He grew up in Drumchapel, Glasgow, singing in school choirs and playing in a Boys’ Brigade pipe band. He ended up singing at Live Aid. That is the arc of Alex Ligertwood’s life, and it is one of the great unsung stories in rock history.
Ligertwood died peacefully in his sleep on April 30, 2026, at his home in Santa Monica, California. His dog Bobo was by his side. He was 79. His wife and agent Shawn Brogan confirmed the news in a statement that said everything anyone who knew him seemed to already know: “Alex was loved by so many. If you knew him, you loved him. He touched so many with his extraordinary voice. He was all heart and soul. His favorite thing in life was to make music, sing and to share his gift with us.”
He performed his last show just two weeks before he died.
Born Alexander John Ligertwood on December 18, 1946, he came up through the Scottish skiffle scene of the 1950s before joining The Senate, a seven-piece soul band that toured Europe and gave him his first real taste of what a voice like his could do to a room. Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and Curtis Mayfield were his north stars, and you could hear every one of them somewhere in what he did.
The 1970s turned him into one of rock’s great journeymen, in the very best sense of that word. He sang with the Jeff Beck Group. He worked with Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. He turned up on records by Carly Simon, Ben E. King, and Solomon Burke. He was the kind of vocalist that other musicians quietly wanted in the room, not for the credits but for what happened to the music when he opened his mouth.
Carlos Santana heard him sing with David Sancious’ band in the mid-1970s and never forgot it. When Ligertwood joined Santana in 1979, Santana later wrote that he “became the voice of Santana on many of our albums and on most of our tours in the eighties and into the nineties.” He added: “He can make you feel God in his singing.” That is about as complete a compliment as one musician can pay another.
Ligertwood stayed with Santana across five different stints between 1979 and 1994, appearing on six studio albums including Marathon, Zebop!, Shango, and Milagro, as well as the live album Sacred Fire: Live in South America. He sang lead on “You Know That I Love You,” “All I Ever Wanted,” “Hold On,” and “Winning,” and co-wrote “Somewhere in Heaven,” “Brightest Star,” and “Make Somebody Happy.” He was there at Live Aid in 1985, one of the most watched performances in the history of music, singing his heart out in front of the whole world.
He never stopped working. He toured Japan and Europe with Brian Auger in 2014. In 2019 he released a solo album, Outside the Box, produced by David Garfield. His last concert took place on April 10, 2026, at Bogart’s Entertainment Center in Apple Valley, Minnesota. His friend and pianist Mark Hoyt was there. “The last song he sang was ‘Somewhere in Heaven,'” Hoyt wrote afterward. “I don’t think there could be a more fitting song that he could have sung after a lifetime of singing thousands.”
He is survived by his wife Shawn Brogan, his daughter Merci, and everyone who ever heard him and felt, even briefly, what Santana described. He did it his way, on his terms, till the end.