(Los Angeles) Graeme Edge, drummer and co-founder of The Moody Blues, has died at the age of 80.
Group frontman Justin Hayward confirmed his colleague’s death on Thursday on the group’s website. The cause of his death has not been revealed.
Justin Hayward called Graeme Edge the backbone of the British rock band, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. The band’s last album was released in 2003.
“When Graeme told me he was retiring, I knew without him it couldn’t be the Moody Blues anymore,” said Justin Hayward. ” And that’s what happened. It’s true to say that he kept the band together for all these years, because he loved it. ”
In 1964, Graeme Edge co-founded the group in Birmingham, England. His mastery of the drums was a key ingredient for the group’s enormous progressive rock successes between the 1960s and 1970s, notably Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon and I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band).
“In the late 1960s we became the band Graeme always wanted him to be, and he came to be both a poet and a drummer,” said Justin Hayward, who joined The Moody Blues in 1966 with bassist John Lodge after the departure of Denny Laine’s band.
Graeme Edge has appeared on 16 The Moody Blues studio albums, starting with The Magnificent Moodies in 1965 and ending with the Christmas album December in 2003.