“Sal Maida, the nimble New York-born bassist who played with bands including Roxy Music, Sparks and Milk ’N’ Cookies, has died. He was 76. Maida died Saturday in New York of complications resulting from a fall in December, his wife, singer-songwriter Lisa Burns-Maida, announced. The 6-foot-6 Maida also performed with Ronnie Spector, The Runaways, Cracker/Camper”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Maida died Saturday in New York of complications resulting from a fall in December, his wife, singer-songwriter Lisa Burns-Maida, announced.
The 6-foot-6 Maida also performed with Ronnie Spector, The Runaways, Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven, Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las, Annie Golden of The Shirts and Velveteen during his career.
Born in New York on July 29, 1948, Salvatore Maida was raised in the Manhattan neighborhood of Little Italy, where he “heard a multitude of sounds emanating from the jukebox below my window, from Sinatra to the Stones, Motown, Ray Charles, The Beatles and Dinah Washington,” he once wrote.
A devoted Anglophile, he traveled to London after graduating from Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and was working in a record store when he met Roxy Music drummer Paul Thompson.
Maida joined the art rock band for their Stranded Tour in 1973 and the next year became a member of Milk ’N’ Cookies, who had recently come out of Long Island to be signed to Island Records by Muff Winwood, the head of the label.
Though short-lived, the power-pop sound of Milk ’N’ Cookies proved to be influential on the burgeoning punk scene, and when their debut album was reissued in the mid-2000s, they briefly reformed and played occasional shows through the 2010s.
Maida, who said he used a blue Rickenbacker bass early in his career because Chris Squier in Yes played one, also was with Sparks for their 1976 album, Big Beat.
In recent years, the fun-loving Maida hosted a radio show, Spin Cycle, and wrote the 2017 memoir Four Strings, Phony Proof and 300 45s — the last bit of the title is a reference to his prodigious collection of 45s — published by HoZac Books.
HoZac recently released an updated edition of the book, adding Bottoms Up, where Maida wrote about his top bassists from 1960-70. Also for HoZac, he co-authored and co-edited two volumes of the White Label Promo Preservation Society, collections of essays on under-achieving classic albums.
Said the publisher on Facebook: “Sal had such an incredible life that it just had to be made into a book, and we’re so glad we got to not only make that happen several times but also got to meet him in person, as he was like the cool older brother we’d never had.”
His son, Dylan, died in December 2019 of melanoma.
In addition to his wife, his survivors include his son’s godparents, Anthony and Kathleen Lifrieri, and “countless friends who loved him dearly.”