Pete Shelley, lead singer of the Buzzcocks, has died aged 63

Pete Shelley, lead singer of the Buzzcocks, has died at the age of 63.

“This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do,” his brother Gary McNeish wrote on social media yesterday, “is tell you my brother Pete Shelley had a heart attack this morning and passed away.”

Shelley wrote the band’s best known hit, Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve), one of the great British singles of all time. But for many, his and the Buzzcocks’ legacy had already been cemented by then thanks to their pioneering of independent music with the Spiral Scratch EP, and their bringing of punk to the north of England when organising the now legendary Sex Pistols gig at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in the summer of 1976.

On Twitter, his surviving bandmates wrote:

“Pete’s music has inspired generations of musicians over a career that spanned five decades and with his band and as a solo artist, he was held in the highest regard by the music industry and by his fans around the world.”