52 Thursday February 3 2022 | the times
Register
5
Jon Lind
Folk singer turned songwriter and music executive whose hits included Boogie Wonderland for Earth, Wind & Fire
Having been in not one but three bands
whose records had flopped, Jon Lind’s
musical career had hit the buffers. “For
a ten-year period I dreamt of a career as
a performing artist and pursued it non-
stop,” he recalled. “I was bummed that
things hadn’t gone quite as I expected.”
A career change was required if he
was going to pay the rent, and so he
asked his former manager Bob Cavallo
for advice. Cavallo, whose other clients
included the Lovin’ Spoonful, Prince
and Earth, Wind & Fire, suggested that
he should accept he wasn’t going to be-
come a star and concentrate on writing
songs for other artists.
The advice was a bitter pill to swallow
and reluctantly he moved to Los Ange-
les and began writing songs, which he
hawked around to publishing compa-
nies and record labels.
Shortly after, he was sitting outside
Cavallo’s office and strumming his gui-
tar when Maurice White of Earth,
Wind & Fire walked in. Lind was play-
ing nothing more than the fragment of
an idea for a song but White liked it and
asked him to send him the composition
when it was finished.
The song was Sun Goddess and when
Earth, Wind & Fire and Ramsey Lewis
recorded it, Lind’s new career was up
and running. He followed it spectacu-
song had come out”. Months passed
and Lind feared the song had been
dropped from the movie. In fact, Ma-
donna had gone back into the studio to
re-record the song with a different ar-
rangement and in the year that elapsed
before the film and song were finally re-
leased in 1985, she had scored hits with
Like a Virgin and Material Girl to be-
come one of the world’s most bankable
stars. Lind had his first No 1.
His first marriage to the actress
Francine Tacker ended in divorce. He
is survived by his second wife, Sue
Drew, a music industry executive, his
daughters, Jenny and Joanna, stepson
Daniel D’Astuges and stepdaughter
Catherine Jones.
Jonathan Gus Lind was born in
Brooklyn, New York in 1948, the young-
er of two sons. His mother, Bess, a
housewife, and his father, Dave, who
worked for the IRS, divorced when he
was five. He grew up on Long Island
and, inspired by the folk revival of the
early 1960s, took up the guitar, playing
songs by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and
Mary. By the age of 15 he was perform-
ing in the folk clubs in Greenwich
Village and opening for such artists as
Judy Collins and Tom Paxton.
He studied classical guitar at New
York’s Mannes College of Music andwhile there formed the Fifth Avenue
Band, who were managed by Cavallo,
destined to play a key role in Lind’s later
career. The group’s only album flopped
and he went on to form Howdy Moon
and White Horse, both of which were
similarly short-lived and broke up after
recording unsuccessful albums.
Songwriting proved a more success-
ful option and in addition to hits with
Earth, Wind & Fire and Madonna, there
was another No 1 with Vanessa Willi-
ams’s Save the Best for Last and a stint as
a co-writer with the Who’s Pete Town-
shend, when Lind spent a year living in
London in 1991. A third career as a music
industry executive opened up in 1998
when Cavallo made him a vice-presi-
dent in charge of A&R at Hollywood
Records, where he signed the chart-top-
ping teenage acts Miley Cyrus, the
Jonas Brothers and Selena Gomez.
Recalling the unexpected success of
Crazy For You, he said: “It was one of
those great moments when a songwrit-
er realises ‘there is a God’.”Jon Lind, songwriter, was born on April
14, 1948. He died of cancer on January 15,
2022, aged 73Email: [email protected]Of all the diagnoses Kristin Henry
made in more than 60 years as a histo-
pathologist, none illustrated her bril-
liance more dramatically than that
involving her two-year-old grand-
daughter Romilly.
When doctors at the Children’s Hos-
pital in San Francisco failed after six
months of trying to diagnose the cause
of Romilly’s digestive problem, Henry
— by then an 86-year-old grandmother
living in London — flew across the At-
lantic to offer her help. This interven-
tion took the US doctors by surprise,
but Henry was the former president of
the International Academy of Patholo-
gy (IAP) and emeritus professor of
pathology at Imperial College London.
