1945 who, among other things, were behind one of the biggest hits of the big band era, ‘Harlem Nocturne’.

A streamlined version of that band, with Little Esther and Mel Walker as vocalists, enjoyed a string of successful R&B hits during the early 1950s, released via New Jersey-based label Savoy and later Mercury Records. And while his own chart success began to dry up as the decade progressed, Otis enjoyed new successes behind the scenes as a producer and songwriter, discovering Etta James, and writing ‘Every Beat Of My Heart’, which became a hit for Gladys Knight And The Pips in 1961. He also worked as an A&R exec, signing the likes of Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and Little Willie John.

In the late 1950s he started to work in radio and television, and via his own TV show he launched a second pop career of his own, scoring hits with the likes of ‘Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me’ and ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’. This second stint in the charts wound up around the time of the so called British Invasion, with Otis once saying that “the white boys from England came over with a recycled version of what we created [and] we were out of business”.

But nevertheless, Otis continued to perform and record, albeit on and off, into the 1990s, while also continuing with his TV and especially radio careers. Though there were periods of inactivity in his music endeavours, mainly because of pursuits in other areas, including journalism, politics and the church.

Otis had been unwell for a number of years, and died at his home in LA on 17 Jan, his manager confirmed last week.

Nilesh Patel, a popular sound engineer who worked for Camden-based mastering studio The Exchange for over 20 years, has died.

Patel joined The Exchange in 1989 after studying at The School Of Audio Engineering. As a mastering engineer he worked on countless tracks and albums, perhaps most notably Air’s ‘Moon Safari’, Björk’s ‘Homogenic’ and Daft Punk’s ‘Homework’. His death was confirmed by The Exchange yesterday.

Numerous artists and producers paid tribute via Twitter, with Ewan Pearson noting: “Very sad to hear of the death of Nilesh Patel, mastering engineer at The Exchange – he cut my Soma [Records] album and singles and was a lovely chap”, while Erol Alkan wrote: “In my eyes and ears, he was the best mastering engineer on Earth. [We] spent so many afternoons together talking like nerds”.

Clive Robbins, the inspirational music therapist, has died aged 84. His death was confirmed earlier this week by the charity that bears his name, Nordoff-Robbins.

Birmingham-born Robbins began to work in music education after a serious injury while serving in the RAF brought to a premature end a promising career as a pianist. He became a teacher for Sunfield Children’s Homes in the Midlands, which provided education based upon the educational philosophies of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. He primarily worked with mentally disabled children, something he later described as “the first profoundly fulfilling experience of my life”.

It was at Sunfield that he met American musician Paul Nordoff, who was fascinated by Steiner’s philosophies. Nordoff spent some time at Sunfield in 1958, and was so impressed with what he saw that he returned a year later to explore his growing interest in the therapeutic potential of music. And so the ground breaking work that is now synonymous with the name Nordoff-Robbins began.

The two men spent much of the 60s touring curative homes and educational institutions, first across Europe, and then the US, advocating, promoting and teaching what they called therapy in music. They showed how some of the most disabled and unreachable children could be persuaded to participate, and to build social and self-awareness, discipline and concentration, by being encouraged and enabled to play simple musical compositions. Or, as the Nordoff-Robbins charity put it: “Placed in front of a snare drum and cymbal, these children revealed their sensitivities and their expressive, receptive and relational abilities in their musical responses”.

It was a prolific period in which Robbins and Nordoff developed their approaches, and shared their work through lectures, publications and media exposure. Six years in Philadelphia allowed more formal research to be undertaken, funded by the US National Institute Of Mental Health, and later the two men spent seven years in Europe lecturing via the American-Scandinavian Foundation. Over the years individuals and organisations across the world became specialists in music therapy based on Robbins and Nordoff’s work.

The two men’s working partnership came to an end in 1974 for various reasons, but their work, ideas and names lived on, not least because the same year in the UK one Sybil Beresford-Peirse, who had set up a music therapy centre at Goldie Leigh Hospital in South London, established the first full-time Nordoff-Robbins training programme. With support from the UK music industry, this programme grew throughout the 70s, and morphed into the Nordoff-Robbins charity in 1980.

Robbins himself returned to the US in 1975 and remarried. With his new wife, also a music therapist, he took various roles at US institutions furthering the music therapy cause, while also continuing to lecture in Europe. In the 1980s they moved to Australia where they founded a Nordoff-Robbins Association, and then in 1989 they were involved in the creation of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University.

