Brooklyn Drummer Jerry Fuchs Dies After Fall Down Elevator Shaft
- Posted on Nov 8th 2009 3:21PM by Liz Colville
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Gerhardt "Jerry" Fuchs, a prolific drummer for bands including !!!, the Juan MacLean and Maserati, died early Sunday after falling down an elevator shaft in a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn late Saturday night.Fuchs, 34, had been attending a party hosted by the Uniform Project, which promotes sustainable fashion and raises money for education in India.
Fuchs and a friend were in an elevator in a converted factory used as loft space when the elevator stopped "somewhere above the fifth floor," the Buildings Department spokesman told the New York Post.
The pair opened the elevator door and attempted to jump a few feet down to the fifth floor. The friend made the jump, but a piece of Fuchs' clothing was caught on the elevator, "sending him swinging back into the crevice separating the elevator from the fifth floor," the Post writes.
Fuchs fell five stories to the bottom of the elevator shaft, where he lay "unconscious and unresponsive," reports Gothamist.
The musician was taken to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition and died early this morning surrounded by "an entire waiting room of friends," according to Chunklet, to which Fuchs was a contributor.
Fuchs grew up in Marietta, Georgia, moving to Athens, then New York in the mid-90s, drumming for bands including Vineland and Turing Machine. More recently, he moved back and forth between Athens and New York, playing for the DFA bands !!! and the Juan MacLean, and replacing the original drummer in the Athens-based band Maserati. The first drummer, Mikel Gius, also died in a tragic accident in 2005 after being hit by a car while riding his bike.
Maserati had just wrapped up a tour for their September album, 'Passages.'
Fuchs is survived by his parents, a brother and two sisters, and, as Fuchs' friend and Chunklet publisher Henry Owings writes in a tribute, "an impressive canon of records on which he's performed, countless mouth-agape audiences in awe of his work, dozens of heart-crushed former bandmates, and an endless parade of true friends around the world."
Watch a video of Fuchs performing with Maserati at 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia earlier this year:
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