Pete Shelley, singer-songwriter of the British punk band, Buzzcocks has passed away at the age of 63 according to a Yahoo source. Shelley, who co-founded the band was in Estonia at the time of his death, a place where he was living at the time. The cause of death is suspected of being a heart attack.
It was confirmed earlier today by the band via their official twitter page; “It’s with great sadness that we confirm the death of Pete Shelley, one of the U.K.’s most influential and prolific songwriters and co-founder of the seminal original punk band Buzzcocks,” the band said in a statement. “Pete’s music has inspired generations of musicians over a career that spanned five decades and with his band and as a solo artist, he was held in the highest regard by the music industry and by his fans around the world.”
Born Peter McNeish, Shelley formed Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto in the mid-1970s after seeing the Sex Pistols performed. Alongside bassist Steve Diggle and drummer John Maher, the band performed live for the first time in 1976 as the opener for the Sex Pistols in Manchester. The following year, Buzzcocks released their debut album entitled Spiral Scratch Ep. Shortly after the release of Spiral, Devoto left the band. Despite the hole, the band kept moving forward. Before their split in 1981, the band released three albums, Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites and A Different Kind of Tension, solidifying themselves as legends of the punk world. Though, that wasn’t the last time the world saw Buzzcocks, Shelley and Diggle came together and reunited the group back in 1989. After reuniting, the band wen onto release six critically acclaimed studio album between 1993 and 2014.
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