RENE BERG

I have got a Rene Berg album (The leather,the lonelines and your dark eyes) and it's bffff,WONDERFUUUUUUUUUUUUUL!But I don't know if it's the only one he has recorded.Could you help me?Thanxx in advance.

technicaly he had two cds released but actually only one. in 1999 there was a cd released called gang bang which was just the leather,the lonelines and your dark eyes re-released under a different name.
he was also in the soho vultures with nasty suicide. they never released anything offical but there is a cdr of demos floating around out there. and before his stint in hanoi he was in a band called idle flowers.

THANKS!!!

IMO, the best thing to come out of Hanoi was Rene, no matter how short of a time he was in there.

In case you didn't know Junkie, Rene passed away a few months ago. Rumour was that he had been battling demons for years and from what it sounds like, he finally fell. The rumours of his death were confirmed on the Hanoi site by Andy and his wife.

That's awful news, Carl. I hadn't heard.

Yeah, I know. I loved the guys stuff, everything he had done I thought was brilliant. He was one of the other people I had been trying to find for some interviews.

I actually haven't heard that much of his stuff but knew him back in the mid/late eighties when we often chatted over a pint - or six. He was likeable, always entertaining company and, I must say, gave no signs of being the same unstable character described by Monroe/McCoy in their current Classic Rock interview. I do remember though that the only time I ever tried to perform drunk was after spending an afternoon at his flat! Very sad news.

I haven't read the whole of that Classic Rock interview yet, but from how it sounds, it is a bit of a downer! Talk of Razzle and Rene? Sheesh.

Rene was a hell of a songwriter. I have everything he did, including some live stuff. All of it is great. If you want to hear it Paul, drop me a line.

You're right on that one. As you know, I only heard of Rene's passing on this board yesterday. It was shocking to then read Monroe's scathing comments.

I didn't know Rene well - we just attended the same watering holes and chatted about music, fishing (his other great love) etc. He was intelligent and very likeable and, incidentally, only had good things to say about Monroe.

Razz (the wife) and I went to the funeral; Razz knew Rene quite well but lost touch with him when she moved up north. It was a really nice service, very moving. I thought it was a shame that there weren't more of the musicians he worked with there though, the only one that came was Bernie Torme. I suspect, however, that not many people knew about it; as I understand it he'd pretty much cut himself off from the London scene. He was living in Dover and had been ill for some time, apparently.
Razz wrote an obituary for Rene, which can be found on Bernie's site here... http://www.bernietorme.ision.co.uk/reneberg.html

Hey, thanks for that link!!! Very nice piece there. I tell ya, I always felt that he had to be a great guy. I don't care what Mike says in that damn interview, a jerk and such could never write the songs Rene did. Might be an ignorant statement, but you can just hear something in those songs.

Again, thanks. How did he die exactly? I still haven't read anything. You mention that he was sick for awhile. Was he "sick" with addiction, or had he actually come down with something?

Man, I wish I had found him and been able to do a little corresponding.

Nobody seems to want to let on about what finally saw him off (it seemed inappropriate to ask at the funeral); there have been a lot of claims of "overdose", but it seems unlikely to me. You don't use smack for as long as Rene did and OD accidentally (although oddly enough he was never an addict - apparently he used to give up entirely with no trouble for long periods of time, and only used it when he wanted to). I think his illness and subsequent death were just from cumulative damage from his, erm, excessive lifestyle over the last twenty-odd years. He was a big drinker more than anything, and it seems this is what did the most damage.

I never knew the guy myself, but the wife held him in VERY high regard and was devastated when he died. And I have to say, "London Town" is probably the most beautifully sad song I've ever heard. The man was a songwriting genius.