Gary Burger, frontman of proto-punk garage-rock weirdos The Monks, has died from pancreatic cancer. He was 72. Burger’s death was reported by Minnesota Public Radio, in a state where one of music’s most influential iconoclasts had spent his later years quietly serving as mayor of Turtle River, downplaying his career and its lasting influence as something born out of boredom, naiveté, and experimentation—in other words, the bedrock of all great musical movements.
Burger formed The Monks in 1964 with a group of fellow Army GIs while stationed in Germany. Originally called the Five Torquays, they started off playing Chuck Berry covers and the like across the German club circuit—the same one followed by The Beatles in their formative years. Growing tired of the same old rock ’n’ roll scene, they started adding in electric banjo, guitar feedback, primitive, almost entirely cymbal-free drum beats, and repetitive chants.
Soon they met a couple of avant-garde German students who came up with a concept that would complement their increasingly odd sound: They adopted traditional black cassocks, wore nooses around their necks, and shaved their heads into traditional tonsures, becoming The Monks. Burger would later complain that maintaining the Monks look was a real pain. The audience wasn’t all that into it either, with reactions ranging from confused silences to accusations of blasphemy.
Add to that Burger’s singing voice—a yowl that was soulful in its own strangled-cat sort of way—and songs like the sneering, life-during-wartime lullaby of “Complication” and the sardonic love song “I Hate You,” and you had a band that was destined to leave audiences who were caught up in Beatlemania feeling cold.