![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/joseph_byrd_rip.jpg\")
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Joseph Byrd, the\u00a0composer\u00a0and leader of the trailblazing psychedelic rock band The United States\u00a0Of\u00a0America, has died aged 87.<\/p>\n
The news was confirmed by his family in a notice to the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/i><\/a>, which stated that he passed away suddenly on November 2 at his home in Medford, Oregon. No cause of death has been provided.<\/p>\n Byrd was the central architect of the highly influential group, who\u00a0were\u00a0formed in Los Angeles in 1967 and\u00a0were\u00a0credited with incorporating electronics,\u00a0musique\u00a0concr\u00e8te and experimentation into psych rock.<\/p>\n Their sole album, which was self-titled and released in 1968, made use of early synthesisers and tape manipulation and is representative of the West Coast anti-commercial counterculture movement. It has been referenced by the likes of\u00a0Stereolab<\/a>, Julian\u00a0Cope<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Broadcast<\/a>\u00a0as a key influence\u00a0and is remembered for pushing the boundaries of rock music, predicting later developments in experimental composition.<\/p>\n\n Byrd was born on December 19,\u00a01937\u00a0in Louisville, Kentucky and studied with the avant-garde composers\u00a0John Cage<\/a>\u00a0and LaMonte Young. His first live performance was at\u00a0Yoko Ono<\/a>\u2019s New York\u00a0loft\u00a0and\u00a0he was part of Cage\u2019s Fluxus movement of radical live performances.<\/p>\n He founded The United States of America with his then-girlfriend Dorothy Moskowitz after\u00a0relocating\u00a0from New York to Los Angeles, but they broke up after one record.<\/p>\n Byrd recorded another influential record \u2018The American Metaphysical Circus\u2019 in 1969 under the name Joe Byrd\u00a0And\u00a0The\u00a0Field\u00a0Hippies, and\u00a0later became\u00a0a professor of American music at Cal-State Fullerton.<\/p>\n Among his work in later life was the creation of the robot sounds in the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running<\/i>, which were\u00a0largely credited\u00a0for inspiring the\u00a0Star Wars<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/i>character R2-D2, and he also scored\u00a0feature films from arthouse directors including Agnes Varda and Robert Altman.<\/p>\n Byrd is survived by his daughter Clarissa, two grandsons and his brother.<\/p>\n The post Joseph Byrd, leader of psych rock trailblazers The United States Of America, dies aged 87<\/a> appeared first on NME<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joseph Byrd, the\u00a0composer\u00a0and leader of the trailblazing psychedelic rock band The United States\u00a0Of\u00a0America, has died aged 87. The news was confirmed by his family in a notice to the\u00a0Los Angeles Times, which stated that he passed away suddenly on November 2 at his home in Medford, Oregon. No cause of death has been provided. Byrd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 21:37:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}