Joseph Byrd, Pioneering Psychedelic Rocker, Dead at 87

Joseph Byrd , leader of the pioneering psychedelic rock band the United States of America, died in November at the age of 87.

Byrd’s death on Nov. 2 went largely unreported until his family submitted a death notice to the Los Angeles Times , the New York Times reports . Byrd died suddenly at his home in Medford, Oregon, his family said. No cause of death was provided.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Byrd studied music under avant-garde composers like John Cage and La Monte Young and was a participant in Cage’s Fluxus movement of experimental performances; Byrd’s first live performance, his family wrote in his death notice, was at Yoko Ono’s New York loft.

After moving to Los Angeles with fellow musicologist and then-girlfriend Dorothy Moskowitz, Byrd