Monday, May 27, 1996 · Page A 2
© 1996 San Francisco Examiner
Band's singer found dead in motel
Drug overdose suspected in death of Sublime's Bradley Nowell; concert canceled
Ray Delgado
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Bradley Nowell, lead singer for the alternative band Sublime, died of an apparent drug overdose in a San Francisco motel just hours before the group was to perform a sold-out concert.
The band's drummer found Nowell, 28, dead in his room at the Ocean View Motel shortly after noon Saturday following a night of partying, said Jon Phillips, a manager of the group.
Cause of death was not been determined, pending laboratory results, but when asked if Nowell had died of a heroin overdose as reported, Phillips said it was "probably the most distinct possibility."
Nowell's death ended what was seen as a promising future for a band that gained extensive airplay with its single "Date Rape."
The band was about to begin a summer tour in the United States and Europe to promote an upcoming album.
"It looked like the band was ready to explode," Phillips said. "The stage was set for greatness."
The band was in San Francisco to perform at Maritime Hall Saturday night, said Boots Hughston, who produces shows at the hall. The band's management told Hughston of Nowell's death hours before the show, forcing the promoters to cancel it and issue refunds.
Phillips said band members Eric Wilson and Bud went back to their hometown of Long Beach to console Nowell's wife of just a week, Troy Dendekker, and the couple's infant son.
Blane Kaplan, another Sublime manager, said Nowell was looking forward to leaving for Europe on Wednesday for a tour. The band's future is uncertain, he said.
"The guys are still going to continue with their projects in Skunk Records," Kaplan said. "I would assume that with Brad gone, they'd never play under the name Sublime again."
Phillips said the three band members grew up together in Long Beach and formed the band in 1988, releasing several albums, including "40 Oz. to Freedom" and "Robbin' the Hood."
Phillips said the band members and people closely associated with them were taking news of Nowell's death pretty hard.
"It left everyone grieving quite heavily," Phillips said. "They were a band that's been together for nearly 10 years and were soul brothers."
Brad Nowell lead singer of the Long Beach band Sublime, was found dead Saturday in San Francisco.
Nowell's memory survives Mourning: Family and friends say L.B. singer likely succumbed to his drug addiction.
By Jennifer Vigil
Staff writer
By all indications, Long Beach singer Brad Nowell had a bright future.
From his new marriage to the burgeoning national reputation of his band Sublime, the East Long Beach native had a good deal to live for, not the least of which was an apparent victory in his battle with drugs.
Sadly, he lost that battle Saturday, just a week to the day after marrying longtime girlfriend Troy Den Dekker in Las Vegas. Nowell, 28, was found dead in a San Francisco motel room, the apparent victim of a drug overdose.
Alan Pringle, an investigator with the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office, said it will take weeks to confirm what family members say is obvious: Nowell, who had been clean and sober for two months, had stumbled, this time fatally, in his quest to conquer a five-year drug addiction.
"He had been doing really well," said Jason Westfall, one of Sublime's managers and a longtime friend of Nowell's.
"He was probably the happiest he'd ever been in his life. He got married a week ago to the day of his death, and he was excited about touring. He just finally succumbed to his addiction. This is as much of an accident as this sort of thing can be."
Sublime was in the midst of a five-day swing through California cities in preparation for a summer tour of Europe to promote the band's new album. The San Francisco show, scheduled for Saturday night, was canceled after Nowell's death.
Westfall, who was in San Francisco with the group, called Nowell's overdose "a sort of one-night thing, like a 24- to 36-hour sort of relapse." Nowell's father, Jim Nowell, said his son has been in and out of rehabilitation facilities since 1992. His most recent stay was in 1994, when Sublime's recording company provided several weeks of personal medical help, hoping to wean the singer from drugs, his father said.
Jim Nowell said the family believes Brad's death was due to a combination of drugs, possibly heroin, but said he would have to wait for the coroner's report to be certain.
Family, friends mourn Family and friends of the singer, guitarist and composer gathered in his father's Long Beach home Monday, comforting one another and reminiscing about Brad, a graduate of Wilson High School who had recently bought his first home in Surfside Colony, just south of where he'd grown up.
"He could lay in bed and look at the ocean and tell whether the waves were up," Jim Nowell said of his son, a surfing enthusiast.
With the July 30 release of their new album, Sublime, whose exotic mix of punk spiced with ska, reggae and hip hop had long been a favorite in local alternative circles, was poised for the big time.
Signed by Gasoline Alley, a subsidiary of MCA Records, in 1994, the band first gained wide recognition last year when KROQ-FM 106.7 began playing an early single called "Date Rape."
Westfall said the release of the new album will be delayed at least until August to allow surviving band members Eric Wilson and Floyd "Bud" Gaugh time to recover before promoting their new work. But Westfall said this is the end of Sublime.
"I don't think Bud or Eric have any interest in making anything in the future with the name Sublime in it," Westfall said. "We will go on in music and do other things, but just like Nirvana, Sublime died when Brad died."
KROQ interrupted programming to announce Nowell's death Monday. KDEO-FM, an Oahu-based station, played blocks of Sublime songs Sunday and opened up phone lines to callers.
Nowell, who had several relatives in Hawaii, made it a point to perform there, said KDEO disc jockey Kathy Nakagawa.
"He was just really cool when he came down," Nakagawa said. "It wasn't an act for them, being friendly, and talking to kids after the show about music. They weren't doing it because it was expected of them."
