We note with sadness the following contributors to rock and pop music of the 50s through the 80s – the BEST music ever made! – who passed on last month:
September 04
● Robby Turner → Pedal steel guitarist and contributor to albums and tours by outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings from 1976 through 2012, as well as producing Jenning’s 2012 posthumous LP Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings, appeared as a sessionman on dozens of albums and toured with numerous top acts, including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Highwaymen, Dixie Chicks and Chris Stapleton, died from undisclosed causes on 9/4/2025, age 63.
September 05
● Bruce Loose / (Bruce Richard Calderwood) → Co-lead singer and bassist in unique, dual singer and dual bassist punk rock band Flipper (“Sex Bomb,” 1981), broke his back in a 1994 car accident but returned in the early 2000s to restart Flipper and front the band until being voted out in 2015 due to health issues, suffered a stroke three months before dying from a suspected heart attack on 9/5/2025, age 66.
● Mark Volman / (Mark Randall Volman) → With long-time friend and musical collaborator Howard Kaylan, co-founder and vocals for light 60s pop-rock The Turtles (“Happy Together,” #1, 1967), then joined Frank Zappa-led satirical rock group The Mothers Of Invention (“Brown Shoes Don’t Make It,” 1967) and later formed the long-lived sardonic pop music duo Flo & Eddie (“Keep It Warm,” 1976), continued to perform with Kaylan on TV, film, radio and in reconstituted Turtles projects for decades, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees while in his late 40s and taught marketing and business in the music industry at various schools and universities, died in a hospital from complications of a blood disease on 9/5/2025, age 78.
September 06
● Rick Davies / (Richard Davies) → Founder, keyboardist, songwriter and vocalist – and only constant member – of Brit prog-art-pop-rock Supertramp, composed or co-wrote many of the band’s hits, including “The Logical Song” (#6, UK #7, 1979) and “It’s Raining Again” (#11, UK #26, 1982) with bandmate Roger Hodson and became sole lead vocalist following Hodson’s departure in 1983, worked as a solo artist during periods when Supertramp was on hiatus, including in the 10s, died at home from complications of multiple myeloma (blood cancer) on 9/6/2025, age 81.
September 08
● Viv Prince / (Vivian Martin Prince) → After starting in the early 60s with several jazz and pop bands, became rock music’s first wildman drummer while in a short, chaotic, debauchery-filled stint with raunchy R&B/blues-rock British Invasion band The Pretty Things (“Don’t Bring Me Down,” UK #10, 1964), fired from the band in late 1965 for unreliability and spent the next three decades as a stand-in drummer, sessionman and occasional solo artist, retired to a citrus farm in Portugal in 2005 and died there from unspecified causes on 9/8/2025, age 84.
September 09
● Allan “Skill” Cole / (Allan Aloysius Cole) → Jamaican football star in international leagues, including in the US and Brazil, and close friend of reggae legend Bob Marley, worked with Marley and his bands as manager and tour manager while not on the pitch, helped found Tuff Gong Records and received songwriting credits for “War” from the album Rastafarian Vibration (1976), the song creating controversy when it was discovered the lyrics borrowed heavily from a 1963 speech to the UN General Assembly by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, was working on a Marley biopic when died following a brief illness on 9/9/2025, age 74.
September 10
● Bobby Hart / (Robert Luke Harshman) → Collaborator with Tommy Boyce in the singer-songwriter duo Boyce & Hart and three Top 40 hits in the late 60s, including “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight” (#8, 1968), then as a prolific songwriting team with dozens more Top 40 hits and over 300 compositions, among them “Come A Little Bit Closer” (#3, 1964) by Jay & The Americans and “Last Train To Clarksville” (#1, 1966) by The Monkees, for whom the team became chief songwriters, toured and recorded with members of The Monkees in Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart in the 70s, died at home from undisclosed causes on 9/10/2025, age 86.
● Nicky Ryan / (Nicholas Dominick Ryan) → Irish recording engineer, music producer and artist manager, starting in the 70s with Gary Moore, Thin Lizzy and others, then joining family Celtic band Clannad as sound engineer and manager until leaving with 18-year-old bandmember Eithne Ní Bhraonáinto (“Enya”) to manage her solo career, wrote and produced records for Enya over a four decade partnership, through 2015, often with his wife, Roma, as lyricist, died in a Dublin hospital after sudden but unspecified complications during tests on 9/10/2025, age 79.
