Graeme Edge, the drummer, co-founder, and sole constant member of the English art-rock band the Moody Blues, has died, the BBC reports. The news was confirmed by his bandmates Justin Hayward and John Lodge. “Sadly Graeme left us today,” Lodge wrote on Twitter. “To me he was the White Eagle of the North with his beautiful poetry, his friendship, his love of life and his ‘unique’ style of drumming that was the engine room of the Moody Blues.” He was 80.

Edge formed the Moody Blues in 1964 with guitarist Denny Laine, bassist Clint Warwick, keyboardist Mike Pinder, and multi-instrumentalist Ray Thomas. Laine and Warwick departed after the release of their R&B-focused debut The Magnificent Moodies, and the band reformed with Hayward and Lodge. The new lineup pursued a more symphonic, psychedelic sound beginning with their 1967 concept album Days Of Future Passed, eventually leading to the birth of prog-rock.

Edge contributed both poems and songs to the Moody Blues, and when the Moody Blues went on hiatus in the mid-’70s, Edge released two solo albums with the Graeme Edge Band. He was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame alongside the rest of the Moody Blues in 2018. “Graeme was one of the great characters of the music business and there will never be his like again,” Hayward wrote in a tribute on social media. Revisit some of his work below.