British guitarist Denny Laine, co-founder of Moody Blues in the 1960s and Wings with McCartney after the Beatles split, died Tuesday at the age of 79, his wife, Elizabeth Hines, announced.
On her husband’s Instagram social network account, Elizabeth Hines announced the musician’s death due to an “aggressive and unpredictable interstitial lung disease.”
“I was at his bedside, holding his hand, while he played his favorite Christmas songs that he had been singing for the last few weeks (…) while he was, this last week, in intensive care on life support,” she said. she wrote, sharing a photo of the couple.
Paul McCartney said on Instagram that he was “very saddened to learn of the death of his former bandmate” Wings, who he formed in 1971 with his wife, Linda McCartney, after the Beatles broke up in 1970.
Paul McCartney praised Denny Laine as “an exceptional singer and guitarist” and recalled that they wrote the 1977 worldwide hit “Mull of Kintyre.”
“We had grown apart, but over the last few years we have reconnected and shared our memories,” the 81-year-old British legend wrote.
Wings’ best-known album, which topped the charts in the United Kingdom and the United States, was 1973’s “Band on the Run.” The band lasted until 1981.
Denny Laine was born Brian Hines in Birmingham, England, in October 1944, and began playing guitar at a young age, influenced by Chuck Berry and Django Reinhardt.
He founded Moody Blues in 1964 with pianist Mike Pinder, a progressive and psychedelic rock band, still officially active, although most of the original members have passed away.
Paul McCartney recalled, also on Instagram, the “great memories of the time with Denny, when the Beatles were on tour with the Moddy Blues”, a band that Laine left in 1965 after the first album.
Source: TSF
