#Pierre Kezdy, Naked Raygun Bassist, Dead at 58

Pierre Kezdy, best known as the bassist of Chicago punk band Naked Raygun, has died of cancer, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. He was 58 years old.

Pierre Kezdy began his musical career with Chicago’s Strike Under. The band was short-lived, releasing just the Strike Under 12″ in 1981. Later, in 1985, Kezdy joined Naked Raygun. He performed on All Rise (1986), Jettison (1988), Understand (1989), and Raygun…Naked Raygun (1990) before the band’s initial 1992 dissolution. In between the breakup and the band’s reunion in the 2000s, Kezdy performed in Pegboy with fellow Naked Raygun member John Haggerty.

Famously, Naked Raygun played the first concert Dave Grohl ever saw. “I went to this club called the Cubby Bear—it’s right across the street from the baseball stadium [Wrigley Field]—and a band called Naked Raygun were playing, and they’re this legendary Chicago punk rock band,” Grohl told NPR in 2011. “But I’d never seen live music. So my introduction to rock’n’roll was in a club that held about 150 people that was half full and I was belly up against the stage watching this incredible live band, like, sweat and spit and bleed in front of me.”

Years later, Naked Raygun opened for Foo Fighters at a number of shows. And, in 2014, Grohl spotlighted Naked Raygun on his HBO show Sonic Highways.