Artist News

Suicide’s Alan Vega dies

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 18 July 2016

Suicide frontman Alan Vega died on Saturday, aged 78. The news was broken by Henry Rollins, who issued a statement from the singer’s family on his website.

Saying that the musician “passed peacefully in his sleep”, the statement went on to remember Vega as “the quintessential artist on every imaginable level”.

“His entire life was devoted to outputting what his vision commanded of him”, it went on. “Alan’s life is a lesson of what it is to truly live for art. The work, the incredible amount of time required, the courage to keep seeing it and the strength to bring it forth – this was Alan Vega”.

Born Alan Bermowitz in New York in 1938, Vega formed Suicide with multi-instrumentalist Martin Rev in 1970. The duo released their debut album, ‘Suicide’, in 1977, going on to become widely influential on bands up to the present day. Vega also worked with Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters Of Mercy under the name The Sisterhood and released a number of solo albums. Suicide’s fifth and final LP, ‘American Supreme’, was released in 2002.

Among many tributes, Blondie posted a picture of Vega and Rev with Debbie Harry in the mid-1970s to Facebook, saying that Vega’s “innovations will be missed”.

Peaches said that Vega was “a huge influence on me and my idea of synth punk music”, while Zola Jesus said that he was “one of my biggest heroes and musical influences”.

And former Majical Cloudz frontman Devon Welsh uploaded a previously unreleased song written about Vega to his Bandcamp profile after learning the news of his death, saying: “Suicide has been very inspiring and influential to me ever since I first heard their music.
I made this song in 2011 but never released it, I feel like posting it as a small tribute”.

Listen to ‘Me And Alan Vega’ here: