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Ian Dury, one of England's most beloved musical figures, died of cancer on Monday, March 27, at the age of fifty-seven. Best known for such irreverent songs as "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" and "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll," Dury combined a poet's flair for language with Cockney humor and a love for the trappings of old-time British music hall. Though he initially gained fame as part of the original British punk movement, his engaging wit and bawdy persona soon endeared him to Britons of all ages and persuasions. Even the notoriously hard-to-please John Lydon once described Dury as one of the only worthwhile reasons to return to England.
Born May 12, 1942, in Upminster, Essex, Dury was afflicted with
polio at the age of seven, which left him with a shriveled hand and
leg. He fell in love with American rock & roll in the late
Fifties, but didn't begin writing songs or performing until over a
decade later, while he was employed as a lecturer at Canterbury Art
College. His first band, Kilburn and the High Roads, gained a solid
reputation on the British pub rock circuit, but broke up in 1975
after recording two poorly received albums. After a year spent
gigging with various lineups as Ian Dury and the Kilburns, he found
a home at Stiff Records, a newly minted punk imprint which had
recently released singles by Nick Lowe, the Damned, and Elvis
Costello. New Boots and Panties, his first album for
Stiff, was a surprise smash; after rising to No. 5 upon its release
in the spring of 1978, it went on to spend 104 weeks on the British
charts. Backed by the Blockheads, a raucous combo spearheaded by
longtime guitarist and collaborator Chaz Jankel, Dury scored an
even bigger hit with 1979's Do It Yourself.
With his ever-present sideburns, drapecoat and walking stick, Dury
resembled an erudite cross between a teddy boy and Long John
Silver. Though he wasn't much of a singer, Dury delivered his
refreshingly frank ruminations on sex, petty crime, and
working-class existence with plenty of gravel-throated charm. By
the late Eighties, when his music had fallen from commercial favor,
his immense personal popularity enabled him forge a lucrative
career as an actor on British television. He also appeared in such
films as Roman Polanski's Pirates and Peter Greenaway's
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
Dury campaigned tirelessly on behalf of UNICEF and various cancer
and polio charities, and he spent much of his free time working
with disabled and mentally ill individuals. He continued to do so
even after 1998, when doctors diagnosed him with terminal cancer of
the liver. In fact, the diagnosis only seemed to kick him into
higher gear; in addition to marrying sculptress Sophie Tilson, he
also reformed the Blockheads, with whom he recorded the critically
acclaimed Mr. Love Pants and toured England for the first
time since the early Eighties.
Irrepressible to the end, Dury regarded death with the same
good-humored equanimity that he brought to the rest of his life.
"If the world by some quirk of nuclear impotency should survive,"
he wrote in 1982, "I for one will definitely feel the urge to dress
up and dance about."
Dury fans would do well to remember him by doing just that.
DAN EPSTEIN
(March 28, 2000)