Remembering the Legends: Musicians We Lost in 2025
Rockapedia, 2025
2025 has been a year that saw some of the most iconic names in rock, pop, punk and soul take their final bow. The year opened with the loss of Garth Hudson, the multi‑instrumentalist wizard from The Band whose organ and sax lines helped define classics like Up on Cripple Creek
and The Weight
. He wasn’t just a sideman, Hudson was the secret sauce that made The Band more than just another roots rock outfit.
Early in the year the world also said goodbye to British artist Marianne Faithfull, whose life read like a rock & roll epic. From her fragile, smoky take on As Tears Go By
to the defiant grit of Broken English, Faithfull was an icon of swinging ’60s London and beyond, a muse and collaborator whose voice carried decades of reinvention.
The punk and new wave scenes lost some of their own in 2025. Rick Buckler, from The Jam, passed away after years of crafting tight, propulsive rhythms behind tracks like In the City
. And Brian James, one of the original guitarists for The Damned, whose snarling riffs helped launch British punk into the mainstream, also left us.
Funk, soul, classic rock and pop all felt the sting too. Sly Stone, the architect of Sly and the Family Stone’s genre‑bending blend of soul, rock and psychedelic funk, died at 82. Brian Wilson, the tortured genius behind The Beach Boys’ sun‑drenched harmonies and studio innovations like Pet Sounds
, passed away in June at 82. Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness himself and a defining voice of heavy metal, and Ace Frehley, the space‑helmeted axe man of KISS, also left us this year.
The UK was dealt a blow with the passing of Gary Mani Mounfield, the bass powerhouse from The Stone Roses whose laid‑back groove underpinned the Madchester sound, and Chris Rea, the gravel‑voiced singer‑songwriter whose Driving Home for Christmas
became a seasonal anthem around the world. And just as the year wound down, Perry Bamonte, the versatile guitarist and keyboardist from The Cure, died after a brief illness.
These artists left us rich catalogs of songs that still make us feel, dance, think twice and remember what it meant to watch them live, hear them loud on the stereo, or discover them for the first time at a midnight hour.
See the full list of - artist we lost in 2025.
