Vivian Trimble, founding member of Luscious Jackson, dies at 59
Vivian Trimble, a singer and keyboardist best known as a member of the stylish 1990s rock band Luscious Jackson, died Tuesday. She was 59.
Her former bandmates announced her death in an Instagram post that said Trimble had “been in treatment for cancer for several years and developed a complication on Monday.”
“We were not expecting this,” read the statement by the group, which also included singer Jill Cunniff, guitarist Gabby Glaser and drummer Kate Schellenbach. “We are devastated beyond words to lose our graceful sister.”
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Once described by Mike D of the Beastie Boys as “somewhere between Hole and the Indigo Girls,” Luscious Jackson played a funky and melodic brand of alternative rock that seamlessly blended samples and live instrumentation; the music, which documented life in the band’s native New York City with wit and attitude, was built on sturdy, low-slung grooves yet showcased elements drawn from the many genres the members absorbed growing up in New York.
“Back in the early ’80s, one night you would be in a hip-hop club, the next night you would be at a Bad Brains show, the next night you would be at a reggae club,” Glaser told The Times in 1997. “It was a fantastic time for a young brain to be influenced by music.”
Named after the ’60s basketball star Lucious Jackson, the quartet was long associated with the similarly eclectic Beastie Boys, for whom Schellenbach played drums in the early ’80s and whose Grand Royal label released its records.
Luscious Jackson scored its biggest chart hit in 1996 with the lithe and propulsive “Naked Eye,” which peaked at No. 36 on Billboard’s Hot 100; the single came from the group’s second album, “Fever In Fever Out,” which it recorded with esteemed producer Daniel Lanois. The band also had songs featured in the movies “Clueless,” “Good Will Hunting” and “A Life Less Ordinary.”
Trimble was born May 24, 1963; her parents were classical musicians, she told Out magazine in 2000, and she spent her childhood between the United States and France. Citing female punk bands like the Slits and the Raincoats as inspirations, Luscious Jackson formed in 1991 and released its debut EP, “In Search of Manny,” in 1992; “Natural Ingredients,” the band’s first full-length, came out in 1994 and earned admiring reviews from Rolling Stone, NME and The Times.
Trimble and Cunniff formed an acoustic-based side project, Kostars, which released an album in 1996 with guest spots from Dean and Gene Ween of the comic rock act Ween. Trimble also played with the Breeders’ Josephine Wiggs in a mellow, ’60s-ish duo called Dusty Trails, which released a self-titled LP in 2000 that featured an appearance by Emmylou Harris.
Trimble — whose survivors include her husband, David, and their two children, Nathaniel and Rebecca — left Luscious Jackson in 1998. The group continued without her for “Electric Honey” in 1999, then split up in 2000 before reuniting without Trimble to make 2013’s “Magic Hour.”
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