Strawbs founding member and longtime frontman Dave Cousins has died, aged 80. The information was reported this afternoon on Cousin’s Fb web page.
The assertion reads: “DAVID JOSEPH COUSINS 1940-2025
It’s with profound unhappiness that we’ve got to announce the passing of David Joseph Cousins on the Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury, peacefully following an extended sickness, at this time, Sunday 13 July 2025.
We are going to all want to have fun the lifetime of this unimaginable singer-songwriter, relation, colleague and/or particular buddy at the moment.
We, subsequently, ask you to get pleasure from listening to your favorite Cousins track because the solar goes down, in no matter a part of the world you’re, having fun with what he would confer with as a glass of vino collapse (wine)…
As extra info turns into obtainable, you can be knowledgeable on his and Strawbs’ Fb pages and on Strawbsweb.
In the meantime, we ask you to hitch in remembering a beautiful, gifted man, whose life has touched us all.”
Born David Joseph Hindson on January 7, 1940, Cousins fashioned Strawbs out of bluegrass band Strawberry Hill Boys, transferring first into folks and later progressive rock. An early singer was future Fairport Conference member Sandy Denny, with whom Strawbs recorded All Our Personal Work in 1967. The band have been the primary UK group signed to A&M Information and Tony Visconti labored with the band on their self-titled 1969 launch, which was produced by Gus Dudgeon.
Rick Wakeman joined the band for 1970’s Simply A Assortment Of Antiques And Curios however would depart following the subsequent 12 months’s From The Witchwood to hitch Sure. Though greatest identified for his or her 1973 No. 2 hit Half Of The Union from that 12 months’s Bursting At The Seams album, 1972’s Grave New World and 1974’s Hero And Heroine symbolize the basic Strawbs sound.
Cousins made an unlikely cameo on Def Leppard‘s 1980 debut album, On Via The Evening, his talking voice may be heard at first of When The Partitions Got here Tumblin’ Down.
In more moderen years’s the band toured with each acoustic and electrical line-ups, which at numerous instances have featured each Adam and Oliver Wakeman, John Younger and Dave Bainbridge, in addition to recording albums for the Esoteric label comparable to The Ferryman’s Curse (2017), Settlement (2021) and The Magic Of It All (2023).
Cousins, who has confronted a lot of well being points in recent times, together with a serious most cancers operation, stent replacements and a full knee substitute, give up touring in 2021 and Strawbs carried out their remaining present at Fairport Conference’s Cropredy Pageant on August 11, 2023.
