Vince Taylor

Vince Taylor will most likely be remembered for being the model for David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character, his 1958 B-Side "Brand New Cadillac" (later covered famously by the Clash), and for his erratic on-stage and off-stage behavior as much as for his actual musical contributions to rock & roll, but as Bowie undoubtedly realized, if Taylor hadn't existed, he would have had to have been invented, which, in fact, he was. Born Brian Maurice Holden on July 14, 1939 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, Taylor's family moved to New Jersey when he was seven years old. Around 1955, after Taylor's sister married future Hanna/Barbera cartoon mogel Joe Barbera, the family moved again, this time to California where Taylor ended up attending Hollywood High School. At 18 he fell in love with the high-energy music of Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent and tried his hand at singing, doing several local amateur gigs. Accompanying his brother-in-law Barbera to London on a business trip, Taylor checked out the rock & roll scene there, meeting drummer Tony Meehan and bassist Tex Makins at a coffee bar where Tommy Steele was playing. In a scene straight out of a bio pic, the three agreed to form the Playboys, and Taylor, realizing that Brian Holden wasn't the ideal stage name, plucked the name Vince from the side of a Pall Mall cigarette pack and officially became Vince Taylor, rebel rocker. That initial version of the Playboys didn't last long, though (none of Taylor's various incarnations of the band lasted very long, due in no small part to his often difficult and diffident manner, not to mention his drug use, and he was actually fired from the band on at least one occasion), but a revamped and expanded lineup recorded "I Like Love" and "Right Behind You Baby" for Parlophone Records in 1958,...