Robbins remained active throughout all of his life, with links to the various Nordoff-Robbins organisations. In more recent years he was particularly active in South East Asia, where his teachings and approaches not only saw an expansion of music therapy work, but were also applied to other medical disciplines.

Paying tribute earlier this week, the Nordoff-Robbins charity in the UK wrote: “Clive’s gift was to help Paul Nordoff harness his musicianship, set a direction, documenting the work and finding a language for communicating their ideas. By the end of his life, beloved around the world across a variety of cultures, Clive had inspired thousands with his love, emotion and sensitivity, his embracing personality and humanistic values. His often rapturous descriptions of the power of music and its impact on the emotional states of human experience were profoundly moving to the many who heard and shared his passion for music and people”.

Robbins died on 7 Dec, and is survived by his third wife, two children and various grand-children and great grand-children, and, as Nordoff-Robbins puts it, “the global community of Nordoff-Robbins music therapists – all heirs to his knowledge and life’s work”.

John Atterberry, the producer and former music industry executive injured during a random shooting incident in LA last week, has died from his injuries.

As previously reported, Atterberry was shot three times in the face and neck when one Tyler Brehm began randomly shooting into traffic in Hollywood on Friday. Brehm was subsequently killed at the scene, seemingly after taunting police to end the carnage by shooting him. It’s thought Brehm had been suffering depression since the end of a four and half year relationship with a former girlfriend. Said girlfriend told reporters that Brehm’s actions last week were totally out of character.

Atterberry was a former Death Row Records Vice President, who also set up and ran his own music ventures, including the music publishing business Infusion Music, which collaborated with the likes of Jessica Simpson, Brandy and the Spice Girls. In more recent years he had been involved in event and real estate companies, and had reportedly worked on some film projects too.

Atterberry was in a serious condition in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center throughout the weekend and died yesterday at 5pm local time. Numerous friends and former colleagues have paid tribute via Atterberry’s Facebook page.

Barbara Orbison, widow of Roy Orbison and a music industry player in her own right, has died aged 60 after losing her battle with pancreatic cancer.

German-born Orbison met future husband Roy at one of his gigs in the UK when she was seventeen and he was 32. They married in the US just nine months later. Barbara entered her husband’s life at the end of a period of tragedy for the singer songwriter, who had lost his first wife to a motorcycle crash, and then two of his children in a house fire.

Barbara was widely renowned for firstly helping her husband to get his life back on track, and then for helping him restore his musical career, ensuring he enjoyed a creative renaissance in the last decade of his life, both as a solo artist and as part of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Roy Orbison died prematurely in late 1988, aged 52, after suffering a heart attack. Having managed the latter part of her husband’s career, Barbera continued to protect and promote her husband’s legacy after his death, including co-producing a four CD box set of all of his recordings released in 2008.

She also established her own music publishing company in Nashville called Still Working Music, through which she worked with a number of songwriters, including Taylor Swift, Billy Burnette and Tommy Lee James.

Aside from her music work, she also led a number of charitable projects, including a 1991 tribute show to her late husband that raised over a million to help the homeless in LA.

She is survived by two sons Roy Kelton Jr and Alexander, and her stepson from Roy’s first marriage, Wesley.

Disco singer Andrea True, best known for the hit ‘More More More (How Do You Like It?)’, has died in New York aged 68.

True was actually an actress, having mainly appeared in pornographic films, when she co-wrote the track in 1975. She became stranded in Jamaica, where she had been filming a commercial, after political conflict prevented her from leaving the country, so she invited songwriter and producer Gregg Diamond to join her, and together they created the song.

Subsequently released under the performing name Andrea True Connection, the song was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and an album, also called ‘More More More’ followed, which spurned one more hit in the UK, ‘What’s Your Name What’s Your Number’.

However, a follow-up album failed to match the initial hit’s success, and True stepped away from her music career. Keen to give up her work in the porn industry, True spent most of the rest of her life away from the entertainment business, though still earned a royalty from her big hit, which has been synced on many occasions over the years, as well as being sampled by Len in their 1999 track ‘Steal My Sunshine’, and being covered by various artists, including Bananarama and Rachel Stevens.

True died on 7 Nov, though her passing was only announced this weekend. No immediate family members survive her.

The guitarist in American cult metal band GWAR, Cory Smoot, aka Flattus Maximus, has died.

