Simeon Coxe, mastermind of the pioneering electronic rock group Silver Apples, has died. AL.com reports that Coxe died yesterday in Fairhope, Alabama. According to The Guardian, Coxe had pulmonary fibrosis, a degenerative lung condition. Coxe was 82.

Simeon Coxe was born in Knoxville and mostly raised in New Orleans. In the late ’60s, Coxe was living in the East Village and singing in a rock group called the Overland Electric Stage Band. Coxe began using a ’40s-vintage audio oscillator, a circuit that made oscillating noises, in the band’s live shows. Most of the band didn’t like it, but drummer Danny Taylor remained, and the two of them formed a new band. Taking a line from a Yeats poem, Coxe and Taylor called themselves Silver Apples.

Even before the formation of Kraftwerk, Silver Apples used early electronic instruments in a rock context — something they essentially had to put together from scratch, since there weren’t really any precedents. Coxe put together his own mad-scientist audio rig — nine audio oscillators, operated with 86 manual controls.

Silver Apples signed to the major-label imprint Kapp and released their self-titled debut album in 1968. Silver Apples made it into the lower reaches of the Billboard album charts. Silver Apples jammed with Jimi Hendrix on a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Woodstock — Coxe once said that he still had the rehearsal tapes — and played a live soundtrack to the moon landing for tens of thousands of people in Central Park.

In 1969, Silver Apples released the sophomore LP Contact, but the airline Pan-Am sued the band shortly thereafter. Pan-Am had struck a deal with the band — they could shoot the album cover in a Pan-Am cockpit as long as they included the airline’s logo in the cover art. But when the band included a photo of a plane crash on the album’s back cover, the airline was not amused. The lawsuit forced the breakup of the band and the dissolution of the Kapp Records label. Coxe has said that New York Marshalls actually came onstage during one of the band’s shows and confiscated their equipment. They’d already recorded a third album, but they had to give up any plans to release it.

After the end of the band, Coxe stepped away from music. He moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he drove an ice cream truck. Eventually, he worked at a local news station as a producer and an on-air reporter. But while Coxe was away from music, Silver Apples records became influential cult favorites, leaving an imprint on ’90s groups like Portishead and Stereolab. In 1996, Coxe and Taylor got together with a new member, Xian Hawkins, and reformed Silver Apples.

In 1998, the reformed Silver Apples released three albums — the newly recorded Beacon and Decatur, as well as The Garden, the album that they’d recorded in 1970 and that they’d been forced to abandon. Silver Apples toured heavily over the next few years, not stopping even after Coxe broke his neck in a 1998 tour-van accident. Danny Taylor died of a heart attack in 2005, but Coxe kept Silver Apples going, using samples of Taylor’s drumming. Coxe released Clinging To A Dream, the final Silver Apples album, in 2016.

Below, check out some examples of Coxe’s work.