Ian Dury

Ian Dury, born in Harrow in 1942, served his apprenticeship fronting Kilburn and the High Roads, a pub rock outfit that always seemed a bit too odd for the saloon bar. It took the new wave, and the upstart Stiff label, to find him a proper home: he signed there in 1977, teamed up with the Blockheads, and a string of UK hit singles followed before the decade was out.

What set him apart was the words. Dury wrote like a music-hall comic who'd wandered into a punk gig, cramming his songs with puns, gags and sharp-eyed observation, while the Blockheads backed him with a limber, funky strut. "What a Waste" and "Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3" were hits, "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" went all the way to the top of the UK charts, and "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" is the one rock radio's countdowns keep coming back to.

In the '80s he turned to acting in film and television, and wrote "Profoundly in Love with Pandora" for the 1985 TV version of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. His 1981 single "Spasticus Autisticus" was the bravest thing he did: a protest song drawn from his own life with polio, aimed squarely at the way people treated disability, and it was performed at the opening of the London 2012 Paralympics. Dury died in 2000.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.