Rick Anderson Has Passed Away At 75
Rick Anderson, the bass guitar player who helped found the arty, glammy San Francisco rockers The Tubes, died at the age of 75 last week, according to Guitar World.
The Tubes offered a brief announcement surrounding his death this week. No cause of death for the musician was given. Earlier this year, The Tubes’ Re Styles died at 72.
“We lost our brother on 12/16/22,” The Tubes said alongside photos of Anderson on Sunday (Dec. 18). “Rick brought a steady and kind presence to the band for 50 years. His love came through his bass.”
The Tubes were known for their “unwieldy, theatrical onstage productions, which marked them out as one of the ’70s’ more outrageous acts,” Guitar World reported. The band “eventually rose to mainstream prominence in the early ’80s, gaining a Top 40 hit with ‘Don’t Want to Wait Anymore.'”
As recounted by UCR, The Tubes first found success opening for Led Zeppelin in 1973. They later signed a record deal with the help of Yes‘ Rick Wakeman. The Tubes’ 1975 self-titled debut features fan favorite “White Punks on Dope.” 1983’s Outside Inside features “She’s a Beauty.”
“Because we started with such a dramatic flair, as time went on we realized that we were always going to be in the red,” Anderson’s The Tubes bandmate Bill Spooner told MusoScribe in 2014. “We’d book tours, 150 dates of sold-out shows, and still lose money because of all the people we’d drag around, and all the props.”
