Shelly Siegel

Continuing from yesterday's post and the post on Monday, I want to introduce you to Shelly Siegel. Shelly started Mushroom Records (with Mike Flicker and Howard Leese) in Vancouver around the time I was shooting there. I don't remember exactly how I met Shelly but I shot the pictures at the press event for him.

Here's a couple of him...

Shelly's on the left. The guy on the right looks really familiar but...anyone recognize him?

Same thing with this picture...

So, Mushroom Records signed a bunch of Canadian acts including Chilliwack (I think I have pictures of them) and Jerry Doucette. But the act that put Shelly and the company on the map was a band called Heart. They came up from Seattle to record a demo at Can-Base Studios in Vancouver (which was run by Flicker and Leese and became Mushroom Studios) and Shelly signed them and they recorded their first album, Dreamboat Annie, which became a massive hit.

I had moved to L.A. around that time but it wasn't long before Mushroom Records opened an office on Sunset Blvd in the building next to Tower Records. I would occasionally stop in and see Shelly. At the time there was trouble in paradise, with Heart wanting to leave the label.

Less than four years after I took these photographs, Shelly Siegel died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 32 on January 17, 1979. I went to his funeral and was impressed to see the Wilson sisters there, despite the legal battles, and Shelly releasing their second album Magazine after they had signed with another label.