Robert Quine

 Posted on July 4, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  681 words  |  Martina Birk

Guitarist

Robert Quine, an adventurous and influential guitarist who emerged in the New York punk scene and would later work extensively with Lou Reed, John Zorn, Matthew Sweet and Tom Waits, died of a heroin overdose over the Memorial Day weekend. He was 61.

Guitar maker Rick Kelly discovered Quine’s body on June 5 in his New York apartment. Quine had been despondent over the death of his wife.

A member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids who had grown up as a fan of jazz, blues and Brazilian music, Quine played the guitar as a hobby, joining his first band while in college in St. Louis. A lifelong fan of the Velvet Underground, his concert tapes of the act were released by Universal in 2001 as “The Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes.”

Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine became a lawyer in 1969, moved to San Francisco and, two years later to New York where he wrote tax law for Prentice Hall Publishing for three years. He started working at a film memorabilia shop, where his co-workers included Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, eventually putting together the Voidoids with Marc Bell and Ivan Julian. In 1977, they released the punk landmark “Blank Generation.”

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After the band split up in the early 1980s, Quine joined Lou Reed’s band before settling into steady session work with musicians such as Brian Eno, Marianne Faithfull and Waits. He became a member of Sweet’s band in the early 1990s, when they collaborated on albums such as Sweet’s well-received “Girlfriend.” Throughout the 1990s, he recorded often with Lloyd Cole and Zorn.

Reed considers Quine’s work on “Waves of Fear,” from Reed’s 1982 album “The Blue Mask,” as among the most “interesting sounds and musical clusters” ever recorded.

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