With Ian Dury, Chaz Jankel co-wrote some of Ian Dury & the Blockheads best-known songs including Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3 and One Love.
Chaz Jankel, is an English singer, songwriter, arranger, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. In a music career spanning more than 40 years, Jankel came to prominence in the late 1970s as the guitarist and keyboardist of the rock band Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Jankel also had a solo career which has resulted in nine studio albums and has a long list of credits as both a performer and as a songwriter. Ian Robins Dury was a British singer-song writer and actor who rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and new wave era of rock music. He was the lead singer of Ian Dury & the Blockheads and before that of Kilburn & the High Roads. The Kilburn's found favour on London's pub rock circuit but, despite favourable press coverage and a tour opening for the rock band The Who, the group failed to rise above cult status and disbanded in 1975. The Blockheads' sound drew from its members' diverse musical influences, which included jazz, rock and roll, funk, and reggae, plus Dury's love of music hall. The band was formed after Dury began writing songs with pianist and guitarist Chaz Jankel. He is best known for the single's Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick which reached No. 1 in the UK at the beginning of 1979. Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57. An obituary in The Guardian called him one of few true originals of the English music scene.
