Jesse Hector, the Kilburn-born guitarist, frontman, and cult rock figure who led proto-punk pioneers Crushed Butler and the Hammersmith Gorillas across more than 2 decades of London’s underground music scene, died on May 6, 2026. He was 78.
Hector picked up a guitar at 11 years old and never really put it down. Through the early 1960s he moved through Sun Records-influenced rock and roll and R&B, absorbing everything around him and developing the sideburned, extravagant stage presence that would define his public image for the rest of his career. By the late 1960s he had formed Crushed Butler, a short, sharp proto-punk three-piece whose savage songwriting lit up London clubs but failed to secure lasting label support despite brief flirtations with EMI, Dick James Music, and Decca.
After several name changes and lineup shifts through the early 1970s, Hector settled on the Hammersmith Gorillas, named with a knowing nod to the Hammersmith Guerillas, a pro-Castro activist group operating in London at the time. The band’s debut release was a cover of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” on the Penny Farthing label in 1974, produced by Larry Page and timed to mark the tenth anniversary of the original. It captured exactly what the Gorillas were: amplified, energetic pub rock with a raw edge that predated British punk by several years.
Signing to Chiswick Records, the band released a series of singles and built a loyal fanbase on London’s live circuit. In 1976, they played the Mont-de-Marsan Punk Festival in the south of France alongside the Damned and Eddie and the Hot Rods, a booking that confirmed their place in the lineage connecting pub rock to the punk explosion. Their only studio album, ‘Message to the World,’ arrived on Raw Records in 1978, a record that wore its influences proudly, including a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” and a track performed in the style of Marc Bolan, 2 of Hector’s most cited heroes.
The Gorillas disbanded in 1981 after bassist Alan Butler died from injuries sustained in a horse riding accident. Hector continued performing through the 1990s with Jesse Hector & The Sound and later the Gatecrashers, contributing to retro-garage rock compilations and releasing an EP in 2000. In later years he worked as a cleaner at the Hackney Empire theatre and the Royal Horticultural Society, a detail that somehow only added to the mythology around him.
In 2008, director Caroline Catz made a full documentary about his life, ‘A Message To The World,’ screened at the Raindance festival and at the Barbican as part of its Pop Mavericks season. It introduced his story to a new generation and confirmed what those who’d followed him since the early days already knew: Jesse Hector was one of the genuine originals, a man who played the music he believed in without compromise or commercial calculation, for over 6 decades.
He was 78. The sideburns were magnificent.