Los Angeles’ dear friend, my dear friend, Brendan Mullen died Monday, suddenly, unexpectedly at 12:59pm. A stroke felled him on Saturday afternoon as he stood outside a restaurant where he and his beloved, Kateri Butler, had stopped for lunch after celebrating his 60th birthday with a lovely weekend in Santa Barbara.

Los Angeles would not be the city it is today without Brendan Mullen. Rock music of the last two decades would not be what it is with out him. Brendan, who was born in Paisley, Scotland, and grew up in  Manchester, England, founded The Masque, a basement rehearsal space-cum-club, filled with punk rock’s earliest voices who went to become the musicians, artists, creators, and lifeblood of Los Angeles; bursting forth out of the dreamy California rock scene of mid to late seventies with neon color, spray paint, safety pins, and the occasional modified Members Only jacket.

The GoGos, X, the Germs, and hundreds of kids who would go on to become more than their suburban pedigrees predicted, tumbled out of that basement club off Hollywood Blvd and into world of their own making. The Masque proved there was more to music in Los Angeles than the Eagles, and proved to the people who hung out there that their futures were their own to create as they willed.

From the Masque Brendan went on to book the Lingerie in the 1980s–putting everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Sun Ra and Big Mama Thorton on the stage; and then helped open the Viper Room for Johnny Depp, along with booking Luna Park and shows at venues throughout Los Angeles. He provided a stage for bands, and those bands inspired other bands — and well, we have modern rock music as we know it today. Plus, he was phenomenally modest about his role changing Los Angeles culture, writing in his book “Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley”:

For the record, I never claimed to have ’started punk in L.A.’ I’d prefer the Masque epitaph to be ‘Where the SoCal scene originally came together.’

A phenomenal archivist and musical fan in the deepest sense–his musical library was vast and far ranging, stuffed with vintage vinyl–Brendan documented the Los Angeles music scene in four books, “We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk,” “Lexicon Devil: the Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs,” “Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction” and “Live at the Masque” along with numerous articles.

Brendan loved making music with his many friends–he’d rented the basement which became the Masque as place for him to jam. The first punk band I ever saw, Arthur J and the Gold Cups, featured Brendan.  During his punk rock career, he drummed with Hal Negro and the SatinTones whose other members have gone on to become a lawyer, a Washington DC insider, and a scientist. He continued to jam, play and record regularly as he worked on his books and articles; making time to see bands, DJ regularly at clubs and art openings, read obsessively, and talk nonstop about everything from supermarkets to politics and mysticism with eloquence, insight and humor.

Throughout the 1980s I knew Brendan casually, to say hello, and then somehow, by 1994, we were friends; and I threw one of my birthday parties at his house and then got to know the wonderful Kateri, his companion for the past decade and half. Their friendship forever altered my life. And when the call came, there was no hesitation about going up the coast to give comfort, to be of service.

The doctors and nurses at Ventura County Hospital were lovely, gentle, understanding, kind and compassionate. Brendan left us hearing some of his favorite jazz tunes playing on a dear friend’s  iPhone, with Kateri, his cousin Niall, and two more of us -a small representation of his many friends- with him.

Brendan was wickedly funny, curmudgeonly, contrarian, sweet, wise, and goofy. He came to America and created himself, created a scene, forever changed Los Angeles art and culture, and the music scene in America. And most importantly, because this is the true measure of our lives, he changed and affected everyone he met — profoundly, immeasurably, eternally.