Nick Knox, drummer for the Cramps has died at age 60.
“My band mate Nicky Knox died but I’m moving forward,” former Cramps bassist Fur Dixon told CaliforniaRocker.com Saturday. “Everyone, including me, just found out.”
Dixon said the death of Knox had was particularly difficult because they had just gotten back in touch recently, after 29 years.
Knox, whose real name is Nicholas Stephanoff was drummer in the Cleveland band Electric Eels before joining Lux Interior and Poison Ivy in the Cramps in 1977.
Bandmate Miriam Linna wrote on Facebook that Knox was a voracious reader who had a love for rock biographies. He was also a great baseball fan.
“Nicky was a voracious reader,” she wrote. “He read every rock n roll biography and autobiography – checked out from the library, and he had the benefit of a near-photographic memory, and an astonishing ability to recall dates and places, and really minute details. More than any book, though, he was addicted, still, to his beloved MAD magazine, and also to the little game schedule of Indians games. He gave me one of those pocket scheds and said, ‘I am not available at game time.’ So strict!”
Following the death of Lux Interior, the Cramps disbanded in 2009. Knox played on the 1980 record Songs the Lord Taught Us, produced by Alex Chilton, Psychedelic Jungle in 1981, A Date With Elvis in 1986 and and Stay Sick! in 1990.
Knox left the music scene in 1991 and went back to Garfield Heights, Ohio. In 2013, Knox played three tracks on Terminal, an album by Cheese Borger And The Cleveland Steamers.
Added former Cramps bandmate Kid Congo Powers on Twitter: “Nick Knox Coolest of the cool. R.I.P. Glad to have played to your boss beat. Meet you on the mystery plane. Nick said on his last email to me a few months ago ‘Don’t take any wooden nickles or $20 bills with Reggie Jackson on ’em.'”
Photo used courtesy of Masao Nakagami under a creative commons share alike liscence.