The wildly inventive band Can announced on their social media accounts that Damo Suzuki, their lead singer from Japan, had passed away. He was 74 years old and had been fighting colon cancer for ten years, but no cause of death was given.

“It is with great sadness that we have to announce the passing of our wonderful friend Damo Suzuki, yesterday, Friday 9th February 2024,” the statement on his Instagram account reads. “His boundless creative energy has touched so many over the whole world, not just with Can, but also with his all continent spanning Network Tour. Damo’s kind soul and cheeky smile will be forever missed.

“He will be joining Michael, Jaki and Holger for a fantastic jam!,” the note concludes, along with a message of love to his family.

The singer Kenji Suzuki was born in the Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo. When he was a teenager, he left Japan to tour Europe and stay in communes run by hippies. When Czukay and Liebezeit, the original members of Can, saw Suzuki performing on the street in Munich’s hip Schwabing neighborhood in 1970, they asked him to play their first concert that same evening.

“There were no instructions from the band,” he said in an interview, remembering the evening, with Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2018. “I was meant to just walk on stage and do anything.”

He guided the group to its undeniable pinnacle between 1970 and 1973, releasing three albums that were as audacious and groundbreaking as any in the history of 20th-century rock: Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, and Future Days. A number of musicians have acknowledged the German group as an influence, including Talking Heads, Radiohead, and David Bowie.

Following his split from Can, Suzuki converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses and took a ten-year hiatus from music. When he started performing again, he toured the world with various regional artists, dubbed the tours Damo Suzuki’s Network. Over the following decades, he recorded a number of Network and solo releases.

In 2019, Suzuki published his memoir I Am Damo Suzuki with coauthor Paul Woods. The 2022 documentary Energy, directed by Michelle Heighway, also focused on the musician.