Dave Allen, Bassist and Founding Member of Gang of Four, Dies

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Gang of Four’s original lineup (Photo: Jay Schwartz)

Dave Allen, the bass guitarist and a founding member of the U.K. post-punk band, Gang of Four, died yesterday (April 5, 2025). The group announced his death, at age 69 of early-onset dementia, on their Facebook page.

The complete statement from drummer Hugo Burnham: “It is with broken yet full hearts that we share the news that Dave Allen, our old music partner, friend, and brilliant musician, died on Saturday morning. He was at home with his family. Dave had endured the early-onset of mixed dementia for some years which has been a heartbreaking time for his wife Paddy, his children, and close friends. Our love and thoughts are with them. Jon and I [Hugo] went to see him and spent a lovely afternoon with him and the family. We talked and laughed for hours, sharing rich and vivid memories of good times together. Adventures, careers in music, raising families, our interwoven lives spanning half a century. We’ve been so very lucky to have had the Ace of Bass in our lives.

“We know that Dave would have wanted nothing more than to step onstage with us again in Portland on our farewell U.S. tour. But it’s now a bridge too far. Goodbye, Old Friend.”

Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by Allen, Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk’s blunt and explosive energies — favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional “rock band” format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.

This original lineup of the band released two monumental albums, Entertainment! (1979) and Solid Gold (1981). A third, Songs of the Free (1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Allen, who left to form Shriekback. After Songs of the Free, Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983. After this release, the band broke up. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released Return The Gift (2005).

Gill’s untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group’s catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four’s music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group’s immediate wake, but the generation after that.

Allen went on to an interesting second career as director of Consumer Digital Audio Services for Intel in Portland, Ore. He later joined Beats Music in an executive capacity. When Apple acquired the company, he stayed on in their artist relations department.

Their recordings are available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here. Tickets for the band’s farewell tour that Burnham referred to in his tribute to Allen are available here.