David Roback
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
David Roback (April 4, 1958 – February 25, 2020) was an American guitarist and songwriter, best known as the founding member of the duo Mazzy Star. He died on February 25, 2020.
Early life
Roback was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and attended Palisades High School, graduating in 1975. He and his brother Stephen Roback, a bass guitarist, formed a band called the Unconscious, which also included Susanna Hoffs, who would go on to become the lead singer and guitarist of The Bangles.
Career
Roback was active in the Paisley Underground music scene in Los Angeles in the early to mid-1980s as the leader of the band Rain Parade, which was popular on the local club circuit. Shortly after the release of the band's first album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, in 1983, Roback left Rain Parade to join Rainy Day, a collaborative effort with a number of Los Angeles musicians in the Paisley Underground. After releasing their self-titled album, Roback formed Opal (which was initially called Clay Allison) with vocalist/bassist Kendra Smith, formerly of The Dream Syndicate. After one EP and one album, Smith was replaced by Hope Sandoval, but this lineup never released an album. Roback changed the name of the band to Mazzy Star in 1989.
Roback wrote and produced the songs that actress Maggie Cheung sang in the 2004 film Clean. He also played himself in the film.
He died in Los Angeles on February 25, 2020 from cancer. Roback's songwriting and guitar work has, according to Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, been highly influential, "most strikingly on Lana Del Rey: you could clearly detect [Mazzy Star's] shadow ... on her breakthrough album Born to Die, a more explicit examination of the LA darkness that had always lurked somewhere in Mazzy Star's sound. In turn, Del Rey went on to exert a vast influence of her own, which meant that one of the most reticent bands in recent history ended up becoming a part of latter-day pop's musical DNA."
