Simeon Coxe III
Silver Apples’ oscillating maverick BORN 1938
Braving electric shocks to wrangle a self-constructed mountain of oscillators in Silver Apples, Simeon Coxe anticipated Krautrock, synth-pop, techno – and Suicide – in late ’60s Manhattan. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he spent his adolescence studying art in New Orleans and absorbing Fats Domino’s piano-playing in Bourbon Street clubs before relocating to New York in 1960. Drinking with outsider artists at the bohemian Cedar Tavern led to doodling over rock records on the Second World War oscillator he expanded into ‘The Simeon’. After singing in Greenwich Village bands, he formed Silver Apples in 1967 with drummer Danny Taylor. Audiences initially derided the duo’s guitar-free sound, but early fans included Lennon, Alan Vega, Warhol and their buddy Hendrix – indeed, Coxe recalled playing six Ebit bass oscillators with Jimi on a version of The Star Spangled Banner in 1968, which later turned up on 1972’s Rainbow Bridge.
Silver Apples self-produced 1968’s astonishing self-titled debut album, though its follow-up, Contact, released in February ’69 just months before the group played along to a broadcast of the 1969 lunar landings at a Central Park ‘Moon-In’, was their consummate statement. However, when Pan-Am sued over Contact ’s sleeve image of cockpit drug paraphernalia, they split. Coxe returned to painting in Alabama; hearing a tribute album inspired his live return and LPs Beacon (1996) and Decatur (’97). Two years’ searching found Taylor, but after the 1998 release of lost album The Garden, Coxe broke his neck in a car crash. He overcame paralysis to regroup Silver Apples in 2004. His final recording revisited 1968’s The Edge Of Wonder and Oscillations with Andrew Weatherall in 2019; both men silk-screened cover images for a special 12-inch. Coxe’s last project was his biography with this writer, who remembers a humble raconteur, grateful his place in music history was recognised, before he succumbed to pulmonary fibrosis on September 8.
“Pan-Am sued over a sleeve image of cockpit drug paraphernalia, and Silver Apples split.”