R.I.P. DICKIE PETERSON, BLUE CHEER

We didn’t report on this one yesterday, but rest assured we didn’t miss it: Blue Cheer frontman Dickie Peterson passed away yesterday of liver cancer. He was 63.

Blue Cheer are often credited as being the forefathers of proto-heavy metal, heaving gone on to inspire Black Sabbath with their work in the late 1960s. They were kind of the Faith No More to alt/nu-metal, the At the Gates to melodic death metal, the Cave In or Converge to metalcore; though they paved the way and largely invented a sound that would later blow up, they never quite got the credit they deserved. And since we’re pretty much talking about the creation of all of heavy metal here, Blue Cheer were/are a big fucking deal. Though the band denied their involvement in the birth of the genre we all love so much, listening to some of their material proves the Sabbath influence right away. Here’s a clip that Decibel posted yesterday of the band performing in Germany last year.

R.I.P. Dickie Peterson.

-VN