Jerry Fuchs, drummer with LCD Soundsystem, !!!, Juan McLean, dies after elevator shaft fall

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Published on November 9, 2009 04:39PM EST

Thirty-four-year-old Gerhardt “Jerry” Fuchs, a beloved fixture of both the New York and Athens, Georgia rock scenes who played with LCD Soundsystem, !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk), Turing Machine, MSTRKRFT, and The Juan MacLean, died Saturday night after attempting to crawl out of a broken elevator shaft at a benefit party in Brooklyn.

Fuchs, who also freelanced here at EW, was a house drummer of sorts for progressive record label DFA, as well as a member of long-running Athens post-rock outfit Maserati (sadly, he had replaced original Maserati drummer Mikel Gius, also the original drummer for !!!, who died in a bike accident in 2005).

On the Juan MacLean website, MacLean wrote: “Jerry was one of my best and most loyal friends. He was hands-down the best drummer I have ever played with or seen for that matter… He was utterly sincere and fiercely loyal.” Watch him perform below:

According to the New York Times, the accident occurred at about 12:30am on November 8, when Fuchs became stuck on a freight elevator between the fourth and fifth floors. When he attempted to jump out of the stalled car, his jacket got caught and threw him back towards the elevator shaft, while another unidentified man in the car with him leaped safely to a fourth-floor hallway.

At a gathering for Fuch’s friends on Sunday night, LCD frontman James Murphy called him “one of the only people we all knew who was literally great at what he did.” And longtime friend Jon Fine noted, “He could play metal, prog rock with multiple time signatures, aggressive indie disco … His passing puts an enormous hold on the Brooklyn music scene. The world of independent music has sustained a really significant loss.”

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