Terry Reid, Rock Singer Known as ‘Superlungs,' Dies at 75

New York Times

3 days ago

Terry Reid, a British vocal alchemist and songwriter whose powerful voice earned him the nickname Superlungs — and who, despite turning down the chance to become the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, came to be celebrated as a singer's singer by luminaries like Aretha Franklin, died on Aug. 4 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 75.
His wife, Annette Grady, said he died in a hospital from complications of cancer. He had experienced a variety of health problems and canceled scheduled performances in July.
In his prime, in the late 1960s and the '70s, Mr. Reid's powerful vocal stylings were compared favorably to the likes of Rod Stewart and Bad Company's Paul Rodgers. Graham Nash, who produced Mr. Reid's 1976 album, 'Seed of a Memory,' once described his talent as 'phenomenal.' Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin called him 'probably the best singer of that period.'
After he released his debut album, 'Bang, Bang You're Terry Reid,' in 1968, when he was just 18, Ms. Franklin said, 'There are only three things happening in England: the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Terry Reid.'
Mr. Reid never had a major hit song or album, although a few of his albums eventually came to be regarded as minor masterpieces — particularly 'River' (1973), with its blend of blues, jazz, folk, R&B and Brazilian music. Although it climbed no higher than No. 172 on the Billboard 200, the British rock magazine Mojo later described 'River' as 'one of the most lazily magnificent records of that or any other year.'
His song 'Without Expression,' which he wrote at 14 and included on his first album, was later covered by John Mellencamp, REO Speedwagon and other artists. Jack White of the White Stripes recorded Mr. Reid's 1969 song 'Rich Kid Blues' in 2008 with his band the Raconteurs.
Even so, Mr. Reid's career was too often framed by what he didn't do.
His shot at rock immortality came in late 1968, when the guitar sorcerer Jimmy Page, late of the Yardbirds, was putting together his next venture, which was originally called the New Yardbirds and would evolve into Led Zeppelin.
He was well aware of Mr. Reid's gift — a voice that could swing from a raspy croon to a flamethrower blues howl — since Mr. Reid had opened for the Yardbirds, and he and the band shared a manager, the intimidating ex-wrestler Peter Grant.
'Jim called me up and said, 'You'd really be good as the singer,'' Mr. Reid said in a 2016 interview with Mojo. But there were complications, starting with his contract to produce solo work for the pop impresario Mickie Most, who had minted hits for the Animals, Donovan and others.
And then there were the Rolling Stones. Mr. Reid had made a handshake agreement with the guitarist Keith Richards to accompany the Stones on their 1969 tour.
'I said, 'Yeah, I'd love to give it a shot,'' Mr. Reid recalled telling Mr. Page in a 2007 interview with The Independent of Britain. ''But I've just got to pop off for a minute to do this Stones tour and I don't want to be the one to tell Keith I'm not going.''
'Oh no, we've got to do it now,' Mr. Reid recalled Mr. Page telling him. The supergroup Cream, featuring Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, 'had broken up and everybody in London was trying to put one of those groups together, so it's a big scramble who's first.'
Instead, Mr. Reid suggested two members of a group called Band of Joy — the singer Robert Plant, blessed with a similarly searing voice, and the berserker drummer John Bonham.
'I contributed half the band,' Mr. Reid later said. 'That's enough on my part.'
Terrance James Reid was born on Nov. 13, 1949, in St. Neots, a town in Cambridgeshire, England, the only child of Walter Reid, a car salesman, and Grace (Barker) Reid. He grew up in the nearby village of Bluntisham and attended St. Ivo Academy in St. Ives.
He started his first band, the Redbeats, at 13. Two years later he left school and joined Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, which got a blast of exposure opening for the Rolling Stones on their 1966 British tour.
One gig, at the Royal Albert Hall, was 'all screaming girls,' Mr. Reid told Mojo. 'It was scary. You couldn't hear anything, your ears were shut down.'
The Jaywalkers broke up soon after, and Mr. Reid embarked on a solo career. His knack for sidestepping history continued.
On the Stones' 1969 tour, Mr. Reid chose not to play the final gig — the chaotic, violence-marred Altamont Speedway Free Festival, which left one fan dead. 'I had a bad feeling about Altamont and said so to Keith,' he later recalled.
Around that time, opportunity knocked again when the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore invited him to become the lead vocalist for the heavy metal progenitors Deep Purple, replacing Rod Evans. Again Mr. Reid slammed the door, ceding the job to Ian Gillan.
'They were going into a real hard-rock thing that I wasn't so into,' he later told Mojo.
Mr. Reid spent years tangled in litigation with Mr. Most. He eventually wriggled free and relocated to the United States, where he signed with Atlantic Records.
When the label's star-making president, Ahmet Ertegun, first heard 'The River,' he told Mr. Reid, 'You've given me a jazz album,' Mr. Reid recalled to Mojo. 'Which it was, in the sense that David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' or Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' were jazz.'
His solo career wound down in the 1980s, although he did session work for the likes of Jackson Browne, Don Henley and Bonnie Raitt. His comeback album, 'The Driver,' released in 1991, featured a star-studded cast, including Joe Walsh, Enya and Stewart Copeland, best known as the drummer with the Police. He released his final studio album, 'The Other Side of the River,' in 2016.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Reid is survived by two daughters from an earlier relationship, Kelly and Holly Reid; and two stepdaughters, Erin Grady Barbagelata and Chelsea King.
Following Mr. Reid's death, Mr. Plant, who remained a friend, paid tribute to him on social media: 'Such charisma. His voice, his range … his songs capturing that carefree era … Superlungs indeed.'
'He catapulted me into an intense new world he chose to decline,' Mr. Plant added.
For his part, Mr. Reid, who was burdened for life with questions about his near miss with Led Zeppelin, was not so sure that he would have been a Plant-scale supernova in some alternative universe.
'Who's to say what would have happened if Jim and me had got a band?' he said in an interview with The Independent. 'It might have been a bloody failure.'