September 13
● Stephen Luscombe → Multi-instrumentalist member of several 70s progressive and experimental rock bands before co-founding New Wave synth-pop duo Blancmange and scoring four UK Top 20 hits, including “Blind Vision” (Dance #3, UK #10, 1983), went on hiatus for 25 years but released a collaboration with Boy George as The West India Company in 1989, restarted Blancmange in 2011 to issue a fourth studio album, retired when diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm and enjoyed a less-stressful retirement until dying from heart trouble on 9/13/2025, age 70.
● Hermeto Pascoal / (Hermeto Pascoal Oliveira da Costa) → Self-taught multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso in several, rose from rural Brazilian poverty to become a prolific composer with over 2,000 individual songs, including one written for each day of the year (plus February 29) and over fifty solo and collaborative albums, along with dozens of appearances as a contributor to top jazz artists, among them Miles Davis, Airto Moreira, and Flora Purim, won a Latin Grammy award in 2019 for the album Hermeto Pascoal e Sua Visão Original do Forró, died from multiple organ failure on 9/13/2025, age 89.
September 15
● Joel Moss → Seven-time Grammy winning music producer and recording engineer with a 50-year resume of work, including the first analog to digital transfer of recordings when engineering the Talking Heads’ documentary Stop Making Sense in 1984, the last recordings of Ray Charles days before his 2005 death, recordings by Rod Stewart, Eagles, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others as executive director and chief engineer at The Record Plant studios in the late 80s, relocated to Upstate New York in the early 00s and spent two decades recording local groups, creating special programming and digitizing Broadway musicals, died suddenly from unspecified causes on 9/15/2025, age 79.
September 18
● Diane Martel → Music video director and choreographer with nearly 200 videos from 1992 through 2025 by Maria Carey, Jennifer Lopez and Sting, among many others, with the best known being the controversial “Blurred Lines” for Robin Thicke (2013), also choreographed the dance routines in the R.E.M. music video “Shiny Happy People” (1991), produced several documentaries about the New York City music world, and was the visiting filmmaker at the University of Oregon in 2022, died from breast cancer on 9/18/2025, age 63.
September 19
● Sonny Curtis → Songwriter and teenage friend of Buddy Holly and sometime member of Holly‘s The Crickets, wrote songs for The Everly Brothers and Anne Murray before joining The Crickets full-time following Holly‘s death in 1959, penned “I Fought The Law” for them and The Bobby Fuller Four (#9, 1966), later wrote the theme song for TV sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Love Is All Around” (Country #29, 1980), in the 80s and 90s penned TV and radio commercial jingles for McDonald’s, Honda, Olympia Beer, Bell Telephone and Mattel Toys, issued nine solo albums and 13 charting singles through 2007, died from pneumonia in a Nashville hospital on 9/19/2025, age 88.
September 23
● Danny Thompson / (Daniel Henry Edward Thompson) → English double bass guitarist with a long career as bandmember, sessionman and solo artist, starting with Alex Korner’s Blues Incorporated for five albums in the mid-60s, joined folk-rock Pentangle for its first incarnation (1968-1974) and subsequent reunions, released a solo album in 1987 and followed with three more through 1995, from the late 60s into the 10s collaborated with John Martyn, Richard Thompson and many others, and appeared as a sessionman on singles and albums by dozens of artists, including Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and The Blind Boys of Alabama, continued to record and perform until declining health forced him to retire, died from undisclosed causes on 9/23/2025, age 86.
September 25
● Chris Dreja / (Christopher Walenty Dreja) → Founding member, bassist, rhythm guitarist and sometime songwriter for legendary British blues-rock The Yardbirds, played behind lead guitarists Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, co-wrote many of the songs on and doodle-sketched the cover of the band’s debut UK album Yardbirds (1966, commonly referred to as Roger The Engineer in the UK and released as Over Under Sideways Down in the US and elsewhere), after the band folded in 1968 took up a career as a commercial photographer, joined a spin-off band Box of Frogs in the 80s and a reformed Yardbirds in 1992, played with the group until health issues forced retirement in 2013, died in a London nursing home from complications of a stroke and COPD on 9/25/2025, age 78.
