Guitarist Bob Casale, one of the founding members of the legendary new wave band Devo, died on Monday according to a post by his brother, Gerald Casale, on the band's Facebook page. He was 61.
Gerald Casale wrote that his brother died from "sudden conditions that led to heart failure" and that "it was a total shock to us all."
The Ohio band formed in 1972, and the classic lineup includes the Casale brothers, brothers Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, and Alan Myers. Myers, a drummer known as the human metronome, died of brain cancer last June at age 58.
The band released its debut album "Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" in 1978 and achieved its greatest success with its hit "Whip It" off the 1980 album "Freedom of Choice."
According to Rolling Stone, Devo broke up in 1991, but reformed five years later and toured steadily over the past two decades. They released "Something for Everybody" in 2010, their first album in 20 years. "We wanted to be Devo again," Bob Casale said. "And so you can’t help but sound like Devo — we weren’t going to try and sound like anybody else, we were just going to do what we do and try and write good songs with the same kind of attention to lyrical content and song structure as we’ve always given all of our work."
Monday's Facebook post noted that Casale was excited about the possibility of Devo playing shows again.
Fans of Casale and the band expressed their sympathies on Twitter on Tuesday.