Eric Albronda Obit

Eric Albronda Obituary

 

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Eric Albronda

11/18/1945 - 07/07/2024

Eric Albronda, age 78, passed away peacefully at home in Mt. Shasta from complications following an automobile accident on July 7, 2024.

He was born on November 18, 1945 to Mildred and Dr. Henry Albronda, UCSF MD Psychiatrist, and grew up in San Francisco, a city he loved and voraciously walked and bicycled within. He graduated from Lowell High School and UC Berkeley.

Eric was a musician, music manager, and record producer, and was the first drummer of the groundbreaking 60's rock band Blue Cheer. In 1966 he and his good friend Jerry Russell wanted to put a band together in San Francisco. At the same time his old schoolmate Dickie Peterson had just quit his band, "Group B" in the Davis area where Dickie had met Paul Whaley. Eventually Eric and Jerry Russell along with Alan Terk, Doug Tracy, and Peter Wagner assembled Blue Cheer by adding Paul Whaley and Leigh Stephens. Within a few months Eric negotiated a recording contract with Mercury Records that would eventually turn into six Blue Cheer albums. With their nationwide hit "Summertime Blues" in 1968, music critics and historians recognized this, along with a few other songs of the era, as the origin of a whole new genre of rock and roll music that they named "Heavy Metal." He later worked on solo records by Leigh Stephens, Gary Yoder, Bruce Stephens and George Michalski. Eric's love for music and his production work was not limited to rock and roll. He loved all music from Mozart to Coltrane...all music, he would say, "as long as it's good."

In the 70's he provided care and counseling for various clients in group and private settings. Then in the 80's he turned his multifaceted creative instincts into a successful 30+ year import business with his beloved life partner, Vicki Brenner.

He was devoted to his mother and helped publish and distribute her books on deaf artists and chronicled her own copious works of art on mialart.us. More recently with the help of Scott Shields, chief curator at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, they used her manuscript on Granville Redmond to print and publish "Granville Redmond, The Eloquent Palette," published in 2020.

Eric was a man of few words who brought his passion and laughter to so many people he touched, from the homeless to the very wealthy. He had a large presence and a big heart. He was a generous loyal and kind man while maintaining the spirit of a warrior.

Eric is survived by his life partner, Vicki Brenner, his sister, Jeanne A. Heaton, niece, Shannon O'Leary, nephew Kevin and Kevin's wife, Kara Moore-O'Leary, and his grand niece and nephew, Izabella and Julian Moore-O'Leary and is loved dearly by countless people around the globe.

Per his request there will not be a service and a celebration of his life will be announced in the future.