Peter Katsis, manager to Smashing Pumpkins and Korn, has died at 69

Peter Katsis, the veteran music manager, died Thursday, August 6, at 69, from complications of congestive heart failure, Loudwire reported. Over more than three decades he managed acts including Smashing Pumpkins, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Jane's Addiction, Morrissey, Bush, Snoop Dogg, Backstreet Boys and One Direction.

Katsis got his start in Chicago, working as a promoter in the late 1980s before moving into the city's industrial and house music scenes, serving as Ministry's first manager beginning in 1981 and working A&R for the label Trax Records, where he booked house pioneers Marshall Jefferson and Adonis. He relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, taking on The Cramps and Jane's Addiction before nu-metal acts Korn and Limp Bizkit, and later adding pop and hip-hop clients including Snoop Dogg and the Backstreet Boys, whose 1999 Into the Millennium tour broke Ticketmaster sales records under his management.

Katsis was a founding partner of the management company The Firm alongside Jeff Kwatinetz, where he helped build the supergroup Audioslave and produced the band's landmark 2005 concert in Havana, the first by a US rock act in Cuba. He co-founded a second firm, Prospect Park, with Kwatinetz and Rich Frank in 2008, building a roster that came to include Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Morrissey, Liz Phair, 311, Bush, Fever 333, Pentatonix, OneRepublic and 5 Seconds of Summer.

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan called him "a dear friend and extended member of our family" who helped usher in the alternative revolution of the 1980s and 90s, writing that he would "always cherish his intense candor and deep love of great music."

Ministry's Al Jourgensen remembered him on Instagram as "our first manager in 1981," while Bush's Gavin Rossdale told Billboard that Katsis "lifted me up personally like no other and drove our band towards the stars." Morrissey posted a photo of Katsis on his own website with the caption "RIP," and further tributes came from Jane's Addiction's Dave Navarro, Korn's Brian "Head" Welch, Filter's Richard Patrick and radio host Matt Pinfield.

Representatives confirmed his death in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, saying Katsis's "vision, instincts and fierce belief in his artists helped shape some of the most important careers in music for more than four decades." His family said he was "simply larger than life" and is survived by his sister, Anastasia, and his son, Ian.

Loudwire included Katsis among the rock and metal world's losses for 2026, part of what the outlet has called an especially heavy year for the genre.

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