Rollin’ Colin Winski

Colin Winski died in his home in Phoenix March 18th. He was 50. As of ‘press time’ there was no conclusive cause of death, the various autopsy results not all in. Colin had agoraphobia and panic attack disorder which led to his taking medication that caused him to gain weight, but his overall attitude and energy was fine. His wife Nina came home from work at 4 pm that day and found him dead, hunched over his school papers in bed - he was completing a degree in Behavioral Science at Arizona State University in Phoenix. .

Colin and Nina met in high school in L.A. Colin’s father Norman Winski was an author whose books included ‘Mysticism For The Millions’ and ‘Sword of the Sorcerer.’ One result of the elder Winski’s association with the southern California beatnik culture was Charles Bukowski becoming Colin’s godfather.

I met Colin around 1974 when I was one of a small cadre of rock & roll malcontents centered at the North Hollywood home of Rockin’ Ronny Weiser and his Rollin’ Rock label. Colin was a rosy-cheek teenager when he joined the label’s big act, the Rockabilly Rebels. That bunch, which consisted of Ray Campi, Jim Roup (drums) and Billy Zoom, played to tiny groups of fanatics in the musically-vapid early 70s.

What times we had, a joyful bunch of misfits watching Elvis films, playing rare records, wishing things were better, and going to see and cheer every living rock & roller - Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Elvis, Dorsey Burnette, Carl Perkins, etc.

In April of 1978 I arranged for the Campi band - now featuring not only bumping-and-grinding Colin but also the back-flipping Jerry Sikorski - to open on Robert Gordon’s debut west coast tour, starting at the Whisky. It was good and bad. The Campi band’s show was a rollicking, rolling success that got the crowd in a lather, but it lit a fire that Gordon’s stolid, studied act had trouble following. If you ask me. For that or some other reason they were dropped from the tour after the Whisky stand.

Colin’s extraordinary, fevered moves, adapted from Elvis’s tv apppearances and “Jailhouse Rock,” can be seen in the movie “Blue Suede Shoes,” a UK documentary about the first big English Rock & Roll C festival, held at Caister-on-Sea in March, 1979. I traveled with the band for six weeks of that tour. They headlined Caister, opened shows for George Thorogood and played all over the nation. Coming from disco-mad America, it was mindboggling to see kids with ducktails and Gene Vincent tattooes jitterbugging to songs like Marvin Rainwater’s “Hot and Cold,” which we thought only WE knew. It was like we’d landed on Planet 50s. I called it heaven, and wrote it up at length in the L.A. Times.

Colin made quite an impact. He was a sex-symbol with extraordinary gyrations and thunderous voice. Along with Jerry Sikorski, whose athletic and frenetic style stole the show in a different manner, and Ray Campi solid in the center on upright bass and vocals, they provided a rock & roll circus far more interesting - and fun! - than anyone else on the scene.

When I returned to England for the next Rock & Roll fest in November, 1979, I saw a British band that featured a Colin duplicate - black shiny cowboy shirt, red neckerchief, black slacks with white piping stripe, and white shoes (Colin wore hospital shoes, not white bucks). Apparently there were others like him scattered around the U.K.

Later that year, Colin and Sikorski left Campi and formed the Rockin’ Rebels, and were chosen by the Clash to open their shows at the Hollywood Palladium and in San Diego. It was a culture clash for the rockabillies, facing the spit-storms of the Clash’s audience. (Joe Strummer spoke fondly of Colin when I spoke to him in 1988, and Nina says that Joe and Colin reunited in Scottsdale, Arizona in October, 2001 when Strummer’s band, the Mescaleros, played there.) And in 1980 Denny Bruce produced a Colin Winski album for Takoma Records. It was Colin’s calling-card for the next couple of decades.

Colin was John Waters’ first choice for the singing voice of Johnny Depp in “Crybaby.“ In 1989 I got a call from one of Waters’ minions asking his wherabouts. This was at a time when I was earning very little money (1968-2007.) Most of us who ‘know stuff’ often got calls from movie and music companies wanting information. Usually those people were earning $1500 a week for their research ability: this guy’s talent was finding me. I was fed up with doing stuff for nothing, so I said truthfully that I didn’t know where he was, but could probably find out.
“So when can you tell me?” he said.
“Well how much does this pay?” I said.
“It’s not a job, it’s just some information.”
“Finding people is a job.”
“Are you a private detective?”
Pause.
“Yes.”
That ended that, and they found him anyway.
But Waters went with James Intveld.

I last spoke to him, for about an hour, in 2003. He called to talk about music, and the old days. His Phoenix band, Helldorado, recorded a couple of CDs, and he occasionally did concert tours in Europe and England.

Colin’s ashes are on a shelf in the Elvis Room in he and Nina’s home. He was a giant in the field of real rock & roll, and will be terribly missed.

C In music-stratified England, Rock & Roll means 50s music, the real stuff. The idea, then, of a festival of that music was frowned upon by people in civilized places like London - it was tantamount to holding a thug festival. It was Mods vs. rockers there, with the Rockers holding firm with mutton-chop sideburns, long drape coats and thick-soled creepers, and punk-rockers the new unwelcome element. The true shock was seeing teenagers who hied to neither the Teddy Boy nor the punk line, but just came for the music. They were the first wave of the new generation of rockabillies that took the reins with the arrival of the Stray Cats.

===============



Colin, Jerry Sikorski, and Rockin’ Ronny Weiser celebrate sigining to Bug Music, with Bug owner Dan Bourgoise. 1976.