Obituary – Tom Parker – The Wanted Star

Tom Parker‘s first brush with fame on The X Factor, aged 16, was short and brutal. The born-and-bred Bolton singer, who went on to storm the UK and US charts with boy band The Wanted, lasted less than a minute before Simon Cowell stopped his audition and sent him off stage.

  • Died: March 30, 2022
  • Details of death: Died due to terminal brain cancer aged 33.

 

Tom Parker, who has died of cancer aged 33, was a singer with the boy band The Wanted, who sold millions of records around the world with hits such as Glad You Came and All Time Low; when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in October 2020 he became an activist and fundraiser and had the support of millions of fans as he documented his struggles with the disease.

Thomas Parker was born on August 4, 1988, in Bolton, north-west England. He taught himself to play the guitar and auditioned for The X Factor talent show but failed to progress beyond the first round.

He went to Manchester Metropolitan University to study geography but was unable to set his musical ambitions aside, and took a small step on the path to stardom when he joined a Take That tribute band.

In 2009 the manager Jayne Collins, who had masterminded the rise of the girl band The Saturdays, which included Tipperary’s Una Healy, held auditions for a male version, seeing more than 1,000 men over nine months. Parker was chosen along with Nathan Sykes, Dubliner Siva Kaneswaran, Max George and Jay McGuiness to form the group that would become known internationally as The Wanted.

The group flew to No 1 in the UK charts with their debut single All Time Low, followed by a No.2 hit with their second single, Heart Vacancy. Glad You Came, the first single off their second album, was another UK No.1 and climbed to No.3 in the US charts.

When The Wanted announced a hiatus in 2014, he took up DJ-ing and reached the semi-finals of Celebrity MasterChef in 2015. Three years later, he stripped off for ITV’s The Real Full Monty: Live to raise funds for male cancers.

But in 2020, after suffering a seizure, Parker announced that he had been diagnosed with inoperable grade 4 glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumour that is notoriously difficult to treat.

Last December 2021 Parker addressed the House of Commons all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, telling them: “I’m staggered they can find a cure for Covid within a year, but for decades on end they haven’t found better treatments, let alone a cure, for brain tumours.”

Parker married Kelsey Hardwick in 2018.

She survives him, along with their young daughter Aurelia and son Bodhi.

Date of birth: August 4th 1988

Date of Death: March 30th 2022 (aged 33 years)

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Express – https://www.express.co.uk/news/obituaries/1594461/the-wanted-tom-parker-singer-obituary

Independent – https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/music-news/obituary-tom-parker-singer-with-the-wanted-who-became-a-cancer-campaigner-following-his-own-diagnosis-41514497.html

Obituary – Taylor Hawkins – Foo Fighters Drummer

Taylor Hawkins played the drums exactly how he lived his life – at full pelt and with vigour. The longhaired blond musician spent 25 years as the celebrated drummer for American rock band Foo Fighters.

  • Died: March 25, 2022
  • Details of death: Died in Bogota, Colombia at the age of 50. Cause of death is unknown at the time of writing this obituary.

 

An arms flailing showman, he combined passion with technical ability. Hawkins joined the band in 1997, three years after it was formed by former Nirvana star Dave Grohl, and his creativity helped elevate them to their first Grammy award win in 2000. Across nine albums, he enjoyed writing credits on transatlantic hits including All My Life, Best Of You, Learn To Fly and Run.

Off stage, he partied hard and spoke openly of his love of drugs but never let his wild side diminish his performances.

Hawkins also recorded for Brian May, Roger Taylor and guitarist Slash – he also formed supergroup

NHC with band members from Jane’s Addiction.

He got his break as the tour drummer for rock singer Sass Jordan and, later, played with Alanis Morissette on her 1995 breakthrough album Jagged Little

Pill, which sold more than 33 million copies worldwide.

Foo Fighters

Taylor Hawkins began playing drums at a young age and was inspired by the band Queen and their drummer Roger Taylor. In 1995, he became the tour drummer for Alanis Morissette’s band, supporting her “Jagged Little Pills” tour, and appearing in music videos for the album. Hawkins joined the Foo Fighters after William Goldsmith left the band during the recording of their 1997 release “The Colour and the Shape.” Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl knew Hawkins and called him to see if he could recommend a new drummer for his band and Hawkins volunteered himself. The two became great friends.

Hawkins was a frenetic drummer which was a great fit for the Foo Fighters powerful rock sound. In addition to drums, he occasionally sang vocals including on the single “Cold Day in the Sun.” He had a side project titled Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, releasing three albums including “Get the Money” in 2019, featuring guest appearances by the Eagles Joe Walsh, Chrissie Hynde, and Nancy Wilson of Heart. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 with the Foo Fighters.

At the time of Hawkins deaths, the Foo Fighters were on tour and were scheduled to play a concert that night in Bogota, Columbia.

