Alan White, longtime drummer for prog rock band Sure, has died at residence aged 72 after a brief sickness. Asserting the information, the band stated they had been “shocked and surprised”.
White was one of many longest-running members of the group, having joined in 1972, changing Invoice Bruford (who joined King Crimson).
Born in 1949 in County Durham, White started enjoying the drums aged 12, and joined his first band a yr later: the Downbeats, later the Blue Chips. Success stepped up a notch with a spot in Billy Fury’s backing band, and after John Lennon noticed a efficiency by one other White band, prog rockers Griffin, he was recruited as drummer for the Plastic Ono Band.
Whisked in a limo to an airport and given three days to be taught the group’s materials, White performed the live performance that turned dwell album Reside Peace in Toronto 1969, and likewise performed drums on Lennon’s album Think about (plus vibraphone on Jealous Man) in addition to George Harrison’s All Issues Should Cross. Different dwell work got here backing one other drumming legend, Ginger Baker, in his sprawling group Air Pressure.
White was requested to affix Sure in 1972, and once more he had solely three days to be taught the repertoire for a US tour. “I used to be ready for various time signatures and the way in which the band flowed, however I added extra of a rock aspect than Invoice [Bruford] did,” he later stated.
The primary studio album he performed on (and the band’s sixth total), Tales from Topographic Oceans, was additionally Sure’s first UK No 1. Success continued – 1977’s Going For the One was one other chart-topper – however the band started fracturing, with keyboardist Rick Wakeman and the then singer Jon Anderson leaving by the early Nineteen Eighties. Regardless of the temporary addition of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes (AKA the Buggles) to the group, Sure break up in 1981.
White performed with Sure bassist Chris Squire and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Web page in a gaggle referred to as XYZ, whose work has been bootlegged however by no means formally launched; Robert Plant was briefly mooted as a lead singer.
White shaped one other new band, Cinema, with Squire, Sure keyboardist Tony Kaye and guitarist Trevor Rabin, whose demos wooed Jon Anderson again to the fold – they quickly relaunched the Sure title. This started the group’s most commercially profitable interval within the US, with the one Proprietor of a Lonely Coronary heart reaching No 1 there in 1983.
Anderson left once more in 1988, and shaped Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe with different ex-Sure members. “I didn’t essentially really feel betrayed, however on the similar time it was one thing for us to take care of,” White later stated. “However we simply put our heads down and carried on making Sure music.”
The lineup continued to fluctuate within the years since – Anderson and Howe rejoined in 1995, together with a short spell for Wakeman – and there was one other hiatus from 2005 to 2008, however White remained the rhythmic coronary heart of the group all through. “You need to preserve the Sure title going to maintain that top customary of musicianship after which carry it ahead,” he stated in 2015.
He's a credited songwriter on dozens of songs and performed on greater than 40 of their albums. Well being difficulties starting in 2016 meant his function with the group was decreased, however he continued to carry out a portion of every dwell set, with Jay Schellen enjoying the majority of the fabric.
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