Photo by Ivy NoyScott Morrow used to write about music for this paper quite a bit in the ’80s and ’90s. He was some gift — a blast of energy who brought your heart rate up to his own. He rocked.One time Scott’s band was playing a club, and he was backstage with his guitar. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the sound man announced, “please welcome the Friends!” “Fiends!” yelled Scott, running to the microphone. “Fiends!”It was an easy mistake to make. Scott’s round face and eager incisors got him compared to Clint Howard from Gentle Ben. He hated that. But he glowed with so much goodwill and enthusiasm, it was hard to cast him as a hellion, however hard he might have lived. Hundreds of people, even some who met him only once, considered him a friend. Donita Sparks of the band L7 says Scott opened a lot of doors for her when she came to L.A. “He had a knack for charming the pants off anybody — literally,” she says. “The ladies loved Scott. I’ll miss him.”When he was writing, there weren’t enough words in the world to satisfy Scott, or enough exclamation points. He loved music so much that it oozed from his pores, and he had a terrific knack for communicating that love. He was the first to call Rick Rubin a genius, the first to extol the glory of the rock cowbell. And his passion and knowledge kept growing; one of his great latter-day obsessions, jazz’s Blue Note sound, got him pouring out rivers of praise for Grant Green and Horace Parlan.As generous as a guy with no money could be, Scott was always trying to do something for his friends. If you did him a small favor, he would respond with a handmade tape of the Orb or Frank Zappa or the soundtrack to Planet of the Apes, colored and decorated with his peculiar calligraphy. If he gave you a tip about music, you knew it was worth a listen.Scott had some health issues, and for more than a decade he had been back in his home state, Illinois, where support from family helped him keep it together. But unknown to him, he’d long had a serious bone infection. Complications arose, and treatments fell short. He died on September 20.Suzi Gardner of L7 offers one of Scott’s special aphorisms by way of remembrance: “He was a brilliant genius. NEXT.”

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