David Fair, who co-founded the band Half Japanese, has died at 74

David Fair, who co-founded Half Japanese with his brother Jad, died on Saturday, August 29, at 74. Jad confirmed to Rolling Stone that the cause was cancer, and Fair's daughter posted a statement on his Facebook page describing a life of love, kindness and creativity.

The brothers started the band in their childhood bedroom after the family moved from Michigan to Maryland, and put out their first set of home recordings, the 1977 EP Calling All Girls, on their own label, 50 Skidillion Watts. The tapes travelled through underground circles, a British indie label picked them up, and the 1980 debut 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts arrived as a three record box of home recordings, noise experiments, wrecked covers and long live medleys.

Fair's most quoted work was not a song. How to Play Guitar, a short essay he wrote about teaching himself, argued that learning other people's chords narrows what a player can do. "If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day," he wrote, and a generation of amateurs took him at his word.

He stayed for Loud, Our Solar System and Sing No Evil before leaving the line up in 1987, then drifted back in and out over the following decades while working on other things. He painted in acrylics, produced the web series The Big Baby Show, and in 2020 co-wrote and directed Psycho X10!, a surreal reworking of the Hitchcock film. He also released solo records through Thick Syrup, among them The Middleman Soundtrack in 2010 and I'll Be Moe in 2016.

Half Japanese became a reference point for bands far better known than they were. Penn Jillette helped the brothers revive 50 Skidillion Watts in the late 1980s, Jeff Feuerzeig's 1993 documentary Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King fixed their reputation, and Nirvana invited the group to open a run of In Utero dates that year. A hiatus ended when Jeff Mangum asked them to reunite for All Tomorrow's Parties in 2012, and the reunion album Overjoyed followed in 2014, produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof.

Tributes came from the label that released his later work and from friends. "David was one of those people who showed you that music didn't have to follow any rules," wrote Travis McElroy of Thick Syrup. Producer Don Fleming remembered him as a pure artist with a good sense of humour, and Jad posted a childhood photograph of the two of them.

The band's records sit awkwardly between rock and the messier indie end of the American underground, which was always the point. Other losses in that world this year include ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard and pedal steel player and producer Tommy Detamore.