Jeff Conolly, Boston garage rock legend and Lyres frontman, dies at 69
Jeff Conolly, the frenetic frontman of the beloved Boston garage band Lyres, has died.
Mr. Conolly, nicknamed “Monoman” for his single-minded devotion to the sound in his head, had been recovering from treatment for bladder cancer. He was 69 and lived with his wife, Stevie Gomez, on the North Shore. He was at home Friday night when he died.
“A sweet guy,” Pat McGrath, owner of Looney Tunes Records in Allston and a longtime friend of Mr. Conolly’s, said Saturday morning. “A complicated guy, but a sweet guy.”
Mr. Conolly, who grew up in Connecticut, had arrived in Boston in the mid ‘70s to attend Boston University. But his interests lay elsewhere and, by 1976, he was fronting a fledgling act called DMZ. The band had a promising beginning — performing with a Stooges-like intensity, they opened for the likes of the Ramones and The Jam — but they soon broke up.
Mr. Conolly went on to form Lyres, a combo whose spiky, ’60s-style garage rock was oriented around Mr. Conolly’s Vox Continental organ. The band’s reverb-heavy sound reflected the singer’s obsession with ’60s garage groups and British Invasion bands, including the Kinks, whose “Love Me Till the Sun Shines” and “Tired of Waiting” Lyres later recorded.
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Watching Mr. Conolly perform was almost always riveting. Standing at the front of the stage, head tilted back, his body convulsed as he played the organ with one hand and maniacally rattled a tambourine over his head with the other. A perfectionist, Mr. Conolly would sometimes berate his bandmates or complain about the monitors until it was chaos on stage.
While the band’s recorded output was limited — in four-plus decades, Lyres released three studio albums on the Boston-based label Ace of Hearts Records; a couple of EPs; and several live recordings and 45s — they are lionized by fans, especially in Europe, where Mr. Conolly is regarded as rock ‘n’ roll royalty and his songs, like “Help You Ann” and “Don’t Give It Up Now,” are considered classics.
In March, after the singer’s diagnosis, a GoFundMe page was created to help pay for his treatment, and several Boston bands, including Mission of Burma, played a benefit show at the Middle East. In recent weeks, according to friends, Mr. Conolly had looked and sounded better; he seemed to be on the mend.
“I am still in shock and trying to process,” his wife said in an email Saturday. “I don’t know what to say.”
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