Conway Savage, a pioneer of the post-punk genre in Australia, has passed away at the age of 58.
As Noise11 reports, Conway Savage has sadly passed away. While no details have been made public in regards to the musician’s cause of death, it was widely reported last year that he had undergone surgery for a brain tumour after being diagnosed earlier in 2017.
Born in Victoria back in 1960, Conway Savage kicked off his musical career in the ’80s, performing piano with a number of groups, including Happy Orphans, The Feral Dinosaurs, Dust On The Bible, and The Legendary Boy Kings.
However, Savage first came to national prominence in 1990, when he joined Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to tour in support of their sixth album, The Good Son.
Becoming a permanent member of the group, Conway Savage also embarked upon a solo career around the same time and released a handful of albums over the next two decades. Savage also served a guest musician on a number of albums by noted Aussie musos, including The Scientists’ Kim Salmon, Dave Graney, The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster, and The Beasts Of Bourbon’s Spencer P. Jones, who sadly passed away just last month.
In recent years, the Savage name went through a resurgence in the public eye, with Conway’s niece fronting the beloved Melbourne group Cash Savage & The Last Drinks.
While Savage had not appeared on an album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds since 2013’s Push The Sky Away, he continued to tour with the group, though he was forced to sit out a number of North American dates last year to undergo brain surgery.
Our thoughts go out to the friends, family, and musical associates of Conway Savage at this difficult time.
UPDATE 03/09/18: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have taken to Facebook to share a tribute to their late pianist.
“Our beloved Conway passed away on Sunday evening,” the message begins. “A member of Bad Seeds for nearly thirty years, Conway was the anarchic thread that ran through the band’s live performances.”
“He was much loved by everyone, band members and fans alike. Irascible, funny, terrifying, sentimental, warm-hearted, gentle, acerbic, honest, genuine – he was all of these things and quite literally ‘had the gift of a golden voice,’ high and sweet and drenched in soul.”
“On a drunken night, at four in the morning, in a hotel bar in Cologne, Conway sat at the piano and sang Streets of Laredo to us, in his sweet, melancholy style and stopped the world for a moment,” the post concluded. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Goodbye Conway, there isn’t a dry eye in the house.”
Check out Conway Savage’s ‘When The Moon Is Gone’:
