EXCLUSIVE :
EARTH QUAKE VOCALIST JOHN DOUKAS, LITTLE KNOWN GREAT, DIES IN SOUTH AFRICA
Thursday, March 24, 2011

Joel Selvin

Barely known outside a few East Bay clubs where his band Earth Quake drew rabid followings, vocalist John Doukas, in front of his audience, was as powerful, persuasive and charismatic a performer as any in all of rock. He never knew the fame and fortune of Steven Tyler or Rod Stewart, but he lived the life every bit as much and possibly had more fun.

Doukas, 62, died over the Friday (18) in Capetown, South Africa, where he had resided for many years, of complications from liver failure. He left the music business and moved to England, where he married the former Sarah Chambers and raised a daughter, Noelle, more than twenty-five years ago. He leaves a second wife, Lesley Harrison Doukas, and a son, Jackson, in South Africa.

Earth Quake recorded two albums for A&M Records in 1972 and 1973 and four more albums for the maverick independent label, Beserkley Records, the band helped found. Earth Quake not only recorded the label's first single, "(Sitting In the Middle of) Madness," and experienced some success with a subsequent 1976 cover of the Easybeats hit, "Friday On My Mind," but anonymously backed singer Jonathan Richman on his song, "Roadrunner," the label's best known track.

Greg Kihn, the most successful Beserkley act, began his career in the West Coast by warming up crowds singing Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" with Earth Quake before Doukas took the stage. Every rock singer who played Berkeley's Longbranch, where Doukas and Earth Quake ruled supreme during the ‘70s, took their measure from Doukas. Eddie Money modeled himself after Doukas. Sammy Hagar remembers him well.

Berkeley's Rolling Stones, Earth Quake could have been one of the great rock bands of the day. Others on the same scene went further with less. The band was a long-running cornerstone of the East Bay rock scene, all the way back to its beginnings at Berkeley High School where the musicians played with such other future players as Lenny Pickett of Tower of Power. Guitarist Robbie Dunbar and bassist Stan Miller had already formed the nucleus of the band called Purple Earthquake in 1966 when Doukas joined.

Purple Earthquake, 1967 (Doukas, back to camera).

He came from Richmond, where he sang with high school bands called the Trees and Lincoln's Promise. He went to high school with Norton Buffalo and once told me Norton's real name, which is one of the secrets of the Western World. When they added drummer Steve Nelson, from rival Berkeley band Haymarket Riot, and graduated high school, they dropped the "Purple," made their name two words, Earth Quake, and moved to Hollywood, where the band signed with A&M Records.

After two albums without much success ("Tickler" was a regional hit in San Jose), the band returned to the East Bay, added former Copperhead guitarist Gary Phillips, and bunkered down at a brown shingle rental in the Berkeley hills, immortalized as "Home Of the Hits" on the Beserkley Records labels. The band-sponsored record label presaged the success of independent labels in the new wave era. Beserkley landed deals in the British record business and operated out of London for a while, before Playboy Records in America decided to underwrite the zany enterprise.

Earth Quake publicity handout

The label's other three acts all experienced success. The Rubinoos - featuring Tommy Dunbar, younger brother of Earth Quake lead guitarist Robbie Dunbar - put a remake of "I Think We're Alone Now" on the charts. Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers scored two Top Five hits on the British charts. The Greg Kihn Band (which included Earth Quake guitarist Phillips) made the U.S. Top Twenty with "The Break Up Song" and went all the way to number two with "Jeopardy" in 1981.

But nobody ever doubted Earth Quake's stature in the Beserkley realm. The band may never have made a record that captured the full magnitude of the band's live sound - and, in fact, the best album of all Earth Quake albums was "Rocking the World," an official bootleg that featured a psycho cartoon caricature of Doukas on the cover - Earth Quake could be quite incomparable onstage. I remember a particularly magnificent headline performance at London‘s Roundhouse, capping a 1979 European tour, and some of the band's Longbranch performance rank with the greatest rock shows I've ever seen.

Doukas moved to England after Earth Quake disbanded in 1981, where he served as director of international affairs for Beserkley Records and dabbled in real estate speculation. He married Sarah Chambers, founder of the Storm Modeling Agency in London, responsible for discovering model Kate Moss.

Doukas started Eastern Light Productions, and supervised a 24-part documentary film series, "Russia: The Missing Years," in 1994.

Doukas was a larger-than-life character with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye and a broad, wicked grin. His offstage antics were often the topic of discussion among friends. One pal remembered Doukas slurping down turpentine, accidentally served as alcohol, and breaking his leg later that night in a stage accident. I saw him cheerfully snort some unknown green powder with rock singer Tommy James that Kenny Laguna and I didn't dare. When he once crashed a car into some poor sleeping slob's Berkeley hills garage, the rumors surrounding the accident had Doukas engaged in a sex act while driving and letting go of the steering wheel at a critical moment. Doukas just laughed when asked about the story.

He was an exuberantly physical performer and during Earth Quake's days as house band at the Whiskey a Go Go, Doukas used to make his entrance doing an acrobatic flip off a hidden mini-tramp, a nervy gimmick "borrowed" by guitarist Nils Lofgren, who used to sit in with the band in Hollywood.
Doukas, me and my girfriend Jill wearing a t-shirt with Doukas cartoon.

He was my first rock star pal. He and my retired anthropology professor uncle used to disappear together for what my uncle always described as "field trips." As tame as it may have been compared to Doukas' own extra-curricular life, I took him to his first topless bar and he was very impressed.

In the Broadway bar with the dancers onstage, he shouted his approval, as the other dozen or so patrons cringed in the dark. As Doukas grew more vocal and enthusiastic, the girls would dance closer to our table and play to him. One came over, raised her leg and spun a pirouette on her other foot. Doukas stood up and cupped his hands beside his mouth.

"I love you," he shouted. "My name is Joel Selvin."

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