Robert Hazard dead
- Filed under: Uncategorized
- Date: Aug 7,2008
In 1979 Robert Hazard recorded a demo of the song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”. This was followed in 1981 by demos of the songs “Escalator of Life” and “Change Reaction”. These two songs received extensive radio airplay in Philadelphia. Around this time, Kurt Loder from Rolling Stone magazine chanced upon a performance by Robert Hazard and the Heroes at a Philadelphia club. Loder was so impressed by the band’s show that he wrote a full page article about them in the November 1981 issue of Rolling Stone. In the article, he predicted that the “limousine life” could not be far away for this band from Philadelphia.
Hazard was profiled in a 1981 Rolling Stone article by Kurt Loder. In the piece, Loder goes through Hazard’s musical history as a musician “…who started out as a Dylan-era folkie, then spent eight years singing country & western. ‘I just love country music,’ he explains — which of course explains nothing, least of all the two years he subsequently spent with a reggae band…or his current electro-pop approach, which owes little to any of the above”.
Hazard’s love of country music, however, does explain the direction his most recent recordings have taken, beginning with The Seventh Lake (2003) and continuing with Blue Mountain (2004). In 2007, Rykodisc signed Hazard and released his album, Troubador.
Robert Hazard died unexpectedly August 5, 2008 at age 59 after surgery for pancreatic cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Robert Hazard, 59, the Philadelphia-bred rock troubadour who wrote the pop anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” died unexpectedly Tuesday night after surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, his widow, Susan, confirmed today.
Mr. Hazard, who lived with his wife and two teenage sons in the Adirondacks and in Vero Beach, Fla., last month had canceled a planned fall tour without explanation.
Robert Hazard and the Heroes, born out of the late-1970s punk movement, were a fixture on the local bar scene through the mid-1980s.
One night in a motel in Delaware, Mr. Hazard sat in a bathtub and in 15 minutes wrote “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a sprightly pop tune covered in 1983 by Cyndi Lauper. Labeled a feminist anthem, it shot to No. 1. Miley Cyrus’ remake is included on her new album, Breakout.
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