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Richard Marc Dufay was born 19th of February, 1952 in Paris, after his mother, working there on the post war "Marshall Plan", had an affair with an American actor. In 1954 he moved back to the U.S. with his mother, living in N.J. with his grandmother until the age of twelve while his mother was working for ABC news. At the age of twelve his mother married an Italian, the family living in Englewood N.J., where Rick enjoyed highschool, smoking pot and making protests. Rick even got himself on the cover of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies album cover holding a big peace sign. Rick left home to pursue his muscical career at 17, heading for New York.
He soon made big name contacts, eventually securing Bill Graham as a manager. Rick had played in quite a few bands in New York, he played in a covers band called Godspeed before Humble Pie guitarist Steve Marriot suggested he play originals, thus prompting a two year stint with Modesty Blaise, before playing for a band called Pegasus. Around 1978 Rick found himself hanging out with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood in a club where Steven Tyler happened to come across him, and before long the Aerosmith frontman had challenged Rick to an arm wrestle.
He soon decided to go solo, and even moved to the West Coast to "get things going" (Graham resided on the West Coast), before changing managers due to Graham's unavailability and recording his debut album. Tender Loving Abuse (Polydor 1980), apparently the first LP to be digitally recorded, was in fact commercially unsuccessful, though it gave him a foot in the door for further career advancement. After passing on a demo tape to Jack Douglas, who was working on an album by ex L.A Jet, Karen Lawrence and her band 1994 (Karen also sang vocals on the Aerosmith song "Get It Up" off Draw The Line), Douglas agreed to produce the album. It was Douglas that persuaded Dufay to join Aerosmith, despite intial hesitations from Dufay. The lure of playing to 20, 000 every night in a name band overcame the concerns about a band consumed with management and drug problems, an inactive, close to death lead singer.
So Dufay joined the band, and contributed to Rock In A Hard place, as well as becoming a close drug buddy of Steven Tyler's, all the while expressing his warped, over the top, bordering on lunatic personality in incidents like trying to jump out of an airline cabin halfway to Hawaii, after not sleeping and doing too many drugs. His stage persona was much the same, many newspaper articles lauding his charismatic showmanship, a deliberate attempt to steal the limelight from Crespo and Tyler.
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Above: Dufay in his Aerosmith days.
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After the reunion of Joe and Brad with the band at the February 14th show 1984, Dufay willingly departed from the band, Dufay worked at getting himself straightened out over several years amidst a solo project of varying success. He recorded tracks for an album on the French "Link" label, but apparently this project never came to fruition.
However, Rick found some level of success in forming the group Blue By Nature with Karen Lawrence singing, recording the album Blue To The Bone with producer Jack Douglas, thus continuing the Aerosmith link. The album was fairly impressive, recorded in a 24 track studio fitted in a 1950's bus, featuring straight blues mixed with more rock oriented blues numbers, the band gaining a good following. Rick has since left Blue By Nature to pursue solo work, though you can hear his playing on BBN's "Live At The Lake" double cd on Hostel records, singing a rocking duet with Karen Lawrence on "You Got Me Workin'". Check out Music Boulevard or CDNow for sales info.
Below: The cover of Blue By Nature's "Blue To The Bone" (Rick far right)
Below right: Karen Lawrence and Jack Douglas
Below:Rick and Karen
Below right: Rick in the 24 track studio bus for the recording of Blue To The Bone.
Below: Blue By Nature:(from left) Fred Hostetler, Rick Dufay, Charlie Diaz, Karen Lawrence, Dan Potruch.
For more on Blue By Nature, check out
Special thanks goes to Fred Hostetler, guitarist in BBN, who helped out with with info on Rick, and also for allowing the use of above BBN pics. Thanks Fred!
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