“If we were in the black when we finished a tour, we’d party into the red”: Dr. Hook’s enigmatic guitarist and vocalist, Dennis Locorriere, dead at 76

American songwriter Dennis Locorriere, best known as the guitarist in Dr. Hook, has died at 76.

Locorriere joined the American rock band, originally named Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, in 1968 as a bass player. By the time of the release of their debut album, Doctor Hook, in 1972, he was fronting the band alongside Ray Sawyer and also handling guitar, bass, and harmonica.

The record yielded the group’s first hit single, Sylvia’s Mother, and, throughout the band’s career, Locorriere helped them score more than 60 gold and platinum singles, topping the charts in over 40 countries.

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His death, as reported by the Guardian, was confirmed by his management. His passing comes “after a long and courageous battle with kidney disease.”

“Dennis faced his illness with remarkable strength, dignity, and resilience throughout,” the statement adds.

Locorriere was born in New Jersey in 1949, and by his late teens, the self-confessed “hippy” was sitting in with older, more experienced musicians to better hone his multi-instrumentalist skills.

“I just knew that I didn’t want to have a regular job because at that time I was a hippy,” he had said. “I would go to bars at night and play until three in the morning, playing and having fun with my friends, and I really wasn’t thinking too much about it.”

Still, he was churning out hits by his early 20s, and continued that success outside of Dr. Hook. He co-wrote A Couple More Years with Shel Silverstein, which would be picked up by both Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. He also co-wrote Last Man Standing with Jerry Lee Lewis in 2006 and has released three solo albums.

But for all of Dr. Hook’s successes, it was their nonchalance that endeared them to so much of their audience. Most notably, when their 1972 tongue-in-cheek hit, The Cover of Rolling Stone broke into the Billboard Top 10, selling over a million copies – and the band found themselves fulfilling the fantasy of the song’s title just a few months later.

Reflecting on that feat later, Locorriere said: “The only thing I regret is that when we got on the cover, we were a bunch of assholes and we had nothing to say.”

Indeed, the band’s inclination toward rock n’ roll excess didn’t make them the most financially astute, leading to bankruptcy one year later. “If we were in the black when we finished a tour,” he once said, “we’d party into the red.”

He would continue to tour as Dr. Hook in later decades, before a releasing a string of solo records under his own name in the 2000s.

Locorriere was the last surviving member of Dr. Hook’s classic lineup.