The thrash metal outfit, known for their elaborate sci-fi-esque costumes, obscene lyrics and obvious sense of humour, have been operational with an ever-changing line-up since the mid 1980s. Smoot joined in 2002, taking over the ‘character’ of Flattus Maximus which had been played by various guitarists over the year. As well has having a relatively long stint in the band, he also played an active role in their albums, producing both 2006′s ‘Beyond Hell’ and its follow up ‘Lust In Space’.

Smoot, on tour with his band, was found dead yesterday morning. The cause of his death is as yet unknown, but his passing was confirmed by GWAR frontman Dave Brockie, aka Oderus Urungus, who released a short statement to the Metal Sucks website that reads: “It is with a sense of profound loss and tragedy that the members of GWAR must announce the passing of their longtime guitarist and beloved friend Cory Smoot, also known to thousands of metal fans worldwide as Flattus Maximus”.

He added that a more detailed statement regards the circumstances around Smoot’s death and its impact on the band’s touring plans would be released in due course, but “at this point we are just dealing with the loss of our dear friend and brother, one of the most talented guitar players in metal today”.

Tributes poured in for DJ, TV presenter and charity fund-raiser Jimmy Savile this weekend, after he died just two days before his 85th birthday.

Although probably best known for presenting TV shows ‘Top Of The Pops’ and ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, Savile also played an important role in the development of the modern clubbing scene as one of the first promoters to recognise that the youth of the late 1940s and early 1950s were more excited about dancing to recorded music than live bands.

He often recalled how technicians expressed surprise when he first asked for record decks to be put on stage rather than at the back of a venue, and again when he requested two turntables, so songs could be played truly back to back. Bosses for the Mecca Leisure Group for whom Savile had started working quickly spotted the eccentric DJ from Leeds was onto something, and at one point had him overseeing club nights all over the country.

It was while DJing in Manchester that Savile was first spotted by the TV cameras, and soon after his career in broadcasting began. He became a radio DJ, firstly for Radio Luxembourg and later BBC Radio 1, before TV work followed. He was the first presenter of the iconic BBC music show ‘Top Of The Pops’ in 1964, which he continued to front for another 20 years, subsequently returning on occasion to mark the show’s various landmarks, including its final edition in 2006.

Despite all his connections with the music world, it was probably another TV venture that made Savile one of the most famous faces in Britain: Saturday night kids show ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, which launched in 1974 and he also fronted for 20 years.

It was during this period that Savile – now associated with making dreams come true on TV – also became known for his charity work off screen, especially the numerous sponsored marathons he ran. It’s estimated that Savile raised over £40 million for various charities over the years, nearly half of that for the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Savile having suffered back injuries himself earlier in his life when working down the mines during the Second World War. As well as using his celebrity to raise millions for charity, Savile also donated his time by helping out at some of the organisations he supported.

His consistently cheerful demeanour, eccentric appearance, feel-good output and regular charity work assured Savile the status of national treasure among the British population, though many were also curious about the man behind the persona. A famously private man who never married, who never hired an agent or PA, who had few, if any, close friends, and who seemed to be as eccentric in real life as he was on screen, many wondered what made this “loner” tick. Savile insisted that while he was “unusual”, he was a very happy man, happy to be known by so many, and happy to have the time to support charitable organisations.

Documentary maker Louis Theroux attempted to discover the real Savile in one of his most famous programmes, 2000′s ‘When Louis Met Jimmy’. The programme mainly confirmed that Savile was a little odd but seemingly very happy with life. Paying tribute to Savile in The People yesterday, Theroux wrote: “My director, Will Yapp, and I stayed in touch with Jimmy long after we’d finished the filming. For several years we’d travel up for an overnight visit to see him once a year or so. We’d go out to the Flying Pizza restaurant with a camera and videotape Jimmy as he presided over birthdays with a kind of papal celebrity. But the camera didn’t have tape in it, as Jimmy himself knew. He just enjoyed the idea that everyone there thought they were being filmed and the sense of occasion it created. There won’t be another like him”.

Other former colleagues paid tribute yesterday. Fellow Radio 1 alumnus David Hamilton told 5Live: “We were together at Radio 1 in the 70s and the station was full of eccentric personalities, but he was certainly the most flamboyant of all. One of the essential things about Jimmy was that he was a man of the people. He knew his audience, he was very much in touch with his audience. I think the public were his family. Probably of all the DJs I worked with, I knew him less than any of the others. He kept himself very much to himself. He didn’t drink so he wasn’t the sort of man who would go down to the pub and have a bevvy with you”.

