Greg Brown, the original guitarist and co-founder of ’90s genre-blenders CAKE, has died at 56 after a brief illness.
The band took to Instagram earlier this week to confirm the news. “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Greg Brown’s passing after a brief illness,” reads the statement.
“Greg was an integral part of CAKE’s early sound and development. His creative contributions were immense, and his presence – both musical and personal – will be deeply missed. Godspeed, Greg.”
Brown co-founded CAKE in 1991 alongside singer John McCrea, trumpeter Vince DiFiore, drummer Frank French, and bassist Shon Meckfessel.
Following the self-release of their debut album, Motorcade of Generosity (1994), the band went on to sign with Capricorn Records and release their breakthrough album, Fashion Nugget, in 1996, which went platinum thanks to what remains one of the band’s most popular songs, The Distance.
The hit – written solely by Brown – also includes some of his most prolific guitar work, and an undeniably ubiquitous guitar riff.
“He took to it right away, and I didn’t really understand what he saw in it so much,” Brown said of McCrea's immediate positive reaction to the song in a 2021 Billboard interview.
“I liked the way it sounded and everything, but I thought Frank Sinatra was a much stronger choice for the single. But the record label chose it and it worked out.”
Brown and then-bassist Victori Damiani both left CAKE before recording started on the band's third album, Prolonging the Magic. Following CAKE, the two started the band Deathray, and Brown also worked on projects with two different Weezer members – Rivers Cuomo's short-lived supergroup Homie and Matt Sharp’s Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy EP.
In 2011, Brown made a guest appearance on CAKE’s Showroom of Compassion album on the track Bound Away, and, twelve years later, released the first and only project under his name, The End of Something New.
Former Weezer bassist, Matt Sharp, took to social media to remember his close friend and collaborator, “Greg Brown, my shyest, most gentle and delicate friend has passed away.
“It’s beyond my capacity to put together the right words to describe his beautiful, beautiful soul. Our partnership, however brief, had lifetime’s worth of love, tenderness and heartbreak.
“We had a mutual understanding of each other’s imperfections and a mutual admiration for how we both tried to not let those imperfections get the best of us and stop us from moving forward.”
