DEL SHANNON
Del Shannon (born Charles Weedon Westover; December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990) was an American rock and roll singer-songwriter who is best known for his 1961 No. 1 hit “Runaway”. Shannon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. (More from Wikipedia)
The Unknowns played a gig once with Tom Petty and rock legend Del Shannon; and Bruce Joyner became good friends with Shannon as a result. Del Shannon had two fabulous hits in the early 1960’s, “Runaway” and “Hats Off to Larry” (often misheard as “Hats Off to Mary”) and later had joint concerts with the Beatles while on a European tour in 1963. He was the first American artist to cover a Beatles song, “From Me to You”. Joyner recalls that Shannon was scheduled to play on one of his records the week after he killed himself. I think of Del Shannon as being one of the Prozac suicide casualties: someone who committed suicide out of the blue that seemed somehow connected to his taking that once ubiquitous drug (1960’s radical Abbie Hoffman was another).
The suicide of his friend prompted Bruce Joyner to return to the South; he also lived in France for a while.
(June 2011)