Speaking for the radio industry, to which Savile was probably most closely associated, the Radio Academy’s John Myers told reporters: “The sad death of Sir Jimmy Savile represents a great loss to the UK radio industry. He was one of the pioneers of modern pop-music radio. He made the smooth transfer from Radio Luxembourg to the BBC in the late 1960s and from 1997 moved his broadcasts to commercial radio where he continued to be successful and well respected by radio audiences around the UK. The UK radio industry meets for its annual festival in Salford next week. He will be fondly remembered and his death will be marked at a special session on Tuesday morning”.

Although it’s not 100% certain how Savile died on Saturday, he had been in hospital recently with a suspected bout of pneumonia. One of his nephews told reporters on Saturday: “It is with deep sadness that I can tell you that our uncle, Sir Jimmy Savile passed away quietly in his sleep during the night. Jimmy will be sadly missed by very many people. We would like to thank the people who have already offered us their condolences”.

Musician and artist Mikey Welsh, who was a member of Weezer for their eponymous 2001 album (generally referred to as ‘The Green Album’), was found dead in a Chicago hotel room on Saturday. He was 40.

Born in New York in 1971, Welsh played with a number of Boston-based bands in the 90s, eventually joining Juliana Hatfield’s live band, and playing on her albums ‘Bead’ and ‘Juliana’s Pony: Total System Failure’, co-writing several tracks on the latter.

In 1997, he began performing as part of Rivers Cuomo’s backing band at the Weezer frontman’s solo shows, where he was testing out songs written for ‘The Green Album’. When Matt Sharp left Weezer in 1998, Welsh was hired to replace him as bassist.

As well as recording on ‘The Green Album’, Welsh was also a part of the band for most of their touring activity to promote it. However, drug use along with undiagnosed post traumatic stress syndrome and borderline personality disorder took their toll on him. Back in Boston during a break from touring in 2001 he attempted to commit suicide by taking an overdose. He then spent time in a psychiatric hospital.

Having left Weezer, he briefly returned to music as part of Mighty Mighty Bosstones guitarist Nate Albert’s band The Kickovers, appearing on their 2002 album ‘Osaka’. But the same year Welsh retired from music altogether to concentrate on his art career, with which he enjoyed some success.

Although he never returned to music as a career, Welsh did join Weezer on stage a couple of times in recent years, most recently performing on ‘Undone – The Sweater Song’ at a show in New York in July.

On Saturday, a statement was posted to Welsh’s official Twitter page, which read: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Mikey Welsh passed away unexpectedly today. He will forever be remembered as an amazing father, artist, and friend. May he rest in peace”.

According to reports, staff at the Rafaello hotel in Chicago found his body after he failed to check out. Reports have claimed that he died of a suspected drugs overdose. However, having conducted an autopsy on Sunday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office has not yet entered a cause of death pending the results of toxicology tests.

In a statement, the band said: “A unique talent, a deeply loving friend and father, and a great artist is gone, but we will never forget him. His chapter in the Weezer story was vital, essential, wild, and amazing. Mikey was never one to shy away from the absurd, dangerous or strange, and he did so with a gusto few others had. No one had quite the stage presence of Mikey, nor have there been many who pulled the types of shenanigans he did at shows. If it rocked, he had to try it – and he always found a way to pull it off”.

Welsh had been in Chicago to see Weezer play last night. The band went ahead with the show as planned, saying: “As sad as it is to think about, we know Mikey would never want the rock stopped on his account – quite the contrary in fact. While we won’t see him, we know he will be there rocking out with us!”

Politicians, business leaders, technology pioneers, artists, celebrities and consumers across the world have been paying tribute to Steve Jobs, the man who set out to make computers but somehow revolutionised the movie and music industries along the way. The Apple co-founder died yesterday after losing his fight with pancreatic cancer, he was 56.

One of the undisputed pioneers of Silicon Valley, Jobs’ role in the IT revolution of the last four decades was as the visionary, one of the first to imagine computers in every home, intuitive interfaces that everyone could use, sleek hardware that you didn’t have to hide out of sight, and the computer as a device of entertainment as well as business.

Jobs founded Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak in 1976, having had casual jobs at both Hewlett Packard and Atari, and inspired by what was happening in computing on America’s West Coast at the time – both Jobs and Wozniak had been attending meetings of Silicon Valley’s grass roots Homebrew Computer Club. Together they developed and marketed what was considered the world’s first personal computer, the Apple II.

From the success of that venture, the Apple Computer company quickly began to grow, again moving the entire IT world forward eight years later when it launched the first Macintosh computer in 1984, the first commercially successful machine with the graphical user interface that became the norm in computing. However, not long after the launch of the Macintosh, Jobs found himself ousted from the company he had co-founded.

