Legendary NZ industrial band Headless Chickens’ Grant Fell passes, aged 56

Grant Fell, bassist and music video director with legendary award winning New Zealand ‘90s alt-pop band Headless Chickens – and one time Sydney resident – passed away on Saturday after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.

He was first diagnosed with a tumour in 2015 but was given a clean bill of health last September.

However, the cancer returned last week, and he was put in a hospice.

His wife Rachael Churchward revealed he had 60 seizures over five days, some lasting up to an hour. These affected his immune system, which could no longer fight the cancer.

Signed to Flying Nun Records, Headless Chickens recorded three albums, Stunt Clown (1988), Body Blow (1991), and Greedy (1997) which included the NZ #1 ‘George’.

These had a major impact on the growing industrial, electronic and sampling scenes of New Zealand and Australia.

Fell described the band’s “melancholic alienated sound as the soundtrack to growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s under the conservative Nationals rule who had little regard for the country’s music or contemporary culture.”

The band won five New Zealand Music Awards in the 1980s and 90s.

They toured Australia a number of times, the last being in 2008 when they also featured on Homebake in Sydney.

Three singles charted in Australia, the highest being ‘Cruise Control’ in 1991 which reached #26.

Social media postings from other musicians lauded the 56-year-old’s bass playing style, his sense of enterprise and his ability to create communities around him.

Fell’s loss was also felt in the fashion industry: both he and Churchward exuded a sense of goth cool, and published a fashion magazine appropriately titled Black.

“That man, with his great heart and his enterprise, changed my life more than once,” noted former Black editor Russell Brown.

Fell grew up in Auckland, the youngest of four in a family with indigenous Ngapuhi ancestry.

He played guitar and keyboards sparingly during his university days.

But he ended up on bass with Headless Chickens for a simple reason: their first bassist committed suicide in their rehearsal room, so the others told him to pick up his guitar and keep playing.

He also directed some of their music videos and took over management duties.

Around the time he was declared cancer-free, Fell announced he would write a book about his journey.