Big Star's original drummer Andy Hummel passed away Monday, July 19. He was 59. Hummel had been battling cancer for two years, which he found out became terminal when he recently underwent hip surgery.
This sadly leaves drummer Jody Stephens as the power-pop group's last surviving member, since leader Alex Chilton recently passed away due to heart failure in March, and back in 1978, guitarist Chris Bell was in a fatal car crash.
After Big Star's release of their 2009 box set, 'Keep an Eye on the Sky,' the band reconvened for a tribute show in March of 2010 at Austin's SXSW. The show was just days after Chilton's death, and the first time in 35 years that Hummel performed with the power-pop ensemble.
After forming in 1971, the group reached critical praise with their debut album, 1972's '#1 Record,' which features hits 'Thirteen' and 'In the Street,' the latter remade by Cheap Trick, for 'That '70s Show's theme song. Katy Perry even admitted to MTV that her current summer anthem, 'California Gurls' is stylized to pay tribute to Big Star's 'September Gurls' -- one the of the singles off their sophomore release, 1974's 'Radio City.'
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