After a disappointing year commercially, and with some in the growing Apple empire complaining about Jobs’ erratic nature, John Sculley, the former Pepsi exec Jobs had persuaded to become CEO of Apple in 1983, forced the company’s co-founder out. Although acrimonious at the time, Jobs later claimed his 1985 ousting was one of the best things to ever happen to him, initiating “the most creative period of my life”.

While out in the wilderness, as it were, Jobs pursued other business ventures. He founded another computing company, Next Computer Inc, creating PCs for the higher education and business market. Although Next had only modest success in terms of sales, the operating system it developed was influential, and the current Apple OS is very much based on it. The Next enterprise also enjoys the claim to fame that Tim Berners-Lee developed the first ever web server using one of its computers.

Jobs’ other big venture in this era was Pixar. He acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm in 1986, with the intention of building it into a high-end graphics hardware firm. That initial plan didn’t come to much, but along the way the company, by this time renamed Pixar, struck up a partnership with Disney to make computer-animated films.

It was, of course, a hugely successful alliance, resulting in a string of award-winning movies, from ‘Toy Story’ to ‘Monsters Inc’ to ‘Finding Nemo’, all of which were huge hits at the box office, and changed the art of animation. Disney subsequently bought out the company, a deal which made Jobs the biggest single shareholder in the wider Disney corporation.

But, of course, possibly the greatest part of the Jobs story begins in 1997, when both he and the company he had co-founded 20 years earlier enjoyed the biggest comeback in IT history, as Jobs rejoined Apple as CEO after it acquired his Next Computers business. Apple’s fortunes had dipped massively in the 1990s as its main rival Microsoft took over the world with its Windows operating system, Office software and IE web browser, and Jobs faced many challenges on his return to the Apple empire. Some had already written the company off completely, but I think it’s fair to say he met those challenges.

From the eye-catching, semi-transparent and rather colourful original iMac, to the OSX operating system which capitalised on the output of Jobs’ Next company, to the game-changing iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple began to take over the world.

While, in this latter era, Apple was rarely first to market with a new product idea, and while some would argue its competitors often made similar products which were – technically speaking – superior, the company’s devices always looked better, both physically and on screen, its software often seemed simpler and more user-friendly, the way products were packaged and marketed made them feel more accessible to the majority, and – as a general rule – Apple remembered to do what some of its competitors often forget, to release products that actually work. All of which meant Apple started eating up market share, despite never competing on price.

Of course it helped that the one community who had remained faithful to Apple throughout, even in the lowest ebbs of the 1990s, were those in the media and creative industries. Suddenly the brand that many designers and journalists had always associated with was on the up, and with a great story to tell – “ousted founder returns and rescues his former company”. But the fact that Jobs, unusual for the IT industry, was so personable, and such a good public speaker, helped with this process, so that every time the CEO got on stage to make an announcement it became a worldwide media event.

It is during this era that Jobs, somewhat inadvertently, became one of the most important people in the music business. It happened because Apple wanted to launch a digital music player, but none of the music companies were making their songs available in a way that consumers could easily access.

The luddites running the big music firms, many of whom struggled to use their own pagers, had ignored new technology, and then when Napster woke them up, they hired lawyers and IT consultancies who claimed they could stop the distribution of music online with lawsuits and digital rights management technology. When the labels finally started to realise the internet could actually be a new sales platform rather than just a vehicle for piracy, they set up their own digital ventures which focused on the interests of rights owners over music consumers, and were therefore universally awful.

Jobs told Rolling Stone in 2003: “There’s a lot of smart people at the music companies, the problem is they’re not technology people. The good music companies do an amazing thing, they have people who can pick the person that’s gonna be successful out of 5000 candidates. The world needs more smart editorial these days. The problem is, that has nothing to do with technology. And so when the internet came along, and Napster came along, they didn’t know what to make of it. They were pretty doggone slow to react. Matter of fact, they still haven’t really reacted, in many ways. And so they’re fairly vulnerable to people telling them technical solutions will work, when they won’t”.

That Jobs was able to persuade these executives to licence his iTunes store – a user-friendly consumer-centric service that did work – so to feed his iPod devices, is a testament to how personable and persuasive the Apple chief really was. His dabblings in the movie industry probably helped, unlike his competitors he had entertainment industry credentials. Though even Jobs the visionary probably didn’t anticipate just how significant those early talks with the record companies and music publishers would be, that, by creating an online store designed principally to help sell an MP3 player, his company would become one of the most important entertainment retailers in the world.

