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It was a little shocking to hear of the death of Barry Cowsill, months after he went missing in New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina. His skeletal remains were found on a warf Dec. 28 and his identity was finally determined through dental records.
The tragic end of Cowsill, 51, was just another tragedy in a family band known by most to have brought sunny sounds to the radio in the 60s with songs like "The Rain, The Park and Other Things," "Indian Lake" and "Hair."
And it's not as if I had never thought of the Cowsills since then. I had interviewed Susan Cowsill about her more recent band the Continental Drifters.
And it was about a year ago, I found Bob Cowsill playing in an Irish bar in Studio City, Calif., rockin' out before kids who may have not known a thing about the groundbreaking family band he played in as a kid.
The Cowsills were not only the most famous rockers to come out of Newport, R.I. (and maybe the only ones until Throwing Muses decades later), they cut the template for the family rock band.
The network wanted to sign the Cowsills – four brothers, a kid sister and a mom – to star in their own TV sitcom, but they declined. Next thing you know, you had “The Partridge Family.” (And would Shirley Jones have earned her coveted role in “Grandma’s Boy” had she not starred in that?).
Their harmonies got them discovered by an NBC producer while they were singing in a Newport bar in 1965. The label encouraged their mom to sing with them as well, and she did.
But when the band imploded somewhat acrimoniously in 1970, so did the personal relationships of the family band members. it took decades to heal and by then Barbara Cowsill died of emphysema in Tempe, Arizona in 1985.], Billy Cowsill was recovering from some lost years and drug abuse in Canada. Susan Cowsill got divorced from Peter Holsapple, with whom she was a member of the Continental Drifters.
There were occasional reunions, to sing at Fenway or the odd benefit, but mostly the Cowsills as a revived pop group, stayed out of the public eye. That's why it was so shocking to see Bob Cowsill's name written on the chalk board of the Fox & Hound pub in Studio City just about a year ago. "Is that the guy from the Cowsills?" I asked the bartender.
"Sure is, and he's playing this weekend."
Well, I made sure I was back there, and oddly Bob Cowsill still looked familiar, applying hisa voice to songs by the Beatles, Kinks and Roy Orbison and if you requested loud enough, yes, The Cowsills as well. It was just him solo with an acoustic guitar, but he had achieved a 60s mastery that allowed him to replicate the riffs of an era, and had a voice that locked into where ever he was trying to go.
The young pub crowd paid attention a bit, requested Neil Diamond, and largely didn't know a thing about his career as a child star in his family band. A couple of us fogies, though, came up to shake his hand and express appreciation for his role in it all. Lucky for us, he was still there to receive it.
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