I didn’t see this one from Reuters:
Guitarist Robert Quine, one of punk rock’s most daring soloists, was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment. He was 61.
That’s really a shame. Robert used to hang out with the Velvet Underground back in the day. In fact a couple years ago, Polydor released a collection of unofficially official live recordings that he did of them “Bootleg Series, Vol. 1: The Quine Tapes”. The quality is pretty much no-fi but it does really capture the raw power of VU.
Anyone who enjoys punk and hasn’t taken a look at VU really needs to. There’s a story about their first album, “The Velvet Underground & Nico”: that it only sold 1000 copies initially but everyone who bought one of those copies went out a formed their own band.
Quine understood that. He was one of the founding members of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Their 1977 debut album, “Blank Generation” is one of the truly great punk rock albums.
Robert went on to work with many excellent artists including Lou Reed, Lydia Lunch, Brian Eno, Material, They Might Be Giants, Tom Waits, Matthew Sweet, and even John Zorn.
He will be missed.