She was also extremely forthright. As
a colleague put it: “You didn’t mess
with Kristin.”
Henry established that Romilly did
not have coeliac disease or lactose
intolerance, as initially suspected, but a
neuroblastoma, the most common
cancer in young children. The root of
the problem, Henry recognised, was
paraneoplastic syndrome, a disorder
more commonly seen in adults with
lung cancer. Her timely diagnosis saved
Romilly’s life.
Histopathology, the study of changes
in tissue caused by disease, is not a field
associated outside medicine with
genius or brilliance, but outstanding
pathologists have “the eye” in much the
same way as talented surgeons have
“the hands”. Henry had a photographic
memory of blood cancer cells viewed
on glass slides down a microscope. Col-
leagues were astonished when she
made a diagnosis of a rare condition she
had not seen for 40 years.
She had an eye, too, for decoration,
loved dressing the Christmas tree and
drew cartoons of animals for her child-
ren, Georgea, an artist, and Dominic, a
paper merchant, both of whom survive
her. Her menagerie at her Suffolk home
included dogs, cats, pigeons and the
occasional fox.
Henry’s artistic flair was matched by
her sartorial elegance. Dubbed the
hobbits of medicine, histopathologists,
unlike their forensic colleagues, are
celebrated wife, he became cross when
she shopped in Harrods food hall in-
stead of Sainsbury’s.
Although she enjoyed the high life,
frequenting Sloane Club and Anna-
bel’s, Henry’s appetite for work was un-
dimmed. She regularly worked 14-hourless. When her daughter complained
that she was upset and exhausted after
working for a demanding film director,
Henry tartly responded: “My dear Ge-
orgea. If you want to work with the best,
you have to take shit from the best.”
She liked to take charge of situations
and joked that she was a founder-mem-
ber of the DWIP (Difficult Women in
Pathology) Society, always insisting
that she was right, though colleagues
conceded that she usually was.
She had “male qualities and took on
men at their own game” but it was her
reputation as an outstanding diagnosti-
cian that determined her authority. In
the 1970s there were two main types of
lymphomas: four Hodgkin’s lymphom-
as and five non-Hodgkin’s. Henry
helped to identify more than 70 forms
of lymphoma, some of which are un-
fathomable even to experienced histo-
pathologists. Recognising the need for
international collaboration, she
worked closely with German and US
histopathologists on lymphoma classi-
fication.
Henry was also the impetus behind
the formation in 2005 of the Arab Brit-
ish School of Pathology, which is to be
renamed after her and operates in 23
countries in Africa and the near and
Middle East.
Much of the last 20 years of her life
were spent travelling — she never tired
of the international lecture circuit,
even as an octogenarian. She was al-
ways calm in a crisis. Sandison recalled
being at San Antonio airport and
Henry saying: “Do you know, I have the
distinct recollection of leaving my
telephone in the hotel foyer.”
An anxious Sandison called the hotel
and explained they needed a taxi to
bring the phone to the airport. “I was
then concerned that it wouldn’t arrive,
but it did. Kristin then turned to me and
said: ‘Do you know, Ann, I think that I
was a lot more calm than you were
during that little episode’.”Professor Kristin Henry, histopathologist,
was born on December 13, 1932. She died
of complications arising from vascular
disease on October 11, 2021, aged 88perceived as middle-aged men locked
away in basement laboratories. Yet
Henry — “the Joan Collins of medi-
cine”, with her penchant for bold neck-
laces and coiffed hair — defied the
stereotype.
Some women would be indignant if
a male colleague highlighted their
appearance ahead of their professional
achievements. However, Henry would
have “loved it”, said her friend Ann
Sandison, when a famous surgeon re-marked that he remembered her as “a
very glamorous pathologist”. Accord-
ing to Sandison: “She used her appear-
ance to get her own way and found her
glamour very useful. People did not
expect her to have negotiating skills.”
Once unexpectedly staying in hospi-
tal overnight after day surgery and de-
termined not to let her image slip, she
rang Sandison, saying: “SOS, Ann. SOS.
I need hairspray.” Whenever she hosted
parties her hairdresser was invariably
invited, along with fellow doctors,
diplomats, stockbrokers and prominent
millionaires.
