Eugene O’Connor, the guitarist who performed as Cheetah Chrome in the pioneering punk band Dead Boys, has died. He was 71.
The band confirmed O’Connor’s death in a post to Instagram on Monday. “We are incredibly sad to announce the news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Cheetah Chrome,” they wrote. “Cheetah was a true original, an architect of the punk rock movement. a one man hurricane tearing up the musical landscape with his feral guitar riffs and manic energy. Beyond all that Cheetah was also just a really sweet guy that loved rock-roll.”
O’Connor, raised in Cleveland, first came to prominence as a member of the band Rocket From the Tombs in 1974. The group included David Thomas, who would later front the experimental rock act Pere Ubu, and several members of what would become the Dead Boys. O’Connor joined the group Frankenstein, with singer Stiv Bators and drummer Johnny Blitz, which quickly transitioned into Dead Boys, filled out with guitarist Jimmy Zero and bassist Jeff Magnum.
The title of their 1977 debut “Young, Loud and Snotty” summed up their aesthetic, embodied on teenage-kicks anthems like “Ain’t Nothin’ to Do” and the tawdry “Caught With the Meat in Your Mouth.” But the band, which had relocated to New York to play in its nascent punk scene alongside the Ramones and New York Dolls, stood out for flourishes like the heavy phaser in “Sonic Reducer.” Chrome’s trashy, thrashy playing wedded the urgency of punk with devotion to older, sleazy rock ’n’ roll.
They released a second LP, “We Have Come for Your Children,” in 1978, before disbanding. Bators died in 1990, but the group sporadically reunited and toured in the decades after. The band appeared in several films, including the punk documentary “D.O.A.: A Right of Passage.” In the 2013 biopic film “CBGB,” Chrome was played by Rupert Grint (of Harry Potter fame).
With Chrome as its last original member, the band planned to tour for a 50th anniversary of “Young, Loud and Snotty” in 2027.
O’Connor, who lived in Nashville late in life, is survived by his wife Anna and his son Rogan.
