After The Smiths, Andy Rourke played alongside The Pretenders and Sinead O’Connor, as well as with the supergroup Freebass.
Andy Rourke, bass guitarist of The Smiths, one of the most influential British bands of the 1980s, died Friday after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer, his publicity firm confirmed to CBS News. He was 59.
Rourke died early Friday morning in New York City at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Reybee Inc. said in a statement.
“Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans,” the statement said.
In a post on Instagram, former bandmate Johnny Marr paid tribute to Rourke, who he first met when they were schoolboys in 1975.
“Throughout our teens we played in various bands around south Manchester before making our reputations with The Smiths from 1982 to 1987, and it was on those Smiths records that Andy reinvented what it is to be a bass guitar player,” Marr said.
“Andy and I spent all our time studying music, having fun, and working on becoming the best musicians we could possibly be,” Marr wrote on Instagram. “Back then Andy was a guitar player and a good one at that, but it was when he picked up the bass that he would find his true calling and his singular talent would flourish.”
During their short time together as a four-piece band, The Smiths deliberately stayed away from the mainstream of popular music, garnering a cult following on the independent music scene.
