David Thomas, frontman for Cleveland experimental rock band Pere Ubu, and previously Rocket From The Tombs, has died. The singer was 71.
The information of Thomas’ passing was shared on the band’s Fb web page.
The assertion reads:
“David Thomas, June 14 1953 – April 23 2025.
“David Lynn Thomas, lead singer of Pere Ubu, Rocket From The Tombs and a number of solo projex, has died after an extended sickness.
“On Wednesday, April 23 2025, he died in his house city of Brighton & Hove, together with his spouse and youngest step-daughter by his aspect. MC5 have been enjoying on the radio. He’ll in the end be returned to his house, the farm in Pennsylvania, the place he insisted he was to be “thrown within the barn.”
“David Thomas and his band have been recording a brand new album. He knew it was to be his final. We are going to endeavour to proceed with mixing and finalising the brand new album in order that his final music is offered to all. Other than that, he left instruction that the work ought to proceed to catalog all of the tapes from dwell reveals through the official bandcamp web page. His autobiography was practically accomplished and we are going to end that for him. Pere Ubu’s Patreon will proceed as a neighborhood, run by communex.
“We’ll depart you together with his personal phrases, which sums up who he was higher than we will – ‘My title is David Fucking Thomas… and I’m the lead singer of the perfect fucking rock n roll band on this planet.’
(Frigo Documentary)
“Lengthy Reside Pere Ubu.”
The experimental and boundary-breaking Pere Ubu shaped in Cleveland, Ohio in 1975, following the break-up of storage rockers Rocket From The Tombs, with guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz happening to kind the Lifeless Boys.
Thomas was the one fixed member of Pere Ubu, who described their raucous, free-wheeling sound as “avant-garage”, with Rolling Stone judging their influential 1978 debut album The Trendy Dance “harsh and wilfully ugly”. Writing in Basic Rock in 2004, journalist Malcolm Dome known as the report, “a touchstone of art-rock genius, a real masterpiece”, including “with out this album, a lot of the extra esoteric rock music recorded within the many years since would have merely remained unheard.”
Thomas, nonetheless, as soon as claimed to Prog journal that Pere Ubu are literally a mainstream act, sayinhg, “You possibly can hint a straight line from the very beginnings, let’s say Heartbreak Lodge, to Brian Wilson to Lou Reed. Into the 70s there was a better maturity of narrative, of the language of music and the event of method. Every thing was evolving and transferring ahead. Pere Ubu joined that straight line.”
Hassle on Massive Beat Road, the group’s nineteenth and most up-to-date album, was launched in 2023.
