Peter Laughner

Peter Laughner was a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and music critic who embraced a wide range of musical influences, mixing rock & roll, blues, folk, and proto-punk and boiling them down into a style that was deeply personal and strongly emotional. Laughner was a fine songwriter and a gifted guitarist who played with a number of bands, but he was committed to the debauchery of rock & roll as much as the music, and his appetite for alcohol and drugs led to his death from acute pancreatitis when he was just 24. Laughner officially released only a tiny amount of music during his lifetime, so it wasn't until decades after his death that collections of home-recorded demos and live tapes gave a more accurate portrait of his tastes and talents.