Harnessing chaos and charm, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas rewrote rock’n’roll

The bandleader, who has died aged 71, created a vast body of work that influenced everyone from Ramones to REM, thanks to his absurdist energy• News: David Thomas, anarchic Pere Ubu bandleader, dies aged 71Rock journalism in the 1970s was never short on hyperbole, but when Jon Landau described seeing the young Bruce Springsteen as “rock’n’roll future” – a line which subsequently became part of Springsteen mythology – the singer felt so “suffocated” by the quote he tried to stop it being used and even reputedly tore down his own posters. However, some years later, when a similarly excitable Rolling Stone magazine declared that “modern rock’n’roll reached its peak in 1978” with Pere Ubu’s debut album The Modern Dance, the band’s singer David Thomas took it as a challenge. “I wasn’t going to stop making music in 1978 just because everybody said ‘they’ve ended rock’n’roll’,” he insisted later. “I had – I have – other things to say.”Thus, by the time of his death this week aged 71, he’d made a further 18 studio albums and dozens more live albums with Pere Ubu, plus many others as a solo artist with a myriad of backing bands. He performed in theatrical productions and delivered lectures. Another LP was apparently almost finished, along with an autobiography. He carried on performing even after technically dying twice and subsequently requiring kidney dialysis and a Zimmer frame. “I’m sort of glad that I can’t jump around any more because I don’t have to worry about falling into the drums,” he gleefully insisted. “All my concentration goes into singing.” Absurdly, given his gargantuan critical reputation, he once attributed his almost pathological desire to keep working to a feeling that “artistically, my entire life is failure. I want to get it right”. Continue reading...

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