Gerard Smith

Bassist TV on the Radio, Gerard Smith, died Wednesday due to lung cancer, the group said in a statement.
Gerard Smith was 36. He died almost a month after it was announced that struggled against the disease. When the news about the condition of Gerard Smith, the group said they had health insurance, a lot of attention from doctors and improvements had been “enormous.” But Smith could not accompany them on tour that began to promote his latest album “Nine Types of Light.”
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, members of the group refused to talk about the illness of bassist respect for him.
“We are very sad to announce the death of our dear friend and band mate Gerard Smith, after a difficult fight against lung cancer,” the band said in its website. “We will miss him terribly.”
The group canceled its concerts in the coming days, beginning with the date they had scheduled for Wednesday in Detroit.
Gerard Smith said in a interview that he worked as a subway musician in New York when he joined the alternative group, which has been recognized by critics for albums such as “Return to Cookie Mountain” and “Dear Science.”
Gerard Smith said in an interview in 2008 with the publication The Brooklyn Rail, on the way the lead singer, Tunde Adebimpe, discovered him and invited him to join them.
“I saw the movie Tunde ‘Jump Tomorrow’. I was super addicted to the cinema at that time. A year later he was playing on the subway platform, here at Bedford station and he would not let me give money. Then as to recognize him, until finally I realized and said, ‘Hey, you go out in that movie’. The film meant a lot to me, especially because it came a black actor living in a slum, and there was plenty policy it, “he said. “He played a great human being and not only was a black actor, so it meant a lot to me.”
Gerard Smith grew up in New York and studied art in high school but dropped out.
“I went through a difficult time, to say the least, towards the end of my studies in arts,” told the magazine LA Record in 2008. “I realized I was one of the few, if not the only black student in arts and I saw him in the artistic world.”
Gerard Smith never thought that her participation in TV on the Radio will be lasting.
“I never took it seriously, I never imagined that this would be a position where I would meet,” he said in the interview. [via]