Nowell is survived by his wife, Troy; an 11-month-old son, Jakob ; his father and stepmother, Jim and Jane Nowell; his mother, Nancy Watilo; brother, Cory; and sisters, Kellie, Katie and Kristin.
Memorial services are scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday at Westminster Memorial Park in Westminster. A private graveside service will be held Monday.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the:
TIME Magazine
August 12, 1996 Volume 148, No. 8
WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER
SUBLIME COULD BE ROCK'S NEXT BIG THING--EXCEPT THE GROUP'S LEAD SINGER IS ALREADY DEAD FROM AN OVERDOSE
CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY When Brad Nowell woke up in a San Francisco hotel around 6:30 a.m. on May 25, his life appeared to be turning around. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter for the ska/hip-hop/punk-rock trio Sublime had a reputation for wildness and womanizing, but he was trying to change. He had been married the week before in a Hawaiian-theme ceremony in Las Vegas, and now he was doing what he loved, touring the country with his band, which had just finished recording an album that, to everyone who heard it, sounded like a smash. In fact, Nowell felt so good that May morning, he decided to take his Dalmatian Louie for an early walk along the beach. He tried to get Eric Wilson, Sublime's bass player, to join him--"It's a beautiful day out there," Nowell said--bu t Wilson closed his eyes and pretended to snore. It would be the last time anyone would see Nowell alive. A few hours later, Sublime's drummer, Floyd ("Bud") Gaugh, found him lying on his hotel-room bed, dead of a heroin overdose.
Nowell left behind his new bride Troy, an 11-month-old son Jakob and a host of might-have-beens. The group's final album, titled simply and aptly Sublime (MCA), was released last week and might have been the band's ticket to becoming the hottest new ac t in the music industry. Nowell might have been to ska what Kurt Cobain was to grunge--a big, blazing talent who introduces the mainstream to a new musical world. Nowell, however, played the Cobain role a bit too well, and Sublime, like Nirvana, will be b est remembered as a band with history-making potential that perished before reaching its full potential--or, in Sublime's case, before most Americans had even heard of it. Says Gaugh: "The band died when Brad died."
Nevertheless, the band's album lives on and deserves to be heard. Simply put, it is the best rock release of the year so far. Like such cutting-edge performers as Beck, Tricky and Rage Against the Machine, Sublime draws confidently on the group's new C D from both alternative rock and avant-garde hip-hop, creating a sound that is sharp and soulful. The band also tosses reggae and ska (a faster, jerkier reggae precursor) into the sonic mix, resulting in songs that are hard to categorize and harder still to resist. While much of today's pop wallows in recycled schlock rock from the '70s (Kiss) and rehashed alternative rock from last week (just turn on the radio), Sublime offers up a sound that is fresh and potent.
Will morbid curiosity attract some listeners? Of course. But MCA is trying to avoid looking like postmortem profiteers. A press release accompanying advance copies of the CD expresses a wish to avoid "the appearance [of] exploitation of Bradley's death," although it then goes on to say that "if there is one last gift" Nowell could give to his bandmates, his widow and baby boy, it was "financial security."
Nowell's last gift to everyone else is this outstanding album. The first song on it, Garden Grove, features a scratchy, staccato guitar riff, characteristic of ska, along with sampled snatches of sound and music. The result is a feeling of restful intr ospection coupled with an underlying sense of urgency. On April 29, 1992 (Miami), the band combines an itchy ska beat with a kind of enlightened gangsta-rap attitude to capture the incendiary, anarchic mood on the streets during the nationwide Rodney King uprisings. Nowell is not just channel-surfing through these emotions and genres, and he's not parodying them, as the Beastie Boys once parodied rap and heavy metal. Instead Nowell uses eclecticism to explore and understand his own shifting thoughts and m oods. There is a purpose to his pastiche, and his bright, versatile voice holds everything together.
It was Nowell who first introduced his bandmates to ska and reggae, when the trio were middle-class, punk-rock-worshipping youngsters growing up in Long Beach, California. They formed a band in 1988, and when clubs refused to book their strange-soundin g hybrid act, they founded their own label, Skunk Records, just so they could proudly tell clubs they were "Skunk Records recording artists."
In 1995 the band played on the very first Warped tour (an annual skateboarding/ska/punk traveling music festival) and became the very first act asked to leave the tour (for a week) because of unruly behavior. This group was too punk rock even for punks . Explains Gaugh: "Basically, our daily regimen was wake up, drink, drink more, play, and then drink a lot more. We'd call people names. Nobody got our sense of humor. Then we brought the dog out and he bit a few skaters, and that was the last straw. "
The drinking, the unpredictability, even the out-of-control Dalmatian, were all part of Sublime's volatile appeal. Gaugh says he and his bandmates were looking for extremes, for the raw experience that could help them write and perform compelling rock. For Nowell, harder drugs than alcohol were part of his wild ride to artistic inspiration. Gaugh says now, not surprisingly, that it was "definitely the wrong way."
But for rock stars, it has been an all too popular way. The music industry has been rocked, in the past few years, by the drug-related deaths of Nirvana's Cobain and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, and more recently Blind Melon's front man Shannon Hoon and Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. As for Nowell, his bandmates say they tried to help him. Recalls Wilson: "If you tried to talk to him about it, he would get mad. He thought he was invincible. When someone would die, other artists, he 'd just go, 'O.K., they're stupid, they shot too much, they didn't know what they were doing.' "
The night before Nowell died, Gaugh says, his friend told him he was giving up heroin and that his next hit would be his last. Of course, addicts always say that. It's usually a lie. Unfortunately for Nowell's friends, family and fans, this time it pro ved true.
