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2- David Thomas and Chris Cutler during a live performance of the "Musique Noir" project.
"My name is David Fucking Thomas… and I am the lead singer of the best rock and roll band in the world."
Long live Pere Ubu
Today, June 14, 2026, would have been his 73rd birthday.
June 14, 1953, born in Miami, raised in Cleveland, died in Brighton & Hove.
RIP April 24, 2025, age 71
Founder and only member present in all Pere Ubu lineups since its inception in 1975 in Cleveland, Ohio, Thomas also dabbled in other projects such as Rocket From The Tombs and in his solo career.
Born in Florida, he has made the UK his creative base for the past few decades.
Always irreverent, he even left detailed instructions on what should be done after his death, such as finishing his autobiography, continuing to archive recordings of live shows, and maintaining the Pere Ubu community on Patreon.
Despite the health problems that have plagued him in recent years—and which led to the cancellation of a US tour in 2017—Thomas has never stopped working.
According to the statement, he and the band were recording a new album, already aware that it would be his farewell.
“We will strive to continue mixing and finishing the new album so that its last song is available to everyone,” the official message read.
Pere Ubu's last album, Trouble On Big Beat Street, was released in 2023, the same year they performed their last live show in Pisa, Italy.
The emotional farewell note ends with a striking phrase from the artist himself, said in a documentary... “My name is David Fucking Thomas… and I am the lead singer of the best rock and roll band in the world.” Long live Pere Ubu
The American musician died at his home in England, surrounded by family.
“MC5 was playing on the radio,” his bandmates wrote, revealing that David Thomas was working on a new album. “He knew it would be his last.”
David Thomas, founder and leader of the band Pere Ubu, died this at age 71.
In 2019, he said: “I’ve died twice, death is nothing special. There’s no golden path to the bright lights. It’s just nothingness, so I keep on.”
others
“Rock music is a folk art. It belongs to amateurs.”
“We don’t make music. We make scenes.”
“The modern world is a mistake.”
“I’m not a singer. I’m a storyteller who screams.”
He had chronic health problems for years. He had reduced mobility.
He continued working on his last album and autobiography. He left instructions to continue posting live recordings on Bandcamp.
One of the strangest, most stubborn, most visionary, and most profoundly unique artists in the history of experimental rock.Thomas was an imposing figure, both physically and in temperament.
During a show in the 90s, Thomas suffered a vertigo attack and fell seated on the stage.
The band stopped. He yelled... “Keep playing! The world doesn't stop just because I sink.”
And continued the show sitting in a chair, bellowing the lyrics as if nothing had happened.
Thomas wrote lyrics from: road maps, industrial machinery catalogs, instruction manuals, engineering reports.
“Industrial folk surrealism” is why Pere Ubu's lyrics sound like the fever dream of an engineer lost on a post-industrial highway.
During a tour, Thomas appeared backstage with a raw fish wrapped in newspaper.
He said he needed it to “get in the right mood.”
Nobody understood if it was a joke, a ritual, a metaphor, or madness. He never explained
David Thomas - Vaartkapoen - Brussels - Belgium - 22/06/1993 ph by giek naeps
CHRIS BUCK photo 2006 I was assigned to photograph David Thomas of Pere Ubu for The Wire, a British magazine for serious music lovers
Thomas was imposing figure, both physically and in temperament. We did some shooting in an antiques warehouse in Queens, NY, and then pivoted to a clean seamless.
He was a great subject; moving with a graceful awkwardness that hit my sweet spot.
He seemed comfortable posing but wouldn’t do anything that didn’t feel authentic. “I’m okay for now,” he cautioned me, “but if you give any additional direction, I will stop.
David Thomas backstage at Bookie Club Detroit ph Sue Rynski
Lindsay Cooper - Rarities Volumes 1 & 2 (2014)
Curiously, the apotheosis of the record as an instrument—as the raw material of a new creation—occurred just as the gramophone record itself was becoming obsolete and when a new technology that would surpass the wildest ambitions of any scratcher, acousmaticist, tape composer or sound organiser was sweeping all earlier record/playback production systems aside. Sampling, far from destroying disc manipulation, seems to have breathed new life into it. It was almost as if sampling had recreated the gramophone record as a craft instrument, an analogue performing instrument made authentic by nostalgia.
Obsolescence empowered a new mythology for the old phonograph, completing the circle from passive repeater to creative producer; from dead mechanism to expressive voice; from the death of performance to its guarantee. It is precisely the authenticity of the 12-inch disc that keeps it in manufacture. It has become anachronistically indispensable.
- Chris Cutler, Not As We Choose
Pere Ubu -- "Say Goodbye" (1988)
Living in the Heart of the Beast
Situation that rules your world (despite all you've said) I would strike against it but the rule displaces…
There I burn in my own lights fuelled with flags torn out Of books, and histories of marching together… United with heroes, we were the rage, the fire But I was given a different destiny - knotted in closer despair
Calling to heroes do you have to speak that way all the time ? Tales told by idiots in paperbacks; a play of forms To spite my fabulous need to fight and live We exchange words, coins, movements - paralysed in loops Of care that we hoped could knot a world still Sere words, toothless, ruined now, bulldozed into brimming pits -who has used them how? Grammar book that lies wasted : Conflux of voices rising to meet, and fall Empty, divided, other…
Clutching at sleeves the wordless man exposes his failure : Smiling, he hurls a wine glass, describing his sadness twisted Into mere form: shattered in a glass, he's changed… Now dare he seize the life before him and discompound it in Sulphurous confusion and give it to the air? He's rushing to find where there's a word of liquid syntax - signs let slip in a flash : "clothes of chaos are my rage !" He shrieks in tatters, hunting the eye of his own storm
We were born to serve you all our bloody lives Labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies : Disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted stillness Twice edged with fear
Twilight signs decompose us
High in offices we stared into the turning wheel of cities Dense and ravelled close yet separate: planned to kill all encounter Intricate we saw your state at work its shapes Abstracted from all human intent. With our history's fire We shall harrow your signs Now is the time to begin to go forward - advance from despair The darkness of solitary men - who are chained in a market they Cannot control - in the name of a freedom that hangs like a pall On our cities. And their towers of silence we shall destroy
Now is the time to begin to determine directions, refuse to admit The existence of destiny's rule. We shall seize from all heroes and Merchants our labour, our lives, and our practice of history : this Our choice, defines the truth of all that we do
Seize on the words that oppose us with alien force; they're enslaved By the power of capital's kings who reduce them to coinage and Hollow exchange in the struggle to hold us, they're bitterly Outlasting… Time to sweep them down from power - deeds renew words
Dare to take sides in the fight for freedom that is common cause Let us all be as strong and as resolute. We're in the midst of A universe turning in turmoil; of classes and armies of thought Making war - their contradictions clash and echo through time
leg end unrest
in praise of learning western culture