Her daughter recalled: “Her typical
Saturday morning would start with a
much-deserved lie-in, a perusal of the
papers and breakfast in bed. But by
noon she was dressed up in Jaeger’s
finest threads, John Denver was on the
record player and she would be waltz-
ing one of our five cats around an imag-
inary dance floor.”
Henry and her husband, George
Blakey, who died eight years ago, cut a
dash. Blessed with film-star looks and
compared to the actor Terence Stamp,
the long-limbed George modelled for
Terence Donovan, the fashion photo-
grapher and film director. A stock-
broker and later a financial historian
and author of A History of the London
Stock Market, he helped to ensure the
financial viability of the British division
of the IAP. More down to earth than hisShe stressed to students
that they should regard
every slide as a patient
Professor Kristin Henry
Leading pathologist known as ‘the Joan Collins of medicine’ who flew across the Atlantic aged 86 to diagnose her granddaughter
Henry put great stock in her imagelarly with Boogie Wonderland, co-writ-
ten with Allee Willis (obituary Decem-
ber 31, 2019) after White told him he
was looking for a disco song for a group
that he was producing called Curtis,
The Brothers.
“Maurice loved it, and cut it with the
Brothers,” Lind recalled. “They sang it,
but didn’t quite seem to get the vibe.
Maurice asked how I liked it. I said I
wasn’t sure about their vocals. He
laughed, and assured me, ‘I think you
got a hit’.”
A day later White rang Lind with
some bad news: the group had
decided they didn’t want the
song on their album. The
good news was that White
re-recorded the song with
Earth, Wind & Fire. A
month later, Boogie
Wonderland was
released as the
first single
from the
group’s 1979
album I Am.
The song
became acrowd-pleaser on dancefloors from New
York to Nairobi, reached No 6 in the US
charts and No 4 in the UK and garnered
two Grammy nominations. “The reac-
tion was nuts,” Lind recalled. “Wow,
what a turnaround.”
There were further hit songs for Cher
and Cheap Trick before he again went
platinum with Crazy For You, which
gave Madonna her second No 1 single.
Lind had been sent a script for the
film Vision Quest, a coming-of-age
drama about a high school wrestler,
and was asked to write a song for
the soundtrack. Working with co-
writer John Bettis, he came up with a
ballad which they titled Crazy For You.
When
told that a
singer named
Madon-
na was
booked to
sing it,
Lind had
never heard
of her. He
attended a
recording ses-
sion with Bettis, who report-
ed that a clumsy arrange-
ment had left them “de-
pressed about the way thetPerforming
in Hollywood
in 2013days and was due to retire from Charing
Cross Hospital in 2000, but never did.
Staff were amazed to see an octogenari-
an hot-desking on the 11th floor after
she finally cleared out her office.
Diana Kristin Henry was born in
India on the border with Pakistan in
1932, the daughter of Colin Henry, a
British civil servant, and his Danish
wife, Vera (née Christensen). Left to
fend for herself as a small child, she rel-
ished independence and hated being
told what to do and what to wear at
boarding school in Malvern, England.
After the headmistress told her that
medicine was not a career for women,
Henry played truant to attend an inter-
view at St Thomas’ Hospital medical
school, London. She became a medical
student there at the age of 17, despite an
official age limit of 18.
The striking young Henry must have
seemed like an unlikely pathologist and
more likely to pursue a more fashion-
able speciality, but she was curious
about the roots and development of dis-
ease and, moreover, had an outstand-
ingly sharp scientific mind. She was not
a detached scientist, however. Patholo-
gists see slides down a microscoperather than patients face to face but
Henry stressed to students that they
should regard every slide as a patient.
In 1970 she became a lecturer and
honorary consultant in pathology at
the Royal Postgraduate Medical School
and Hammersmith Hospital. Four
years later she moved to the Westmin-
ster Hospital and Children’s Hospital,
where she joined the bone marrow
transplant team and became lead
pathologist in the melanoma unit.
After Westminster closed in 1987 she
became professor of pathology at
Charing Cross.
While she was vivacious, convivial
and kind, she also knew the importance
of being tough and occasionally ruth-Although she enjoyed
the high life, her appetite
for work was undimmed