Amy Pritchard misses late exchanges with her fellow insomniac. But that doesn't lessen the blow: Demon Eye guitarist Erik Sugg says he keeps expecting Holland to show up at a rock club or post a ridiculous joke on Facebook. His closest friends suggest that, in many ways, years of bad living and drinking finally killed Holland.

Holland never really returned to the spotlight.

Cry of Love released another album, but it didn't climb the charts in the same way. Both slid quickly away from what had seemed a guaranteed career. But just after this success, the band let Holland go. 2.) Big tours followed, and on the heels of the grunge surge, the record-buying public seemed primed for Cry of Love's Southeastern take on similar tropes. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, while 'Bad Thing' hit No. Three songs from the band's Columbia records debut, Brother, charted. Only two decades ago, the future of Holland and Cry of Love looked limitless. 24 in WakeMed, just a week after he'd made that plea. 'Do you want to die before then?' Thomas asked.Īnd he did, even though he never returned to the Velvet Cloak. Thomas told Holland that, if he left WakeMed early, he might die before even reaching the two-month minimum doctors had given him. But suffering from a severe abdominal infection, he had given up. He had toured with Aerosmith and lent his voice to a handful of minor radio hits in the '90s with the major label-signed Raleigh band Cry of Love. Holland had played in local bands since the mid-'80s, acts like The Point, Crush and Sundog. 'I said 'Well, Kelly, as your friend, I really can't do that if the doctors think that's a bad idea,'' Thomas remembers. In February, he hoped to return to his rented room in the Velvet Cloak on Hillsborough Street, where he'd been living with his friend Kent Thomas. Doctors had given him between two and five months to live, but he didn't want to spend them in a hospital room. Kelly Holland knew he was dying, and he wanted out of the hospital. Kelly Holland, third from the left, led Raleigh band Cry of Love during its short-lived rise toward fame.

Love singe