Obituary

Stuart Pevitt

• Alex Gunningham
• The Guardian, Thursday 22 January 2009

Stuart "Pev" Pevitt, who was the lead singer of rock band 'The Purple Gang'

My friend and colleague Stuart "Pev" Pevitt, who has died of cancer aged 56, was a well-known figure on the Manchester music scene. After he became lead singer of the notorious psychedelic rock band the Purple Gang (of which I was the manager) in 1999, his reputation as a vocalist and harmonica player spread across Europe.

Stuart was an unorthodox frontman for a rock band and was inventive in his presentation of songs. He often stood stock-still so that the audience could more clearly see his vaudevillian facial expressions. He fully embraced the rock-theatre style pioneered by Screaming Lord Sutch and incorporated many outlandish props. When performing the song Granny Takes a Trip, he would vanish from the stage during an extended instrumental introduction and reappear dressed as a crazed grandmother, in grey wig and floral dress.

With Stuart in the Purple Gang, bookings from eastern Europe (where Granny Takes a Trip, banned by the BBC on its release in 1967, was widely bootlegged) were plentiful. Successful stadium tours were interspersed with low-key pub dates in Cheshire.

The diverse range of musical styles embraced by the Purple Gang (rock'n'roll, rhythm'n'blues, country, folk, jug-band jazz, bluegrass and more, in a two-hour set) made the band hard to pigeonhole, but gave Stuart the opportunity to exercise his wide vocal range and incorporate musical parody and impersonations into his delivery.

Commercial success seemed imminent for the Purple Gang in 2003 when a single, Sunset Over the Mersey, entered the pop charts in Bulgaria and Hungary. Stuart's wry sense of humour disguised the difficulties caused by regular fallow commercial periods and his brittle health.

He was born in Sale, Cheshire, and educated at Bramhall junior and Hazel Grove secondary schools. He worked for many years as a textile designer and latterly as a dealer in antiques and collectibles. However, it is for his musical gifts that he will be remembered.

Stuart was a dedicated family man and is survived by his mother Brenda, his father Ged (Gerald), his brother John, his ex-wife Rachel and their two daughters Emma and Vikki.

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 GMT on Thursday 22 January 2009. It appeared in the Guardian on Thursday 22 January 2009 on p39 of the Obituaries section. It was last updated at 18.06 GMT on Thursday 22 January 2009.