David McComb's death at age 36, on February 2nd, 1999, went mostly unheralded in his native Australia. His band, The Triffids, never made it big even in their homeland, writes Padraig Collins
I was there on holiday at the time, but did not hear about his death until reading about it in Uncut magazine a month later.
It was like hearing that an old friend, whom you had lost touch with over the years, had died. Few of us realised that the reason he had not released anything in years was that he had had a heart transplant in 1995. He completed a master's degree in Art History in 1998, but had never fully recovered his strength.
Since then, his death has, unfortunately, become more legendary than his life. On January 30th, 1999, he was involved in a traffic accident and taken to hospital. He was released, apparently uninjured, the next day. Two days later he was dead.
Initial reports indicated that he died as a result of a brain haemorrhage related to the crash, or through heart complications exacerbated by the accident.
However, it did not take long for Internet postings to emerge claiming he had actually died of a heroin overdose. Some even hinted that the fatal dose might not have been self-administered.
None of this speculation should overshadow the brilliant body of work that McComb left behind though.
Born into a Perth medical family (his father is a plastic surgeon and his mother a geneticist), he was the youngest of four sons. He was touchingly self-effacing about his early musical experiments, which were heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, Bowie and Dylan.
"It was a totally ramshackle thing," he said. "I thought that if you had to be a musician you had to start when you were seven-years-old, and I was 14, 15.
"I thought there was no way that I'd be a musician, you know, it was too late, I was already an old maid."
His best albums with The Triffids - the broad melodrama of Born Sandy Devotional, the stripped-bare In The Pines and the big technicolour production of Calenture - showcased a gifted songwriter, with a mastery of styles ranging from rock to folk to country.
A few days after McComb's death, Australian legend Paul Kelly dedicated his entire show to the memory of McComb. Kelly later combined with Chris Bailey (of The Saints) at the Mushroom Records Concert of the Century to perform a version of McComb's Wide Open Road, this ensuring one of his favourite writers was represented.
Commercial success may have eluded him, and he never did get to be an old maid, but David McComb's genius will survive long beyond speculation as to how he died.