The New York Times Loves To Ignore Rock N’ Roll Deaths

On February 3, 2026 Lamonte McLemore one fifth of the great singing group The Fifth Dimension passed away at the age of 90.

Amazingly, The New York Times did cover McLemore’s death with a well deserved obituary a week after his passing . McLemore, while not a rock star per se, was definitely part of the sixties pop rock identity.

We use the term “amazingly” because of the paper’s continued willful denial of printing obituaries involving certain musicians. This is something we have pointed out previously.

Here are all five original Fifth Dimension members reuniting in 1991 on The Arsenio Hall Show sounding as great as ever with a performance of Aquarius  / Let The Sun Shine In.

Put in perspective The Fifth Dimension are now a nostalgia act performing with only one original member, Florence LaRue. The fact that The Fifth Dimension hasn’t had a hit in five decades doesn’t diminish from the group’s immense talent.

We are not making this a competition or comparison.

Yet three major rock musicians passed away recently with none of them even getting a peep out of the Times high fallutin’ obit desk. Maybe it’s because all three were of the hard rock variety. The Times explains its capricious obituary practices here.

Notable Deaths

The Times made the decision that Francis Buchholz (February 19, 1954 – January 22, 2026) bass player of Scorpions from 1973 -1992 was not worthy of a mention. I guess being a longtime member of a band selling over 100 million records worldwide is an ordinary feat.

More stupefying was the silence from “the paper of record”  on the death of Phil Campbell (May 7, 1961 – March 13, 2026). Campbell was Motörhead’s guitarist from 1984 until the death of Motörhead founder and vocalist Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister in 2015.  Campbell played in Motörhead for longer than anyone except for Lemmy. He was co-writer of all of their music. Motörhead is definitely an acquired taste but their influence on rock is undeniable. Apparently Campbell was not “important”enough for coverage.

The recent death of a New York musical icon Ross “The Boss” Friedman (January 3, 1954 – March 26, 2026) is another mystifying omission.

For a newspaper that takes delight in gritty New York stories, Ross The Boss should be a no brainer.

Ross The Boss, born in the Bronx, lead guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Dictators should garner some eternal notoriety. But, after The Dictators, Ross The Boss would co-found an even  more successful band.

The  power pop metal quartet, Manowar would sell millions of albums and garner fans across the globe. As commercial and hokey as Manowar may appear to  many rock fans, the band has had an uncanny knack of writing memorable and catchy songs.

One additional passing that went unnoticed was that of Donn Landee at age 79. The exact date of Landee’s death from natural causes in April  was not released.  Landee’s name is unfamiliar to the casual music fan, but not to Van Halen fans.

Landee a music mixer and engineer extraordinaire would help design and build Eddie Van Halen’s 5150 studio. Landee was instrumental in capturing Eddie Van Halen’s unique guitar sound, working on every Van Halen album until 1988.

In his long career Landee worked for dozens of artists beginning in the 1960s. Besides Van Halen, Landee’s credit list includes: Van Morrison, Randy Newman, The Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon; Michael Jackson, Neil Young, James Taylor.

Maybe it is unfair to expect musical obituary notices from a publication like the Times which is now primarily an opinion dispenser, rather than an objective news reporting outlet,

We will continue and try and make up for that here every so often.