Through iTunes and the iPod, Jobs both transformed his company into one of the most successful consumer electronics firms on the planet, and totally changed – and some might argue rescued – the entire music industry. Even with the developments in recent years in social media and streaming music – two things Apple has never really cracked – iTunes still controls the vast majority of the digital music market, and is arguably the only digital service that delivers significant revenues to rights owners that come from the pockets of music fans rather than venture capitalists. And, as with its hardware, Apple has achieved all this despite never really competing on price.

Of course there have been tensions between the music industry and Apple along the way – some majors regretted the 99 cents price point they’d agreed to, others wanted variable pricing, some didn’t like being forced to sell albums track by track, the indies questioned why a company that positioned itself as anti-establishment too often ignored their interests, and many feared the sheer market dominance of this IT firm in the digital music space and suspected it may be abusing its size – but that didn’t stop labels, publishers, managers, artists and songwriters getting a little excited whenever Jobs called, or took to the stage.

Jobs revealed that he been diagnosed with a cancerous tumour in his pancreas in 2004, but the tumour was removed and he seemed to recover remarkably quickly. However, health concerns returned a few years later, and while Apple initially kept them a secret, as Jobs started to visibly lose weight the firm announced in 2009 that he would take a six month leave of absence for treatment. By this point Jobs and Apple were so interlinked that Wall Street started to panic amid concerns for the CEO’s health. In April 2009 Jobs had a liver transplant, but the prognosis was good, and he returned to Apple later that year.

Nevertheless, reports about Jobs’ ailing health continued, and at the start of 2011 he again took time off for health reasons. In August he announced he would step back from the CEO role for good, to be replaced by his close colleague Tim Cook, who had run Apple during previous breaks from the company. In a note to staff Jobs wrote: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come”.

Yesterday Jobs’ family confirmed the Apple man had “died peacefully today surrounded by his family”. In a statement his company added: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts”.

As it released the statement Apple replaced its home page at Apple.com with a black and white photo of their co-founder and former leader with the strapline “Steve Jobs 1955-2011″. A suitably simple yet somehow brilliant tribute.

Influential folk musician and founder of the band Pentangle, Bert Jansch, died yesterday aged 67. He had been suffering from lung cancer.

Influential to many musicians throughout his career, including Led Zepplin’s Jimmy Page and The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Jansch was born in 1943 in Glasgow and raised in Edinburgh. He moved to London in 1964 where he met producer Bill Leader, with whom he recorded his eponymous debut album. The producer sold the tape to Transatlantic Records, which released it in 1965. The record went on to sell 150,000 copies.

In 1967, Jansch formed The Pentangle (later just Pentangle) with vocalist Jacqui McShee, guitarist John Renbourn, bassist Danny Thompson, and drummer Terry Cox – the name representing the fact that they were a quintet. They performed their first live show at the Royal Festival Hall in London in May 1967, and released three successful albums in 1968 and 1969, again through Transatlantic. However, the subsequent three LPs received mixed responses, and amid a royalty dispute with their label, they moved to Warner/Reprise for the last record, 1972′s ‘Solomon’s Seal’. The album was not a success, and the band split on New Year’s Day 1973, leaving them to pay off debts to Warner until the early 80s.

During his time with Pentangle, Jansch had also continued to release solo work. He returned to this fulltime once Pentangle had split, though his personal life started to untangle after he split from his second wife Heather Sewell, who had previously inspired a number of his songs, and he began drinking heavily. Nevertheless, he still pursued interesting projects, including a concept album based on birdsong with multi-instrumentalist Martin Jenkins, and an albeit shortlived guitar shop in London, building his own acoustic guitars.

In 1982, Pentangle reformed for a tour and subsequently stayed together, though all but Jansch and McShee left the group over the next couple of years. Jansch stuck with it until 1995, when he also left and the band was rebranded Jacqui McShee’s Pentangle with no other original members amongst the line-up. However, the original line-up did reform briefly again in 2008, after receiving the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards’ lifetime achievement prize in 2007.

In 1987, Jansch was rushed to hospital and informed that his drinking was killing him. He chose to give it up completely, at which point many noted that his creativity, which had diminished somewhat, returned in full force resulting in a resurgence in his career. More recently, however, health problems continued. In 2005, he underwent heart surgery, and in 2009 he began receiving treatment for cancer.

