David Thomas, who fronted the boundary-pushing rock band Pere Ubu from the late 1970s forward, died Wednesday at age 71. The news was announced on the group’s Facebook page, where the cause of death was only given as the result of “a long illness.”
The band’s statement said that Thomas “died in his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest stepdaughter by his side. MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be ‘thrown in the barn’.”
Thomas also was a founder of the short-lived mid-’70s band Rocket From the Tombs, a Cleveland group that was considered influential in proto-punk circles even though they split up before ever recording an album. From there, he moved on to leading the more adventurous Pere Ubu, whose determinedly uncommercial music was self-described as “avante-garage.”
Pere Ubu’s original, most influential run lasted from 1975 through 1982. A version of the band reformed in 1987, and thereafter Thomas continued to alternate work with oft-changing Pere Ubu lineups with solo projects, side bands and even a Rocket From the Tombs reformation.
Said Pere Ubu’s Facebook statement: “David Thomas and his band have been recording a new album. He knew it was to be his last. We will endeavor to continue with mixing and finalizing the new album so that his last music is available to all. Aside from that, he left instruction that the work should continue to catalog all the tapes from live shows via the official Bandcamp page. His autobiography was nearly completed and we will finish that for him. Pere Ubu’s Patreon will continue as a community, run by communex.”
The statement concluded: “We’ll leave you with his own words, which sums up who he was better than we can – ‘My name is David Fucking Thomas… and I’m the lead singer of the best fucking rock and roll band in the world.’ … Long Live Pere Ubu.”
Although he was to move away, Thomas was associated with the edgier side of the Cleveland rock scene, and before starting up his career as a musician, he wrote a weekly column for the Cleveland Scene under the pseudonym Crocus Behemoth.
His band Rocket From the Tombs had just been commemorated on Record Store Day this year with a 50th anniversary edition of a collection of rehearsal and live tracks from the band, which also included members who would go on to form the Dead Boys. A sticker on the LP included a quote from the Guardian that called Rocket From the Tombs “the most self-destructive group ever to smash a six-string.”
Thomas, who stood out in the 1970s when he began wearing a suit and tie on stage, resisted labels like punk and post-punk. His tastes ebbed and flowed between aggressive music and more esoteric tastes, as his collaborators came to range from Richard Thompson to Hal Willner, whose tribute to Federico Fellini and Nino Rota included contributions from Thomas, as did a collection of sea shanties.
Pere Ubu released 19 studio albums from 1978 through 2023, although the group recently touted that its Bandcamp page now consisted of 40 albums, including archival live releases.
More to come…
