Screaming Lord Sutch born 10 November 1940

Screaming Lord Sutch (10 November 1940 – 16 June 1999) was an English musician and perennial parliamentary candidate. 

Sutch was born in north London. His father, a war reserve policeman, was killed in an accident when his son was 10 months old. His mother, to whom he was devoted, was a fan of Dickens; she christened him David after David Copperfield. For most of the next 15 years they shared a flat and poverty in what he called a dead-end street in Kilburn, while she worked as a cleaner and shop assistant. Entertainment was Saturday morning pictures and the Metropolitan Music Hall, Edgeware Road. In 1956, after David had left school, they moved to south Harrow, where he became a window cleaner. 

It was the birth of British rock music; a time when the young and desperate could pursue a new escape route. What he called his "wild man of Borneo look" got Sutch a spot singing at the Two I's coffee bar in Soho. His style evolved, or lurched, out of that slurry of music hall (he was a Max Miller fan), horror movies, Grand Guignol, pulp comics, slapstick and transatlantic pop. Thus did the black American rhythm & blues singer Screaming Jay Hawkins provide a name, and the basis of an act. 

In 1961 he was spotted by the curious and doomed independent record producer Joe Meek. "I was doing the horror," Sutch said in later interview, "screaming and yelling. I had 18 inches of hair and I was running around in buffalo horns and my auntie's leopardskin coat “. Meek noticed that Sutch had a different approach and asked if he wanted to make a record. Sutch did, and recorded with a clutch of (later) distinguished British rock musicians. The early subject matter focused on disembowelment and graveyards and on one occasion Meek posed Sutch, as Jack the Ripper, in Whitechapel at night. Both men, observed Sutch, were intrigued by horror films. But he had no real hits. 

                                   

Many of his singles featured lyrics with overt horror movie themes ("Dracula's Daughter"), and he also recorded covers of American hits like "The Train Kept A-Rollin'", "I'm A Hog For You" and "Good Golly Miss Molly". Indeed, by 1963 his career had been swamped by the Mersey boom. It was then that he went to Stratford in 1963, campaigning for commercial radio, votes at 18, abolition of dog licences and his share of the spotlight, with the mix of native wit and puerility that marked his aimless - or dadaist - media courtship. The live act around Europe, and playing small halls and pubs, provided an income. In the 1966 general election he fought Prime Minister Harold Wilson in Huyton and picked up 585 votes. 

After recording singles throughout the early '60s, it wasn’t until 1969 that he recorded his debut album “Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends" which was released the following year. It featured an all-star line-up with contributions from Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page (who also produced the album) and John Bonham, guitarist Jeff Beck, session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, session guitarist Deniel Edwards and Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding. A few years later, he ran in Westminster as the Young Ideas party candidate, and in 1974 for the Go To Blazes party in Stafford and Stone. 

But it was in the next decade, with the flowering of Thatcherism, that Sutch first ran as an Original Monster Raving Looney Party candidate. The contest was Bermondsey, the Labour candidate Peter Tatchell, and the victor the Liberal Simon Hughes. Sutch advocated a statue to Tommy Steele - "the Bermondsey bombshell and the only decent thing to come out of the place" - and attracted 97 votes. Meanwhile he released two more albums "Hands of Jack the Ripper" (1972) and "Rock & Horror" (1982). His autobiography, Life As Sutch, written with Peter Chippindale was published in 1991. 

Sutch ran for parliament 39 times. Thus did a decade unfold where, whatever the national crisis, whatever the earnest fatuities of the victorious byelection candidate, there on the edge of the screen would be Sutch, or a sidekick, a Shakespearean antick for the TV age. It was a great joke, but the viewer could never be absolutely certain that Sutch was in on it. 

His last political hurrah was in the 1995 Littleborough and Saddleworth byelection (the OMRLP didn't have the money to run in the last European elections). But more than finances, it was perhaps the times that had finally run out.

Sutch had a history of depression, and killed himself by hanging on 16 June 1999 at his late mother's house. At the inquest, his fiancée Yvonne Elwood said he had manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder. He is buried beside his mother, who died shortly before the 1997 General Election. 

(Edited from Nigel Fountain obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)