
Steve Mackay of the Stooges Has Died at Age 66
Steve Mackay, saxophone player most known for his work with Iggy Pop and the Stooges, passed away yesterday, Oct 11th 2015 at age 66 in Daly City, California after battling complications from sepsis. Regarded as one of the most influential jazz rockers in last four decades, his involvement in the Stooges’ second album Fun House, and the ensuing collaborations he had with acts like Carnal Kitchen, Violent Femmes, Snakefinger, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Smegma Zu, Andre Williams and others established him as an originator in the racy ways of rock ‘n roll sax—a tactic strongly utilized in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s by the No Wave bands of New York. During the 90s, a lot of the old rockers were either dead or staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and Steve Mackay’s profile wasn’t so hot. In fact, the music world thought him for dead. While Mackay took up residence in the Bay Area and worked as an electrician, authorities like MTV and Rolling Stone were writing on the Stooges biography pages that the sax player had died in the 1970s. A false story unknown in origin, but initially reported on by music journalist Nick