Throughout all of this, though, Jansch continued to perform and record, as his work continued to influence a new generation of musicians. Beth Orton guested on his final (and 23rd) album, 2006′s ‘The Black Swan’, and in 2007 he performed live with Pete Doherty.

In August of this year, Jansch was forced to cancel a show in Edinburgh. A statement on his website said that “both he and his doctors were hoping he would be well enough in time to do the show, but unfortunately that has not been the case and he will be in hospital at least until next week”. He never recovered from his latest illness though, and passed away at a hospice in Hampstead early on Wednesday morning.

His booking agent John Barrow, with whom Jansch worked throughout his career, told the BBC yesterday: “He was very quietly spoken. People used to say to me: ‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ But when he could play the guitar like that, why should he be talking?”

He is survived by his third wife Loren Auerbach, and two of his sons, Kieron and Adam.

Founder of the Sugar Hill record label Sylvia Robinson died yesterday from heart failure, aged 75. Often referred to as the “mother of hip hop”, she was a pioneering figure in the genre, working as producer on its first commercial hit, The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’, and later ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, as well as releasing them both.

Born Syliva Vanderpool in 1936 in New York, Robinson began a singing career in the 1950s, her first hit coming in 1956 as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia with Mickey Baker. Entitled ‘Love Is Strange’, authorship of the song remains in some dispute; based on a guitar riff by Jody Williams, the writing of the lyrics has variously been claimed by Baker, Bo Diddley and Diddley’s then wife Ethel Smith.

In 1964, Sylvia married her husband Joe Robinson and in 1968 they formed their first record label, All Platinum Records. A notable hit from that label was ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’ by the Shirley Goodman fronted Shirley & Company, which Robinson also wrote. Another success story was ‘Love Is A Two Way Street’ by The Moments, a band put together by Robinson for All Platinum imprint Stang Records. The Robinson-penned song was a hit on the R&B charts at the time, and has since been sampled for Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ ‘New York State Of Mind’. In the early 70s, All Platinum also bought Chess Records after it went bankrupt.

Back as a performer, in 1973 Robinson had a solo hit with ‘Pillow Talk’, which was released by another of her labels Vibration Records. She had originally written the raunchy (particularly for the time) song with Al Green in mind as its performer. However, when he turned it down on moral and religious grounds, she recorded it herself, seeing it go to number three in the Billboard Hot 100 and number fourteen in the UK top 40.

But it was in 1979 that she and Joe founded Sugar Hill Records, which is almost certainly what she will be most remembered for. With financial backing from Roulette Records owner Morris Levy, Robinson launched the label after being inspired by seeing people rapping over instrumental records played by DJs. Recognising the potential of this new art form, both creatively and as a way to revive her then struggling company, she formed the Sugarhill Gang, both the group and the label named after the Sugar Hill area of Harlem in New York.

The Sugarhill Gang’s first single, ‘Rapper’s Delight’, went on to be a huge hit, the first commercial success for the burgeoning rap scene. After a run of other hits, the Robinsons bought Levy out of the label in the early 80s, and went on to be pioneers in early music videos and to release the first cassette single. ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was also the first hip hop track to spark a lawsuit for copyright infringement, having used an uncleared sample of ‘Good Times’ by Chic. There were no clear rules for royalty payments on the fairly new practice of sampling at that time. The suit was eventually settled out of court.

The Sugar Hill label’s early success faded a few years later. The label signed a marketing and distribution deal with MCA after the company began to take off, but the Robinsons later sued the company, accusing it of inflating its own profits by failing to report sales. Terms of the deal also meant that they sold the Chess Records catalogue, and that of Checkers Records (which they had also acquired), to MCA, so they couldn’t rely on that income when financial struggles forced them to close Sugar Hill in 1986. The legal battle with MCA continued on until 1991 when it was settled out of court, though the Robinsons received no money from the settlement. In 1995, the Sugar Hill master recordings were purchased by Rhino Records.

Later controversy came in 2008 when some members of The Sugarhill Gang sued the Robinsons over unpaid royalties, claims the couple firmly denied. However, despite these low points, Syliva Robinson will continue to remembered as a woman who rose up and achieved considerable success in a male-dominated industry, and who was certainly a catalyst for what has gone on to be the most successful musical genre worldwide.

She is survived by three sons, plus several grandchildren and great grandchildren.

American R&B singer Vesta Williams has been found dead in an LA hotel room. According to TMZ, the singer died last week, but an autopsy was inconclusive regards cause of death pending the results of toxicology tests. Sources say prescription drug bottles were found at the scene, and that no foul play is suspected.

48 year old Williams first appeared on a US TV show called ‘Jack And Jill’ as a child in the 1960s, before beginning a career in music, initially as a backing singer working for various groups and with the likes of Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight. She secured a solo recording contract with A&M in the mid-1980s, and debut album ‘Vesta’ followed in 1986.

Her singles performed well in America’s R&B charts, and that first album scored one UK hit too, in the form of ‘Once Bitten, Twice Shy’, which went top 20. Meanwhile, in America, what was arguably her biggest hit, ‘Congratulations’, came on album number two ‘Vesta 4 U’. That said, the title track of third album ‘Special’ resulted in her highest position in the R&B charts, at number two, though subsequent albums did not match the first two in terms of sales.

She continued to work with A&M, even after its acquisition by Polygram, until the late 1990s, when the company chose to not renew her contract. Williams continued to work as a vocalist though, albeit mainly as a session singer and recording jingles for brands as diverse as Nike, McDonalds, Diet Coke and Exxon, although another album via an independent label was released in 2007.

By this point, however, Williams was probably better known as a radio personality, especially in Dallas where she co-hosted a morning show on KRNB. In recent years she also became an advocate for the campaign to prevent childhood obesity and diabetes, having dropped 100 pounds herself through a period of dieting.

Various US celebrities tweeted their tributes this weekend, including Grammy nominated R&B singer Shanice who said, simply: “My friend Vesta died… I can’t believe this… RIP”.

Paris-based hip hop and electro producer DJ Mehdi, real name Mehdi Favéris-Essadi, has died aged 34. The musician’s French publicist, Fabrice Desprez of PR company Phunk, confirmed yesterday afternoon that he had been killed in an accident at his home.

Desprez told 20Minutes.fr: “We don’t have many details. We know that he was at home on a balcony with others. The balcony collapsed. Three others have been hospitalised”.

According to DJMag.com, Medhi had been celebrating the birthday of fellow producer, and Carte Blanche bandmate, Riton. The website reports that the group had actually been on the roof of Medhi’s house, which had then collapsed. Riton, real name Henry Smithson, is thought to have been the only person not to have fallen, and he therefore escaped uninjured.

Born in 1977, Favéris-Essadi began his career in music as a DJ in various acts in the late 90s, before moving into production with hip hop outfit 113. However, his big break came when he signed to Ed Banger Records to release his third solo album, ‘Lucky Boy’, in 2006. Last year he formed the duo Carte Blanche with Riton, and the pair had just returned to France after playing Bestival at the weekend.

He is survived by his wife, artist and music video director Fabienne Fafi.

Popular music journalist and former Observer columnist Tom Hibbert has died from complications brought on by diabetes. He was 59.

Hibbert dropped out of a course at Leeds University in the early 1970s to pursue his ambitions in rock music and journalism. The former didn’t go so well, despite stints in various bands, but he did manage to find some employment in the latter domain, albeit for home-improvement magazines. In 1980, he was able to combine his two passions when Felix Dennis launched a new title called New Music News, capitalising on the fact strikes were hindering the publication of both NME and Melody Maker. Hibbert wrote reviews for the short-lived title and his refreshingly sarcastic writing style got noticed.

Though it was as a pop interviewer for subsequent employer Smash Hits that Hibbert came to most music fans’ attention, managing, as he did, to turn in entertaining copy whoever his subject might be, even with the tedious ones. This was the hey-day of the pop magazine, and Hibbert’s writing was part of that success, so much so when, in 1987, a certain Margaret Thatcher asked to be interviewed by the pop mag ahead of that year’s General Election, it was Hibbert sent to chat with the PM. She revealed that she admired Cliff Richard and her favourite song was ‘(How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window?’, perfect material for Hibbert.

In 1986, he moved to a new title then being set up by Smash Hits publisher EMAP, Q magazine. There a special column was created geared towards Hibbert’s writing style and interview approach, ‘Who The Hell…’, and he spent many years travelling the world to interview all sorts of celebrities from the music world and beyond, meeting with and writing about TV stars, business leaders, comedians and politicians along the way. A column in The Observer followed in the mid-1990s.

The journalism career came to a premature end in 1997, however, when Hibbert fell ill. Although he survived a bout of pneumonia and acute pancreatitis, despite three months in intensive care, he never fully recovered, and subsequently retired from his media work, much missed by the many readers of his work in the music community and far beyond.

He is survived by his wife Allyce.