R.I.P. Sky Saxon
By Joe Gross | Thursday, June 25, 2009, 10:18 AM
Sky Saxon, founder of the brilliant ’60s garage band the Seeds, died Thursday morning at St. David’s Hospital.
The newly minted Austinite, born Richard Marsh, was hospitalized Monday with what doctors suspected was an infection of the internal organs, but cause of death has not yet been released.
Saxon fell ill last Thursday, but performed at Saturday at Antone’s with recent Austin collaborators Shapes Have Fangs.
Sky’s wife Sabrina Saxon posted news of his passing on Facebook this morning: “Sky has passed over and YaHoWha is waiting for him at the gate. He will soon be home with his Father. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him here with us. More later. I’m sorry.”
We are sorry as well.
Saxon was the founder of the Seeds, one of the all-time great first-wave garage rock bands. If the Rolling Stones was the sound of five British guys trying to imitate Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf and failing in new and strange ways, ’60s garage rock was the sound of American kids trying to imitate the Stones and (similarly, brilliantly) missing the mark.
The Seeds fell together in 1965 around a core of Saxon and guitarist Jan Savage with keyboardist Daryl Hooper and drummer Rick Andridge. The bands’s first couple of singles — ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ and ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ — are ’60s punk classics, snotty and fuzzy and brief. Check out their first two albums — ‘The Seeds’ and ‘A Web of Sound,’ both from that magic rock year 1966 — for perfect examples of proto-psychedelic roar.
After a few more records, Saxon broke up the Seeds in 1970, joined the spiritual commune the Source Family, adopted the name Sunlight and played with the Source Family band YaHoWha 13 now and then.
He continuted to make albums since with various lineups, distributing his music via the Internet at
http://www.skysaxon.com. He came to Austin in March for the second annual Psych Fest and never really left, according to his publicist, keeping a very low profile until recently.
