Image Credit: Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty ImagesBassist Mick Karn, who co-founded the U.K. band Japan, has died following a battle with cancer. According to a message posted on the musician’s official website, Karn passed away yesterday at his home in London. He was 52.
Japan were leading lights of the so-called “New Romantic” musical movement along with Duran Duran, Visage, and Spandau Ballet. Duran Duran bassist John Taylor has posted a tribute to Karn on the band’s website in which he described seeing Japan in the late ’70s. “When I think back to that night,” he remembered, “the image that first comes to mind first is beautiful Mick, red hair and Ibanez bass, shaved eyebrows and ballet shoes, shuffling around the floor like a docile robot, playing also with great beauty and verve, punching delicate holes in the fabric of the songs; in Mick Karn’s basslines no notes were ever wasted.”