Hawkins is survived by his wife Alison and their three children, Oliver, Annabelle and Everleigh.

Date of birth: February 17th 1972

Date of Death: March 25th 2022 (aged 50 years)

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Express – https://www.express.co.uk/news/obituaries/1591639/Taylor-Hawkins-drummer-rock-Foo-Fighters-Obituary

Legacy.com – https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/taylor-hawkins-1972-2022-foo-fighters-drummer/

Obituary – Shane Warne- Cricket Legend

Shane Keith Warne (13 September 1969 – 4 March 2022) was an Australian cricketer. A right-arm leg spinner, he is widely considered as one of the greatest bowlers in cricket history, and in 2000 he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler and the only one still playing at the time.

  • Died: March 4, 2022
  • Details of death: Died of natural causes at the age of 52.

 

On 4 June 1993, a 23-year-old Australian with a cocky manner and peroxide blond hair ran up to the wicket at Old Trafford to deliver his first ball in Ashes cricket, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. Although considered a bright prospect in Australia, nothing Shane Warne had done to this point had suggested he was anything out of the ordinary. His early Tests had been unremarkable, and a few weeks previously, in a warm-up game at Worcester, Graeme Hick had hit him to all parts of the ground. Now, from a short, casual-looking run-up, he bowled to Mike Gatting, who was on four. “Two-thirds of the way down the pitch the ball dipped into the leg-side, opening Gatting up like a can of beans, before ripping diagonally across his body to clip the outside of off-stump”, reported Mike Selvey in the next day’s Guardian. “Gatting stood his ground, not in dissent or disappointment, but in total, utter disbelief.”

The “Ball of the Century”, as it became known, turned Warne into a “cricketing superstar”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. And he remained one throughout his career, which ended 14 years later with the leg-spinner having taken 708 Test wickets, then more than any other bowler in history. But Warne wasn’t just the “greatest leg-spinner in the history of the game”, he was also one of its biggest personalities, a “force of nature” who “lived his life to the full, fitting more in one year than many others would” in a lifetime. That was why his death from a suspected heart attack last week came as such a blow. It seems inconceivable someone “so full of energy, so fizzing with the enjoyment of life’s rich possibilities” should be dead at the age of just 52.

Warne was born in 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ferntree Gully, said The Daily Telegraph. His father, an insurance consultant, and his German-born mother were both “natural athletes” who encouraged Shane and his brother Jason to try “all kinds of sports”. Warne’s first love was Australian rules football, which he dreamed of playing professionally. He only took up cricket seriously in his late teens, after being rejected by one of Melbourne’s biggest Aussie Rules clubs. It soon became apparent that he “possessed an extraordinary capacity to spin the ball”, largely due to his phenomenal upper body strength: something he attributed to a period as an eight-year-old which he’d spent dragging himself around in a cart, after breaking both legs in an accident.

 

Once Warne hit his stride in the Test arena, his impact on the game was incalculable, said Matthew Engel in The Guardian. He joined an already formidable Australian team and made it “overwhelmingly stronger”. And he “single-handedly revived the discipline of leg-spin”, which had become “almost a lost art” in a sport dominated by fast bowlers. Combining his prodigious spin with “rare consistency for a wrist-spinner”, Warne would “attack right from the start of a spell”, said Vic Marks in the same paper, staring down batsmen in a cocksure manner and often sledging them mercilessly as well. Under such pressures, batsmen would often cave in psychologically, resorting to “desperate acts of foolishness”.

 
Warne embodied the Australian archetype: a “larrikin” – a scrape-prone young man with a heart of gold, said The Times. And over time, his off-field antics became almost as notorious as his cricketing achievements. “There were brawls, betting scandals, drug controversies and sexual peccadilloes, such as in 2006, when he was secretly filmed ‘romping’ with two models who sold the story to a tabloid.” While none of this dented his popularity, it put paid to his hopes of ever captaining his country. And that’s arguably a shame, said Ed Smith in The Sunday Times, because “Warne’s cricketing intelligence was superb”. He planned each over meticulously, and had “great insights about wider trends” in the sport. In retirement, at least, his more reflective side got a chance to reveal itself, as he became a respected commentator.
Warne was someone with “no airs”, said Mike Atherton. Like most great sportsmen, he was “often surrounded by the monied” – but he always treated “ordinary folk” as he would anyone else. His death took place at a resort in Thailand, where he was holidaying with friends. One revealed that he and Warne had shared a meal of toast and Vegemite hours before the cricketer died. “Geez,” the friend reported Warne remarking, “you can’t beat Vegemite with some butter, always great wherever you are in the world.” He was an Australian “through and through”, to the last. 

Date of birth: September 13th 1969

Date of Death: March 4th 2022 (aged 52 years)

 

 

 

 

Sources:

The Week – https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/sport/cricket/956033/shane-warne-obituary-australias-favourite-larrikin-son