Posted on 10/23/2024 5:45:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Fuller and his group’s version of ‘I Fought The Law’ is a classic rock’n’roll record, but always risks being upstaged by the macabre circumstances of his death.
No matter how memorable was Bobby Fuller’s signature hit – and his version of “I Fought The Law” is inarguably a classic rock’n’roll record of any era – it always risks being upstaged by the macabre and never-explained circumstances of his death.
Born on October 22, 1942 in Baytown, Texas, Fuller became a noted performer in the El Paso, Texas area to which he and his family relocated. His first appeared on disc came in 1961, when “You’re In Love” became the first of a series of independently released singles.
The strong influence of Buddy Holly and the Crickets is reflected in both of the Billboard Hot 100 chart entries in 1966 on the Mustang label by the Bobby Fuller Four. First came their enduring version of “I Fought The Law,” written by Holly’s collaborator (and Crickets member after Buddy’s death), Sonny Curtis. The song originated on the 1960 album In Style With The Crickets.
Revived by Fuller and his quartet, which included his younger brother Randell, “I Fought The Law” went to No.9 in America; they went on to reach No.26 with the follow-up, a remake of Holly’s composition “Love’s Made A Fool Of You,’” which had also been recorded by Curtis and the Crickets for that same In Style With… album. The Crickets’ version was also a No.26 hit, but in the U.K.
While “I Fought The Law” only reached No.33 in Britain for Fuller and his group, the recording was much revered by rock’n’roll fans. When The Clash were making their second album Give ’Em Enough Rope, and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were in San Francisco recording overdubs, they often heard the single on the jukeboxes of the Automatt studio in San Francisco. Moved to record it with the Clash, their version became part of the 1979 EP The Cost of Living, and remains a landmark of the new wave era.
Fuller was just 23 when he enjoyed that singles success, and he and the group even made it onto the big screen, when they performed two songs in the spring 1966 movie The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini. This late entry into the “beach party” series of lighthearted film cash-ins also provided the amusingly improbable combination of stars of earlier classic horror movies such as Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone with Nancy Sinatra, red-hot from her U.S. No.1 “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” of a few weeks earlier. Sinatra was herself a fan of the Bobby Fuller Four, often seen at their concerts.
But within a few weeks of Fuller’s record and movie success, he met an unseemly and mysterious end. Eight days after the group’s last gig in July 1966, he received an unexplained late night phone call that prompted him to leave in the family Oldsmobile, apparently for a meeting in the small hours of the morning.
Rock’n’roll’s greatest mystery?
Later that day, July 18, at 5pm, Fuller was found dead by his mother Loraine in the vehicle, parked outside his Hollywood apartment. The car was full of gasoline; accounts have subsequently varied as to whether he had sustained bruises or cuts. His body had, it seemed, been there for some time.
He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills on July 22. The cause of death, originally listed as suicide (a theory widely seen as unlikely, given his breakthrough success of the time) was later changed to accidental.
No criminal investigation was launched by the LAPD, which was in some turmoil at the time with the sudden death of its chief of police just days earlier. But rumors have persisted ever since that Fuller was murdered, perhaps by the mafia. Such subterfuge has continued to be investigated by Bobby’s brother Randy, notably in the 2014 book I Fought The Law, written with Miriam Linna.
In 2015, Randy told NPR how the mystery had prevented him ever finding closure over his brother’s death. “It’s just always eating at you,” he said. “If you just knew what happened, you could get over it. But, you know, it’s just always there.”
Far more than just ‘I Fought The Law’
Fuller’s sad end may always overshadow a career which achieved much in a short time, but he’s warmly remembered, not just for his signature hit but for “A New Shade Of Blue,” used in the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, and “Let Her Dance,” the Bobby Fuller Four single that immediately preceded “I Fought The Law.” A local Los Angeles hit, it went on to feature at the end of the 2009 movie Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The words written by KRLA Beat soon after Fuller’s death are as poignant today as they were then. “He was only 23 – a promising young singer from Texas whose friends said he ‘Just liked to be around people’ – when he was found dead in his car parked in front of his home. And no one knew why.”
Doesn't begin to compare to the Bobby Fuller original, both the voice and the guitar sound:
I think most investigators conclude he killed himself in a wierd sequence of self harm
Culminating in gasoline asphyxiation I think
In the parking area under moms apartment in Hollywoodland
Cranes looks like sexual anger
Man he was a blade
Oh please AW
too very different versions
That rambling drumroll buddy meets rockabilly was long in the tooth by 66 when Brit invasion and even Haight music was popping off
It was maybe the last big hit of that style
I used to ride my pre banana seat schwinn around transistor radio strapped to handle bars hearing it on 1320 or 1610 our top forty dials in Jackson schwin
Stubbed toes and skinned knees de rigeur
Grey 5X5 Motorola with wrist strap
I bet I’m not only boomer here remembers that life
No helmet lol
Very very very Buddy arranged and sounding IFTLATLW
Man Holly could rest a career on just Not Fade Away alone
A watershed structure of a song for 1957
Sir Mick did it justice too
Thanks for the suggestion!
“The prosecutor put forth the notion that the friend was jealous of Crane’s success and money but the jury did not think so.”
Guess I can see how that might have been unconvincing. A shame, really.
Hollywood streets alone late at night?... we used to go up there from OC in the late ‘60s, but in a group. Hollywood was pretty sketchy even for males. Beware Santa Monica Boulevard.
Maybe it was different for Fuller if he lived there. But there would have been plenty of trouble to find without looking too hard. Manson was on the streets gathering his “family” including one of my HS classmates.
In the movie with Greg Kinnear and Willem Defoe it was hinted Crane cut him off after he realized he had bi tendencies.
We absolutely do know what happened to him. He was killed by videotaping pervert John Henry Carpenter. Law enforcement botched the case twice, and he was acquitted in 1994.
It's a regaional thing. Southern though I may be, I was raised farther north than you, and our radio stations were behind yours in keeping pace with the waves of Southern sensibility music. Sorta like the movie theaters in Georgia were a year behind those in Maryland when I arrived with my hubby at Fort Benning.
I lived within walking distance of the Strip growing up (late ‘70s and early ‘80s), so I was there all the time. Fuller lived and died on Sycamore Ave., further east, in a seedier part of Hollywood.
Sure wish Buddy would’ve lived to record IFTL.
Joe Strummer did it proud.
Thanks nickcarraway. It’s good to know that folks still care.
YW. Since the LAPD never even opened an investigation, I guess there isn’t even a file somewhere about the case.
Incidentally, his son seems pretty anti-Bob Crane, and says his father was a pervert long before that. But he seems biased, and Crane left all his estate to his last wife.
I am really mad at that movie. It ruined that song Girl Watcher by the O'Kaysions for a while. They never should have been allowed to use that song.
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