Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer died today

Received a message from FB from one of his friends and who runs the Blue Cheer website.


October 12 at 7:10am

I am truly heartbroken to have to announce this. Dickie Peterson, the
founding member of Blue Cheer, has passed away this morning at 5 AM in
Germany.

This is a very sad time for all. He was an inspiration and a true rock and roller. He was an icon and a special person.


Blue Cheer were often credited as being the first American metal band, while I think that title is up to debate, their first album 'Vincebus Erptum' is a classic sludge of feedback, sloppy playing and early metal. R.I.P.

Sad to hear. How did he die?

She did not say but he was fighting off a gall bladder infection just a few days ago.

That's horrible! Now I feel kinda bad for dissing on Blue Cheer so much. Despite all I said, I really did enjoy the "Vincebus Eruptum" album.

Dickie

Another message from my FB friend about Dickie Peterson:

Dickie went into the hospital for prostate cancer and the doctors found
liver cancer. He had treatment for the liver cancer. As a result he got
a gall bladder infection. Then Dickie developed some sort of sepsis.
Thats what happened

Terrible news. May he R.I.P.

RIP one of the original Punks!

Dickie had a huge bass sound and a voice to match. People are still coming to terms some 40 years later on what an out and out legendary band the original Blue Cheer was...........

Here's the official statement:

Blue Cheer leader Dickie Peterson has died at the age of 61.
The bassist/vocalist had been battling prostate and liver cancer for some time. Apparently, he contracted a fatal infection while undergoing a surgical procedure.
Peterson was unquestionably one of the forefathers of metal and stoner music as we know it.
His influence on the late 1960s scene was huge, and the debut Blue Cheer album, 1967’s Vincebus Eruptum, remains one of the most important rock albums of the past four decades.
Peterson once said: “I have been so blessed to be able to do what I do, and to do it for so long. Every time I go on stage, it’s a privilege.”
Concerning Blue Cheer’s legacy, Peterson commented: “People keep trying to say that we’re heavy metal or grunge or punk, or we’re this or that. The reality is, we’re just a power trio, and we play ultra blues, and it’s rock and roll. It’s really simple what we do.”

manny wrote:

"The reality is, we’re just a power trio, and we play ultra blues, and it’s rock and roll. It’s really simple what we do.”

Blue Cheer in a nutshell.

RIP.

Terrible news! He was a heavy rock legend... RIP

Very cool tribute written by Rush's own Neil Peart:

Rush drummer and Blue Cheer fan Neil Peart wrote the following
in memory of singer/bassist Dickie Peterson, who died after a battle
with liver cancer on October 12th:
In the summer of 1968, I was going on 16, living in a small Canadian
city (St. Catharines, Ontario), and had been playing drums for a couple
of years. I owned a small set of Rogers drums, a plastic AM radio that
I played along to, a tiny mono record player, and 12 LPs. On the
bookshelf in my room, facing my drums, I stacked those LPs with the
covers facing outward, rotating different ones to the front.
Both fans and haters of my future work with Rush would find those
LPs telling, and nod their heads or roll their eyes accordingly: The
Who’s My Generation, Happy Jack and The Who Sell Out; Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold as Love by the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the Grateful Dead’s and Moby Grape’s eponymous debuts; Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow; Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears; the first album by Traffic (called Reaping, in a Canadian-only variation, the cover showing the band posing on a Massey Ferguson combine); and Vincebus Eruptum, the first album by “the world’s loudest band,” Blue Cheer.
Tiny articles in early rock magazines said Blue Cheer were so loud they had to record outdoors — part of their second album, Outsideinside,
was recorded on a San Francisco pier — and the drummer, Paul Whaley,
played so hard he had to wear golf gloves. Blue Cheer had a fortress of
amplifiers, cannonades of drums, forests of hair, were managed by a
former Hells Angel named Gut (who described the band’s sound as: “They
turn the air into cottage cheese”), and they were hated by grownups and
rock critics alike. Of course I loved them!
Blue Cheer’s version of “Summertime Blues” was a good-sized hit that summer of 1968, and their two albums that year, Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside, galvanized my friends and me. When TV Guide
listed Blue Cheer as guests on Steve Allen’s late-night TV show, I was
wildly excited (rock bands on TV were rare in those days). I tuned in
to watch what I remember as a comical period-piece: Steve Allen, in his
black suit and tie, thick-rimmed glasses, and Brylcreemed hairdo,
sitting at his desk and saying something like, “the loud noise you are
hearing is just the hum of their amplifiers.” Then, “Blue Cheer — run
for your lives!”
Cut to a wall of Marshalls, a massive set of Rogers drums, and three
long-haired guys crashing into “Summertime Blues.” I had our family TV
turned down low, trying not to disturb Mom and Dad, but the speaker was
still overwhelmed with static and distortion. Drummer Paul Whaley
thrashed at the cymbals with both arms, Leigh Stephens was a
dark-haired menace grinding out thick guitar riffs, and Dickie Peterson
wailed through a pyramid of blond hair with his bass guitar hanging
low.
I loved those first two Blue Cheer albums, and even the third, New!
Improved!, though it was a major departure (not as loud). In 2004, my
bandmates and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary by recording an
album of covers, Feedback, to pay tribute to our early
influences. We combined the Who’s and Blue Cheer’s versions of
“Summertime Blues,” and ended with me playing the innovative drum
pattern from Blue Cheer’s “Just a Little Bit,” from Outsideinside, which I had never forgotten.
So Blue Cheer made an enduring impression on this once-young
drummer, and definitely played their part in shaping Rush’s beginnings
— a loud power trio with a fortress of amps, cannonades of drums, and a
bass player’s high voice trying to pierce the darkness. That would be
my bandmate Geddy, who remarked that Blue Cheer might well have been
the first heavy metal band.
Dickie Peterson was present at the creation — stood at the roaring
heart of the creation, a primal scream through wild hair, bass hung
low, in an aural apocalypse of defiant energy. His music left deafening
echoes in a thousand other bands in the following decades, thrilling
some, angering others, and disturbing everything — like art is supposed
to do.
A later anthology of Blue Cheer songs was hilariously titled Louder Than God,
and whatever your beliefs, it is certain that death, alas, is louder
than God. Given a little ironic licence, perhaps it becomes a fitting
epitaph for Dickie Peterson.
Because it sure would look cool chiseled in granite . . .