Pete Shelley (nee MacNeish), singer and chief songwriter of the Buzzcocks died at 63 today in Estonia, where he’d been living. Cause of death undetermined.
The preeminent song-oriented punk band, in many ways light years past the far more renowned Sex Pistols or Clash. Shelley and his quartet believed that punk rock was basically crude fast pop music and wrote accordingly. Classic after classic came from his pen, “Orgasm Addict”, “What Do I Get” and “Ever Fallen In Love”, ten years hence a hit for the Fine Young Cannibals. He and his band were also the first to put out their own record in the punk movement, “Spiral Scratch” as opposed to those bands, who’d opted to sign with major labels. Making them—the poppy yearning Buzzcocks—far more “punk rock” than Messers Rotten or Strummer were. They actually DID do it themselves.
I loved them and saw their first American gig in 1979 (foolishly, they’d stepped right off the plane and cabbed it to the show where jet lag rendered them fizzled and frazzled, plus they had to follow the incredible Gang of Four, who’d done three encores at that point!). They were always on after that and their music remains in my playlists to this day and I still cover “Ever Fallen In Love” at my own shows.
Pete’s greatest success in the US was in 1981 as a solo with the dance hit “Homosapien”.
He was a beautiful soul and as a lyricist, had no equal in the “class of ‘77” when it came to the personal and not the political or the parody.
Rest in peace.