Joe Murphy, the British bassist who helped noughties rock band Koopa crash the UK Top 40 purely on digital sales, has died aged 46, his family confirmed this week in Essex. The cause of death has not been publicly disclosed, although the Blag, Steal & Borrow musician had survived a near-fatal cardiac arrest and car crash in June 2021 that left him in intensive care for weeks.
Murphy first became a cult name in the mid‑2000s when Koopa, an unsigned three‑piece from Essex, quietly rewrote UK chart rules. Alongside bandmates and brothers Stuart and Ollie Cooper, the bassist helped push Blag, Steal & Borrow into the Top 40 in 2007, at a time when digital downloads were only just starting to shake up the music industry. Their success, achieved without a label behind them, was treated as a watershed moment for DIY rock bands trying to break through on their own terms.
