Rock Legend Dickie Peterson Dies

Dicki Peterson, founder, frontman and bassist for the legendary rock group Blue Cheer, passed away yesterday (Oct. 12th) in Germany after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 61 years old. 

Named after a type of LSD, Blue Cheer emerged from the 60's psychedelic rock scene of Haight-Ashbury and began gigging at every club in San Francisco and Los Angeles, quickly earning the respect of fellow musicians on the scene. With their biker attitude and wall of Marshall amps, Cheer were considered by many to be the first American  heavy metal band, and were even the first to be named the World's Loudest Band by the Guiness Book of Records.

Cheer released their first album Vincebus Eruptum in 1968, and had a big hit with their cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” which reached No. 14 on the Billboard chart. It wasn’t long before Cheer were touring with all the major acts of the day—Hendrix, Cream, the Dead, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Stooges and the MC5, and were even rumored to be Jim Morrsion's favorite band.

In the ’70s, after numerous lineup changes and lackluster sales, Peterson disbanded Cheer and moved to Germany. He attempted to revive the band a few times over the next two decades, without much success. It wasn’t until around 1990, when he met guitarist Andrew “Duck” McDonald, that the band began to make a comeback.They began touring again and released a few live albums. Then in 2007, they released their first new studio album in decades—the eerily ironic titled What Doesn't Kill You ...  It was their heaviest and arguably best album to date.

Dickie was was a huge fan of HIGH TIMES and one of the proudest potheads I've ever known. Despite struggling with a heroin addiction and alcoholism in his younger days, he never stopped loving marijuana, and attributed much of his creative inspiration to it. In his 2007 interview with HIGH TIMES, he said:

“I’ve been clean now for about 20 years—except for pot. I’ve smoked pot since I was 18 years old—I’ll always smoke pot. I didn’t do anything without smoking weed. It was like having a cup of coffee. We used to have kilos of marijuana in our flat. I’d come home sometimes and find the whole hallway stacked with bales of weed...almost everything that I wrote back then, and that I write now. I come up with some of my best ideas not when I’m sitting down with a pen and paper, but when I’m at that perfect point of being high—when I’m thinking deep enough to add meaning to experiences, to turn words into meaning. There are certain doors of perception that open. LSD did that for me, and weed does that for me.”

In 2008, Blue Cheer headlined the HIGH TIMES Doobie Awards show at SXSW in Austin, TX. There, I had the great honor of  presenting them with the two most prestigious awards—Pot Song of the Year (for "Rollin' Dem Bones") and the Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor which Peterson took to heart.

“This means an awful lot to me. I’ve been smoking for 45 years now, and we’ve worked hard all our lives, so this is really special for us. Thank you, HIGH TIMES ... and thanks to all of you people—it takes all of you to make this real."

On a personal note:

I first met Dickie in June 2006 at a motorcycle rally in New Hampshire, where I spent the night in jail for the privilege of interviewing him for HIGH TIMES. We became instant friends, and over the past several years I'd seen him play and smoked him out on numerous occasions. Getting to know him and see him perform over the past several years has been a privilege, and knowing that he considered me a friend has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I am deeply saddened by his passing, but his music and memory will forever live in my heart. All I can say is ... for their sake, I hope they have earplugs in Heaven....

To read Dickie's interview or the coverage of Blue Cheer at the Doobie Awards, head to the HT Blue Cheer page.