The teenage son of Martin Duffy, the keyboard player from Primal Scream who passed away in December, has accused other members of the band of isolating his father before his death.
Writing in a statement, which was submitted to an inquest in Brighton last week, Louie Duffy, 19, said Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie and guitarist Andrew Innes cut his father out of rights deals involving the band and also didn’t give him his fair share of touring profits. He added that the band isolated Duffy from the group and forced him to leave the touring lineup at a time when he needed support while dealing with addiction problems.
The younger Duffy said his father was "not able to cope any more" and "aged 10 years in a matter of weeks" after finding out that the rest of Primal Scream had decided to end his involvement with the band, which started in 1989 and saw him play on every album that they released. The decision to terminate his involvement with the group, Duffy said, came after his father made some musical errors during a gig in Glasgow.
In his statement, Duffy said: "I am well aware that financial reward may not have saved Dad from himself – we will never know. But I do know that while the band were reaping the rewards from touring Screamadelica, a classic British album, he was having to live month to month – just being paid session fees to perform it – when in fact he had played such an important part in creating it. I know Dad found this really insulting and not right.
"He knew then that he was never going to get his payday, a time when he didn’t have to worry so much about paying the bills. All of our family and Dad’s friends noticed this change in him and tried to support him but felt helpless. I can say without any doubt that the band’s total disregard of Dad’s circumstances directly impacted on his mental health."
Duffy’s son also alleged that his father was not paid for his contributions to Gillespie’s 2021 solo album, Utopian Ashes. You can read the full statement here.
It’s believed that Gillespie and Innes had told Duffy that he could return to the band if he stopped drinking. Sources close to the band said that they hoped showing him some "tough love" might force him to seek help, and it’s reported that the band continued to pay his session wages after asking him to leave the tour. The band have not publicly released a statement on the matter – Gillespie described Duffy as "a beautiful soul" when announcing his death on social media in December.
The coroner, Dr. Karen Henderson, concluded that Duffy’s accidental death had resulted from alcohol intoxication and multiple skull fractures after a fall. The inquest was also told that Duffy had been diagnosed with prostate cancer during lockdown.
