Peter Case: Last News

The Nerves‘ frontman and writer of Blondie’s 1978 hit ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, Jack Lee, has died aged 71.Lee’s passing was confirmed by his family and management in a statement shared with Pitchfork, saying he had been living with colon cancer for three years. “He never gave up on his music, to the very end. His guitar, right by his side,” Lee’s family wrote.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There has never been a compilation album in the history of rock as influential as “Nuggets,” a 1972 double-LP that revived a period and style that was seen as having ended about five years before. It was nostalgia of a sort for the very recent past — as opposed to the very distant past that’s now being celebrated with fondness as “Nuggets” itself surpasses the half-century, arguably no less central to a certain rock ‘n’ roll ethos than ever. Lenny Kaye, now best known as the guitarist for Patti Smith’s band, but then highly regarded as a rock critic, compiled the original “Nuggets” for Elektra and may have saved an early wave of garage-rock for the ages … although some would give the collection even more credit, for helping invent, or at least bring into focus, the burgeoning punk-rock movement in the 1970s.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticBob Neuwirth, a recording artist and mainstay of the New York City folk scene in the 1960s, and a collaborator with Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, John Cale and Peter Case, among others, died in Santa Monica Wednesday night at age 82. The cause of death was heart failure.“On Wednesday evening in Santa Monica, Bob Neuwirth’s big heart gave out,” said his longtime partner, entertainment executive Paula Batson, in a statement. “He was 82 years old and would have been 83 in June.