Flesh For Lulu’s Nick Marsh dead at 53: underrated rocker dies after cancer battle.
Nick Marsh, frontman for 80’s new wave group Flesh For Lulu and world music group The Urban Voodoo Machine, passed away from a long bout with cancer on Friday. He was 53 years old.
Marsh wasn’t a household name, but he might have been, if musical trends had played in his favor. Flesh For Lulu forged a catchy mix of New Wave, goth, and glam. After originally forming with mixed success, they broke through with their hit dance tune I Go Crazy, which appeared on 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful soundtrack.
Click here for our list of Top 10 John Hughes’ Films
That same year, I saw the band open for Gene Loves Jezebel in Dallas for The House of Dolls tour. It was my second ever concert, and after FFL’s set, Marsh came out for autographs. He was friendly, magnetic, and rocking a Batman T-shirt.
Click here for Albums Revisited: GLJ’s The House of Dolls
But every song on the album was great, from the chiming guitars of Sleeping Dogs, the lusty sax-driven Hammer of Love and the gritty Dream on Cowboy. It was a soundtrack to my high school days, and had a permanent slot in my cassette case in my car.
Their 1989 follow-up Plastic Fantastic produced minor hits Every Little Word and Time and Space, But their spotlight dimmed in the 90’s.
Much has been made about how the grunge movement killed the hair metal scene, but it also pulled the rug out from under more subdued alternative bands like Flesh For Lulu, and they folded after being dropped from their label, and in Marsh’s words: To coin the oldest cliché of them all, there were musical differences.
But that didn’t stop Marsh from trying again: in 1996 he formed Gigantic, resulting in the wonderful album Disenchanted which mixed aggressive 90’s guitars with Britpop flair. Sadly, that album would also tank, becoming a collector’s item for diehards when it was later re-released under the Flesh For Lulu banner.
Click here to see where Flesh For Lulu ranks on my list of Bands That Should Have Been Bigger
With his sonorous raspy pipes, arched plucked eyebrows and witty lyrics, Marsh cut a dynamic figure, and it’s a shame he wasn’t better recognized.
In later years he released a solo album, and played with The Urban Voodoo Machine, a gypsy like collective that won a small, but devoted cult following. He also had plans for a new North American tour with FFL, while also working on a project with his wife Katharine Blake (Miranda Sex Garden). But Marsh’s world turned upside down when he was diagnosed with mouth and throat cancer in 2014.
But he never let it dampen his spirit, and launched a gofundme campaign named the Marsh Family Cancer Crisis Fund, and kept fans and donors apprised of his progress via social media. Posting his health status updates came to him spontaneously, as he told Classic Rock magazine: I didn’t know how else to approach it really. I just thought, ‘Here I am.’ Facebook is like an open diary if you want it to be. I just felt like I wanted to do that.
While first reports of his treatments were promising, it returned with a vengeance, leading to the sad update on his funding page Friday:
Dear all,
Sadly, Nick lost his fight this morning. He passed peacefully away, with Kat by his side holding his hand. A massive thank you to everyone who has shown support, in so many ways, to Nick, Kat and their beautiful girls. We’ve lost a good’un.
xx
Marsh leaves behind two young daughters and a wife burdened with steep medical bills and a memorial service while they simultaneously work through their grief. You can donate here.
While I’ve lost touch with Marsh’s career, I’m saddened by seeing a tragic end to someone who fueled my musical enthusiasm in my 80’s high school years, and my sympathies go out to his family and fellow musicians. Having lost a family member to cancer, I know how brutal a loss it can be.
It’s also a reminder of the fragility of life, and how our feelings of youthful immortality seem so foolish now. But god how I miss the innocence of those days.
I’ve included Amazon links to my favorite Flesh For Lulu albums below. Give them a listen if you haven’t and you’ll discover some true musical gems. I’m gonna crank’em up all week in tribute.
[amazon_image id=”B000BAVI64″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Long Live The New Flesh[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B000008FNH” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Plastic Fantastic[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B00005N9FT” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Big Fun City[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B000TKOCVY” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Gigantic[/amazon_image]