Lux Interior, the founding member of garage punk band the Cramps, died on Wednesday at a Glendale, California, hospital due to a pre-existing heart condition, the publicist of the band told Billboard. He was 62.

 

Lux Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, founded the Cramps together with his wife, Kristy Wallace, better known as Poison Ivy. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, while Ivy explained she had received hers during a dream. The couple moved to Akron, Ohio, in 1973 and to New York a couple of years later, thus entering CBGB’s early punk scene along with other well-known acts such as The Ramones, Patti Smith and Television. In 1976, the lineup of the band comprised Poison Ivy, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory, who played the guitar, and his drummer sister, Pam “Ballam” Gregory.

 

Although the band changed its lineup several times, it was not until 1986 that the Cramps found an appropriate permanent bass player, Candy del Mar. The Cramps managed to obtain a spot in the top 40 singles chart in the UK for the first and only time with “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns,” which gave Ivy the opportunity to pose as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the track.

 

The band recorded numerous albums and singles through the 1990s and 2000s for several labels.