Darryl Michael Roy Read (19 September 1951 – 23 June 2013) was a British singer, guitarist, drummer, actor, poet and writer. In the late 1960s, Read was a member of Crushed Butler, considered by some to be amongst the forerunners of proto punk and punk rock. He collaborated with musicians such as Bill Legend, Mickey Finn and Ray Manzarek.
Read appeared as a child actor in a number of films, including, aged 14, in Daylight Robbery (1964), for which he won a silver medal for best actor at the Venice Film Festival. He also appeared onstage in two rock-based plays and a number of television programmes. He was a published author of poetry as well as a biographical novel.
Read was killed in a motorcycle incident in Thailand in 2013.
Early years and career
Read was born in Exeter, where his father Hedley Read was working on a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Read struggled at school (he was later diagnosed dyslexic) and following his parents divorce, he lived with his grandparents. Following his grandmother's death when he was seven years old, Read was sent to Parkside Boarding School, in East Horsley. The establishment has moved location and is now known as Parkside School, Cobham.
Read attended an audition at the Corona Academy for Dramatic Arts in Chiswick, west London, and he was accepted. He left boarding school the following term in early 1963. Within two weeks of joining Corona Academy Read worked professionally, with a background role on the 1963 film The V.I.P.s. The following week he featured in a Persil commercial. By the end of his first term, he appeared in the Children's Film Foundation film The Young Detectives, replacing the original actor who had fallen ill. He then played Dick in the 1964 film Five Have a Mystery to Solve, based on an Enid Blyton Famous Five book.
He left Corona in 1968 with a small number of film and TV acting credits under his belt including a Venice Film Festival award for his role in the film Daylight Robbery. At 17 Read appeared in Fabulous 208, a teenage magazine. Read had been playing the drums and the guitar at the age of 14, and with Michael Des Barres he formed the rock pop group the Orange Illusion in 1967.
Read also appeared in a 1967 episode of Dixon of Dock Green, the 1968 film The Lost Continent and a 1969 episode of Z-Cars.
Late-1960s bands
In early 1968 Read became interested in the Edgar Broughton Band and Mick Farren of the Deviants. Read's then girlfriend, Nikki Johnson, found him his first manager, Robin Hemingway. Hemingway had worked with T-Bone Walker and introduced Read to soul music. Whilst trying to secure a record contract for Read, Hemingway got Read to record demos at Decca Studios, as well as inviting him to a Beatles session at Abbey Road Studios, and introduced him to Jimi Hendrix.
Read continued to switch between playing drums and guitar whilst continuing acting work. Read was asked by Emperor Rosko to form a group for his brother Jeff Pasternak from American west coast psychedelic band The Pasternak Progress. The Pasternak Progress named after Jeff's surname "Pasternak", released one rare single "Cotton Soul" b/w "Flower Eyes" in 1967. Read recruited Lou Martin and Stuart MacDonald, members of blues outfit Killing Floor, and guitarist Chris Gibbons to form The Krayon Angels. They played in London and recorded a demo album but the group split in early 1969, when Jeff Pasternak and Chris Gibbons created a Simon & Garfunkel-type duo. Read did another album demo for them and gave them the name Smooth Loser, which they later utilised as a rock band. The demo album Read made with Krayon Angels was eventually released in 2000 on Dig The Fuzz Records.