"MC5 were playing on the radio": Pere Ubu founder David Thomas has died after “a long illness", aged 71

Some sad news for all fans of left of centre rock – Pere Ubu frontman and motivating force, David Thomas, has died after a long illness. He was 71.

A statement has been put onto the band’s Facebook page: “In his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest step-daughter by his side. MC5 were playing on the radio.”

The statement continues: “He will ultimately be returned to his (family) home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be ‘thrown in the barn’ … 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.’”

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That was a matter of debate, but Pere Ubu were certainly a unique proposition. They emerged from Cleveland, Ohio in the pre-punk mid 1970s. They released their debut single 30 Seconds Over Tokyo in 1975 but whilst it shared the serrated guitar of their spikier peers, in retrospect it was a sneak preview of post punk – discordant, experimental and with a dark subject matter.

The band’s debut album – 1978’s The Modern Dance – was much praised but unlike say fellow travellers like Talking Heads, Pere Ubu were never destined for mainstream success – they were too knotty and difficult to ever be more that a cult concern. After five albums they split up after Song Of A Bailing Man in 1982.

Pere Ubu - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo - YouTube

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Six years later, the band reformed, and for the next three decades Thomas continued to pilot the band through a further eleven albums. In between there were some interesting side projects – he wrote a a West End show Shockheaded Peter, which he described as a “junk opera” in 2002. Twenty years later the band would perform a set inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 2022.

To the end, Thomas lived a creative life. The Facebook post announcing his death revealed that he had been working on a new album that “he knew was to be his last” as well as an autobiography. Both are be completed and released posthumously.