Thursday Pete Shelley Warped Tour

watch Pete Shelley & Thursday play "Ever Fallen In Love" at Warped Tour '06

Yesterday, the music world suffered a huge loss with the death of Buzzcocks singer Pete Shelley. Tons of tributes from other musicians poured in, including one from Thursday singer Geoff Rickly, who wrote about getting to know Pete at Warped Tour 2006, “where most of the kids didn’t even understand the legends they were seeing when the Buzzcocks stepped on stage.” He mentioned that, over the course of the tour, he’d take time to join Thursday on stage and invite Geoff on stage with the Buzzcocks to sing “Ever Fallen In Love” (which Thursday recorded a cover of for the Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland Soundtrack). Geoff has now posted a video of one of the times Pete joined Thursday on stage. It’s a short clip, but it’s clearly an incredible moment and it’s very worth watching:

Before that tour (which was Buzzcocks’ first year played Warped), Pete was interviewed and said: “There’s this band called Thursday. They did a cover of ‘Ever Fallen Love,’ off the 1978 album Love Bites. It will be interesting meeting them. [I’ll tell them] ‘Thank you for doing a good version.'”

Geoff’s full tribute to Pete reads:

Pete Shelley was without a doubt one of the best songwriters that ever came out of any scene. He was also an incredibly kind and generous man. I feel lucky to have known him, to have shared a stage with him, and to have learned a thing or two from him.

❤️ RIP, legend. ❤️

We got to know them on Warped Tour, where most of the kids didn’t even understand the legends they were seeing when the Buzzcocks stepped on stage. But rather than complain about the kids or the tour itself, Pete would laugh and tell Diggle that it was because of his shirt.

And, over the course of the summer, he’d both take time to come sing on the stage with us and invite me up to sing “Ever Fallen in Love” with him. And when I screwed up the entrance to the third verse, he laughed and teased me afterwards in a way that made me feel included.

Like I was “one of the gang”

Without the Buzzcocks, would Joy Division have ever been noticed? Without Pete Shelley’s songs, would we have ever had Green Day or Jawbreaker? Would emo exist? It’s hard to imagine a world without them.

Tributes have also come in from members of Green Day, Joy Division, The Sex Pistols, R.E.M., Pixies, Superchunk, The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers, Pearl Jam, The Decemberists, Belle & Sebastian, and so many others.