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Rock Producer John Purdell Passes Away
Press Release
2003-07-30

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Producer, songwriter, engineer and musician John Purdell passed away Friday after a battle with cancer. John has a long, extended history working with such notables as Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, Poison and Cinderella. Please check out his website for his lengthy contributions to the hard rock world at JohnPurdell.com. There will be a memorial site set up soon at: JohnPurdell.com/memorial. The staff at KNAC.COM would like to express their deepest sympathies.

Here is Mr. Purdell's biography from JohnPurdell.com:

John is a classically trained pianist, born in San Diego and raised in Los Angeles. He grew up listening to everyone from the Beatles and Bach to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. His professional career started in high school where John landed a publishing contract and became a staff writer for well-known producer, George Tobin. This time not only helped John polish his songwriting skills, but also gave him full reign of a million dollar studio where his engineering and producing teeth were cut.

His diverse musical interests were fueled by his own musical skills, which include playing accordion (from age 5) and piano (from age 9). As a teen, John became an accomplished guitarist, bass guitarist, keyboard player and programmer. He played in several garage bands, playing gigs at all the local clubs, frat parties and proms. John eventually made a "name" for himself as a top session keyboard player whose client list included the top of L.A.s producers. It was then that he auditioned for and landed the keyboard gig for a world tour with Rick Springfield. Rick was at the peak of his career and they played venues ranging from all the top television shows to sold out arenas capped off with the famed "Live Aid" concert in Philadelphia PA.

The mid 80's found John back in the studio where he met and began working with world-renowned engineer Duane Baron and metal producer whiz, Tom Werman. John, Duane and Tom became a formidable industry production team with a string of multi platinum records produced for Motley Crue, Poison, LA Guns and Kix.

John and Duane later broke from Tom and began a successful run of hit records produced for Heart, Foreigner, Alice Cooper, Cinderella and most notably Ozzy Osbourne's best selling "No More Tears" album where John co-wrote the title song. He also wrote 3 songs on Ozzy's "Ozzmosis" CD.

In the mid '90s John released a solo CD with the first single "Better Way To Die" reaching top 40 on the Gavin AC charts. He traveled the US doing promotional radio and television shows and was featured at a live concert in South Korea as guitarist and lead singer.

[In the 2000's, John had been] splitting his time between the studio and the road. In the summer of 2000 he played keyboards and sang background vocals with Foreigner on the "Jukebox Hero" tour. Most of 2002 was spent on the road with Cinderella and Poison playing to sold out audiences all over North America and Canada.