operating theater, shouting, 'Don't cut off his arm! He's a piano player!'" He spent six months in a wheelchair, eventually receiving a steel hip. Though by 1984 he was able to play piano for short periods, his arm's nerves never recovered, and he "may have been in considerable pain for the rest of his life." In the 1980s he returned to USC, first in administration, then teaching musical theater. At USC in 1997 he directed productions of Good News and The Threepenny Opera, and in the 1990s completed Sister Aimee, a musical based on the life of Aimee Semple McPherson, which was performed in Los Angeles in 1995 and in Chicago in 2004. He and Rob Dickins of Warner Music UK discussed recording Sister Aimee. He was the executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Society of Fund-Raising Executives (now the National Association of Fundraising Professionals) and was a part of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles (now the Academy of New Musical Theatre). Ackles died of lung cancer on March 2, 1999, at the age of 62. Legacy When Elvis Costello was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, he cited Ackles in his speech as one of his major influences. In the November 2000 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Costello identified two of Ackles's albums among his "500 Greatest Albums Ever," describing Ackles as "perhaps the greatest unheralded songwriter of the late 60s." When Phil Collins was on the British BBC radio show Desert Island Discs, he selected Ackles's song "Down River" as one of his eight all-time favorite songs. He said of Ackles: "He taught me that writing songs didn’t have to be moon/spoon/June. That you could write intelligently about more serious subjects." Elton John and Elvis Costello—two of Ackles's most fervent admirers—chose "Down River" to perform as their first-ever duet together for the finale of the premiere episode of Costello's TV series Spectacle: Elvis Costello with....Interviewed in 1990 for the booklet accompanying his To Be Continued retrospective box-set, Elton John recalled his incredulity when he discovered that Ackles had been selected to be his co-headlining opening act for his American debut at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles in August 1970. "I could not believe that I was on the same stage with someone like David Ackles who opened for me at the Troubadour. David