{"id":434568,"date":"2026-05-19T06:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434568\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T06:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:23:11","slug":"dennis-locorriere-obituary-singer-with-the-rock-band-dr-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434568\/","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Locorriere obituary: singer with the rock band Dr Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the bearded lead singer of Dr Hook, Dennis Locorriere spent three decades singing about Sylvia and her meddlesome mother \u2014 and then he met her.<\/p>\n

Written by Shel Silverstein, Dr Hook\u2019s recording of Sylvia\u2019s Mother topped charts around the world in 1972, a novelty song parodying teen-heartbreak with Locorriere pleading in vain to be allowed to talk to his girl, even if it was only \u201cto tell her goodbye\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fact, as Locorriere later revealed, it was based on a true story \u201cabout a girl Shel knew when he was a young man and the phone call in the lyrics happened almost as they say it did. Shel called, and Sylvia\u2019s mother had other ideas and wouldn\u2019t let her speak to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RayLocorriere was resentful that Sawyer was considered the face of Dr Hook, despite that fact that he was lead vocal on many of the band\u2019s biggest hitsDavid Redfern\/Redferns<\/p>\n

Sylvia was Silverstein\u2019s girlfriend, Sylvia Maria Pandolfi, who became engaged to another man and subsequently became the curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Her mother \u2014 the \u201cMrs Avery\u201d in the song \u2014 was Emma Louisa Pandolfi, and many years later, a television company made a documentary about the song featuring Sylvia\u2019s mother and Locorriere. \u201cShe was about 92 and was sweet, but she still disputed the lyrics and said \u2018I was not rude to the boy when he called,\u2019\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n

The documentary led to Locorriere and Sylvia arranging to meet for lunch, and he confessed that he was so nervous that right up until the last minute, he thought about cancelling. \u201cIt was like having lunch with the Loch Ness monster, this legendary creature,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was exciting and startling at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the event, they shared a laugh about the song her one-time lover had written inspired by their doomed teenage love affair. \u201cThe greatest thing about it was she knew Shel years before I did,\u201d Locorriere said. \u201cBut after that phone call, she never saw him again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For much of the group\u2019s existence, Dr Hook had two lead singers, with Locorriere sharing vocal duties with Ray Sawyer, whose eyepatch and battered cowboy hat made him the group\u2019s visual focus and, in the words of NME, \u201cthe most instantly recognisable mug in the rock business\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"SevenLocorriere, second right, with the rest of the band in Atlanta in 1976. Locorriere was a decade younger than most of his bandmatesTom Hill\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

To many, Sawyer \u2014 who had lost his right eye in a 1967 car crash \u2014 was \u201cDr Hook\u201d and Locorriere, whose conventional hippie look of straggly long hair and beard made him look like the band\u2019s roadie, was ignored. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat used to really hurt my feelings,\u201d he candidly admitted. \u201cWhen we\u2019d walk into radio stations, everybody would run and talk to Ray like I was the caterer. Then I\u2019d sing on the air, and they\u2019d realise. I was nobody\u2019s friend on the way in, but everybody\u2019s pal on the way out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sawyer sang lead on the group\u2019s hit The Cover Of The Rolling Stone, but in addition to Sylvia\u2019s Mother, it was Locorriere who sang lead on hits such as The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, famously covered by Marianne Faithfull, and When You\u2019re In Love With A Beautiful Woman, which spent three weeks at No 1 in the UK in 1979. On other songs, such as the group\u2019s 1978 easy-listening hit Sharing The Night Together, they harmonised with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI like songs which tell stories,\u201d Locorriere said. \u201cIt means I can be more than just a singer; it almost steps into acting. When you\u2019re singing Sylvia\u2019s Mother, you have to be that guy in the phone booth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DennisLocorriere on stage in Punchestown Racecourse in Ireland in 2017Debbie Hickey\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sawyer left the group in 1983, and Dr Hook continued touring until 1985 with Locorriere as the lone frontman. After the group broke up, he retained legal ownership of the band\u2019s name but licensed it to his former co-singer to tour as \u201cRay Sawyer of Dr Hook\u201d.<\/p>\n

After recording several solo albums under his own name, Locorriere eventually resumed performing as Dr Hook, including a 50th anniversary tour which was delayed for a year due to Covid.<\/p>\n

Sawyer died aged 81 (obituary January 2, 2019), and there was not a lot of love lost between the two former bandmates. \u201cThere were years of wrangles with lawyers and shit,\u201d Locorriere said. \u201cIt\u2019s no different from if you used to love somebody and now they want to cut your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2002, Locorriere moved to England, where he took dual citizenship and lived in West Sussex with his third wife, Claire Anne, who survives him. He is further survived by a son, Jessejames Locorriere, an actor, and a daughter, Lily.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His first two marriages ended in divorce, although he would not say if his chequered career as a husband had anything to do with his lyrics for Dr Hook\u2019s 1976 hit If Not You, intended as a love song but for which he got some flak for lines such as \u201cWho\u2019s gonna iron my shirts?\u201d and \u201cWho\u2019s gonna keep me fed?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DennisLocorriere performing with Dr Hook at Lead Belly Fest 2015 at the Royal Albert HallEdu Hawkins\/Redferns via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Dennis Michael Locorriere was born in 1949 in New Jersey, the son of teenage parents, Ruth (n\u00e9e Mantovani) and Lenny Locorriere, who separated soon after he was born. Growing up in Union City, New Jersey, just over the Hudson River from New York, he was raised mostly by his maternal grandmother, Angelina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By his late teens, he was singing and playing guitar in local clubs. \u201cI just knew that I didn\u2019t want to have a regular job because at that time I was a hippy,\u201d he said. \u201cI would go to bars at night and play until three in the morning, playing and having fun with my friends, and I really wasn\u2019t thinking too much about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 18, he became a founder member of Dr Hook and the Medicine Show, joining Sawyer, the guitarist George Cummings and the keyboard player Billy Francis, all of whom were older by a decade and more, and had moved north from Alabama to form a new band.<\/p>\n

The group signed to CBS Records in 1971 and hit the top a year later with Sylvia\u2019s Mother. It was followed into the charts by The Cover Of The Rolling Stone, and within a few weeks, Dr Hook were indeed on the front of the magazine. \u201cThe only thing I regret is that when we got on the cover, we were a bunch of assholes and we had nothing to say,\u201d Locorriere noted laconically.<\/p>\n

Despite a string of hits and working incessantly, playing up to 300 dates a year, by 1974 the band was forced to file for bankruptcy. \u201cI closed my eyes, and I sang, and by the time I opened my eyes, half the shit I should have had was not mine,\u201d Locorriere said. \u201cBut that\u2019s life, and I\u2019m not going to blame anyone for it. If we were in the black when we finished a tour, we\u2019d party into the red.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although many of the group\u2019s best-known songs were written by Silverstein, Locorriere was a talented and versatile songwriter in his own right, as his solo albums showed. He was also credited alongside Silverstein with co-writing Dr Hook\u2019s A Couple More Years, which was covered by Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, among others.<\/p>\n

Asked how he would like to be remembered, he replied that the hits and the gold and platinum albums on the wall were unimportant. Rather, to have sung with \u201can entertaining musical group who spread joy and goodwill everywhere we went\u201d was all the satisfaction he could ever have wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dennis Locorriere, Dr Hook singer, was born on June 13, 1949. He died of kidney disease on May 16, 2026, aged 76<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the bearded lead singer of Dr Hook, Dennis Locorriere spent three decades singing about Sylvia and her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-434568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}