Police: FiancÈe Discovered Delp’s Body
After trying several times to reach Brad Delp by telephone, fiancÈe Pamela Sullivan returned to their south New Hampshire home Friday morning and found the Boston frontman dead, the Atkinson Police Department said Monday.
The cause of the 55-year-old rocker’s death is still under investigation although authorities have said that they do not suspect foul play. No autopsy is scheduled, but the state medical examiner is awaiting toxicology test results.
Sullivan, who had been planning to tie the knot with Delp this summer, spent Thursday night away from the house, according to a police spokesman.
“She had last heard from him the night beforeÖbecause she stayed out after work with some colleagues,” said Lt. William Baldwin. “She tried that morning three times to get a hold of him, and could not, so she went home and [found] him.”
A 911 call summoned Atkinson police to Delp and Sullivan’s house on Academy Avenue at about 1:20 p.m. The singer appeared to have been alone at the time of his death, police said.
Baldwin said the police are looking to wrap up their investigation and get those toxicology results by the end of this week.
“He was only 55, and I know he’s been a vegetarian for about 30 years,” WKNE-FM radio host Parker Springfield, who had met with Delp just last weekend, told the New Hampshire Union Leader. “It’s hard to understand what could have happened.”
“It’s a shock,” Springfield said Friday. “Three minutes before he was supposed to go on stage last week we were still chattingóhe was just that kind of regular guy, so down-to-earth. The kind of guy who, after a show, would sit at the end of the stage and just talk with people. He really had his ego in check.”
During the weekend, friends, family and fans mourned the passing of “the nicest guy in rock and roll,” with some leaving flowers on Delp’s mailbox and on the front steps of his home.
“What an inspiration,” musician Gardner Berry, who fronts the Manchester-based cover band Mama Kicks, told the Union Leader. “I played [Boston] to death, played the grooves right off the vinyl. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.”
Boston hit the big time in 1976 with their multiplatinum self-titled debut, with Delp providing lead vocals on ’70s-era classics such as “More Than a Feeling” and “Don’t Look Back.”
The Danvers, Massachusetts, native parted ways with Boston in 1991 to pursue other projects, but hooked up with his fellow “Amanda” purveyors again in 1997. They released their fifth studio album, Corporate America, in 2002 and played a national arena tour the following year.
Plans had been in the works for a summer tour, during which Delp had been planning to take a moment to swap vows with Sullivan. The musician also had two children from a previous marriage.
“His soaring, seemingly effortless vocals graced millions of Boston records as well as the numerous musical projects that we did together,” former Boston member Barry Goudreau, who also played with Delp in the bands Return to Zero and Orion the Hunter, said in a posting on his Website.
“He will be sorely missed by his many friends and his family. Anyone who met Brad knows he was the sweetest, kindest person you could have known. I hope he can rest in peace.”
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