Obituaries: Dickie Peterson, Brendan Mullen, Stephen Gately

• Blue Cheer bassist-singer Dickie Peterson died yesterday in Germany after developing an infection following surgery to treat prostate and liver cancer, Blabbermouth reports. Peterson, 61 (pictured above) was a founding member of the hard-rock trio whose debut Vincebus Eruptum remains a heavy-metal landmark.

• Brendan Mullen, a pioneer behind the scenes of the Los Angeles punk scene, passed away from a sudden stroke Monday in L.A., Variety reports. Mullen founded legendary club the Masque in 1977, where the Germs and X performed legendary gigs; he later became a booker at Club Lingerie and co-wrote We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk. His final book was the Jane's Addiction oral history Whores, which was published in 2005.
• Stephen Gately of Irish boy band Boyzone died unexpectedly while on vacation with his boyfriend in Majorca, ABC News reports. Gately, 33, suffered a buildup of fluid in his lungs that led to respiratory failure.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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