Dave Edmunds is famous to rock connoisseurs. He was one half of Rockpile with Nick Lowe. He had a run of hits in the late 70s culminating in a landmark cover of Elvis Costello’s “Girls Talk.”
Now Edmunds’ wife, Cici, reporting from Wales, wrote on Facebook tonight that “Dave died in my arms” from cardiac arrest. He’s 81 and has been in poor health for some time. Luckily, Cici says, Dave was revived. But his condition now is questionable.
Dave Edmunds first became popular in America in 1974 with his cover of “I Hear You Knocking.” He was signed by Led Zeppelin’s record label, Swan Song, and turned out a series of classic albums as he joined forces with Nick Lowe and then Elvis Costello as a brilliant rockabilly savant guitar player with a reedy voice that cut through middling radio.
Edmunds and Lowe recorded one album as Rockpile and toured. But they had different managers. Lowe used Costello’s Jake Riviera, who treated Dave badly. The band broke up before it could capitalize on the Rockpile album.
Dave flourished. He produced the seminal first album from the Stray Cats. He worked with Squeeze on their “East Side Story” album, producing the opening track, “In Quintessence.” He signed with Arista Records and had a hit with a Bruce Springsteen song, “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come”).
Eventually Dave retreated to Wales, and his home, even though his two sons with first wife Lesley Glover live here. I’d get hopeful reports about him, but mostly he’d retired to the countryside. We’ve got to send him prayers and great thoughts now. He’s a rock survivor. He can do it.
PS I spent the night after my 25th birthday at a Dave Edmunds show at the Country Club in Reseda at the height of his solo career. It’s a highlight of my life. (I saw Squeeze a month later at the Greek Theater. Heaven on all counts.)
Some of the hits below but first Dave’s immortal cover of “Where or When,” the Rodgers and Hart classic from “Babes in Arms,” 1937, released 40 years later.
