Roland S. Howard Dead

Birthday Party on Gotterdamerung - Junkyard

I have posted this video here before but this new year's day I am listening to the music of Roland S. Howard, which has been part of my life these past twenty years. RIP.


Birthday Party: Deep in the Woods

Former Birthday Party guitarist Roland S. Howard passed away early Wednesday morning after losing his battle with liver cancer. The 50-year-old had been waiting for a crucial liver transplant and had been forced to cancel recent shows due to his illness.

Howard first came to prominence as guitarist with Melbourne punk band the Boys Next Door who then mutated into the Birthday Party. Led by singer Nick Cave, the Birthday Party left their native Australia for the U.K. in 1980 where the band established their fearsome reputation thanks to a series of incendiary gigs that often saw as much violence on stage as off.

Howard's idiosyncratic guitar playing -- an incredible collision of blues, feedback and six-string brutality -- marked him down as a true original and proved to be a huge influence on subsequent generations of guitarists.

After the Birthday Party's split in 1983, Howard lent his guitar skills to Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls. He appeared onstage in London with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in 1991 for a partial Birthday Party reunion when the band played 'Wild World', 'Dead Joe' and 'Nick the Stripper.'



Dead Joe