Dead mean walking

On the office desk of his Arizona home, Alan Niven has two objects that chronicle the rise and fall of the Sunset Strip’s great forgotten band. The first is a scrappy page of gig listings for the Troubadour club, torn from BAM magazine back in April April ’86. “In mid-week, in tiny print, there’s a band called Guns N’ Roses,” notes the veteran manager and producer. “But on the Friday night, billed in much larger print, there’s Letchen Grey.”

The second object pulls you up short. It’s a mirrored box, holding the ashes of Frank Surber, the guitarist who seemed destined to lead Letchen Grey to glory, but succumbed to an agonising death from cancer while still a footnote. Niven sighs. “This band got dealt a motherfucker of a hand.”

All this might be just another sorry case of. “Los Angeles is the flame,” explains Andersen. “People come out here, get too close and get burnt.”