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NEWPORT - In frigid temperatures and strong winds, Newport said goodbye to Barry Cowsill Saturday afternoon.
About 100 people turned out at King Park to honor the charismatic and often-troubled musician, a teen heartthrob of the 1960s who died in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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Susan Cowsill, left, and Lisette Saint Germain hug after the memorial service for Barry Cowsill Saturday afternoon at King Park in Newport. (Megan Rathfon/Daily News staff)
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Friends and family members hugged and wept after sister Susan Cowsill and brothers John and Richard scattered some of Barry's ashes on the grounds of King Park, not far from where the Cowsills once lived at Halidon Hall.
The high winds, however, forced the ashes to blow back at the crowd.
"I got ashes in my eye," brother Paul Cowsill said. "I'm digging it."
Bob and Paul Cowsill sang Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Mourners held roses as they huddled at the front of the park's gazebo, providing a sense of community as well as body heat.
"This thing was sweet, something really nice for Barry," said Paul Cowsill, who lives in Oregon. "We had a Mass earlier at St. Augustin's (Church), which was nice. Barry and John and Susan went to school there.
"To me, Barry was always the same guy," he said. "He never changed and that's what we loved about him."
Susan Cowsill, who relocated to New Mexico after Katrina damaged her New Orleans home, briefly read some of Barry Cowsill's writings, prefacing them by saying: "Barry was a spirit trapped in a body. He is now a relieved soul. He doesn't have to carry that around anymore."
Barry Cowsill was born in Newport 51 years ago, and lived in various parts of the country throughout his adult life. The Cowsills, a Newport-based family band, rose to fame in the late 1960s with hits including "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" and "Hair."
Barry was perhaps the most popular member, a pinup boy on the cover of "Sixteen" and "Tiger Beat" magazines. By the time he turned 16, the band and family split; financial bungling left them with little money.
Friends and family agree that Barry Cowsill, who battled alcohol and mental health problems, longed to be taken seriously as a musician, often playing under names like Elvis Franklin, trying to distance himself from his pop-star days.
Through adulthood, he worked odd jobs - in construction and on charter boats - while performing in small bars in California and New Orleans, and finally finding a base of operations at Billy Goode's in Newport during the past few years. He moved back to New Orleans last summer.
He called Susan on Sept. 3, a few days after Hurricane Katrina, leaving a voice mail saying he was inside a warehouse and was scared, amid "a lot of lootin' and a lot of shootin.'"
No one heard from him again. Police found his body on Dec. 28 on a New Orleans wharf. On Jan. 3, New Orleans medical officials identified him through medical records and ruled that he drowned sometime in September.
During the half-hour ceremony on Saturday, Richard Cowsill read a column written by New York Newsday Editor Ellis Henecan, who knew Barry Cowsill from his New Orleans days. "There's something fitting about Barry Cowsill going out in a hurricane," Henecan wrote. "That's sort of how he came in."
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