Rock Trailblazer Who Inspired Eddie Vedder Has Passed Away at 72: ‘A Titan Amongst Men’

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Fans are mourning the passing of punk rock pioneer Gary Heffern at age 72.

Singer for influential punk band The Penetrators, Heffern was an early influence on Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Heffern died in Finland, the land of his birth. Sadly, his passing came just days after the band was inducted into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame on October 16. A cause of death was not revealed.

An Outsized Influence

Heffern was frontman and lyricist for The Penetrators from 1978 to 1984. While the band never achieved mainstream success, the group gained a cult following of ardent fans that includes Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, a San Diego teenager when he attended one of the band’s more raucous performances.

“It is fabled that when a riot broke out at a San Dieguito High School dance, where The Penetrators were playing, a young student named Eddie Vedder was so caught up in the tumult that he decided to become a rock star,” noted the San Diego Troubador.

During the course of the band’s seven-year career, The Penetrators opened for The Ramones, co-headlined Los Angeles’ famed Whiskey-A-Go-Go with The B-52s and The Go Gos, and once shared a recording studio with an up-and-coming Irish band called U2.

After The Penetrators disbanded, Heffern relocated to Seattle in 1984. He went on to record several critically acclaimed solo albums that featured collaborations with such admirers as Vedder, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Los Lobos’ keyboardist Steve Berlin.

Heffern performed in Seattle with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, and became friends with future Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell when they worked together at a local restaurant. The two would form a band together, a satirical country-folk group called the CDC Boys.

“An underground music sensation and a poet of note, Heffern combined punk-rock attitude and ‘look-at-me!’ showmanship with rare emotional depth and empathy,” noted the Union-Tribune, pointing out that Heffern was the subject of two different documentaries, one produced in his native Finland in 2010, and another in San Diego in 2019. He moved to Finland in 2006.

Tributes to a ‘Titan Amongst Men’

“I’m crushed to hear of the passing of our great punkrock poet, and dear friend Gary Heffern,” wrote musician Cindy Lee Berryhill in a social media post. “I had hoped he would come back to San Diego for his band The Penetrators induction into this weeks SD Music Hall of Fame but he’d said his health was not well enough to travel. Still, I did not expect he’d leave the planet so soon. May your good heart and deeply caring poet-soul fly free friend. 💔❤️”

“My friend Gary Heffern passed away,” David Ybarra wrote on Facebook. “On a music level, Gary was a titan amongst men. He was the singer for the band The Penetrators, a monster, groundbreaking band. That band was quite something, a movement, if you will. On a friendship level, he was a mentor to me and he was my friend. The Penetrators just entered the San Diego Music Hall of Fame. Well deserved. Bless you as you approach your next adventure.”

“Gary and the Penetrators were the ground zero of the punk scene here and he was able to convert a lot of people. He was a sweet, sensitive guy,” Grossmont College Professor Raul Sandelin — who directed the 2019 documentary “Gary Heffern’s Last Waltz” — told the Times-Union.

“Gary was a really kind, down-to-earth person and a mesmerizing performer,” added Tim Mays, co-owner of San Diego’s Casbah club and Heffern’s onetime San Diego roommate. “He was a raconteur who could adapt to any situation and engage with anybody. He was very introspective and sensitive, and yet very outgoing at the same time.”

“Gary was nice, smart, creative and funny, and he was friends with a lot of people,” San Diego music writer Peter Blackstock shared. “It always impressed me how much the kids in the grunge scene in Seattle took to him because, by then, he was a singer-songwriter, not a grunge or punk guy. But they saw in him a kindred spirit.”