Pete Shelley, Leader of the Punk-Rock Buzzcocks, Dies at 63

Pete Shelley, who supercharged pop melodies with punk energy as the leader of the British band Buzzcocks, died Thursday at his home in Talinn, Estonia. He was 63.

His label, Domino Records, said the cause was a heart attack. Shelley had moved to Estonia, the home country of his wife, Greta, an artist, in 2012.

Shelley’s breakneck guitar strumming propelled songs that often proclaimed lovelorn vulnerability alongside acute self-consciousness. “I’m in distress, I need a caress,” he sang on one of the first Buzzcocks singles, “What Do I Get?”

Buzzcocks, formed in 1976, were in London’s punk-rock vanguard. For its initial EP, “Spiral Scratch” (1977), the band was led by its founders and songwriters, Shelley and Howard Devoto, often with Devoto as lead singer. But Devoto left before “Spiral Scratch” was released, and Shelley took over lead vocals and most of the songwriting, trading the band’s early sneers for songs about romance — often romance gone wrong.

“Singles Going Steady,” the 1979 compilation that was the first American Buzzcocks album (it consisted of material that had been released in Britain), is a quintessential punk collection: fast, terse and tuneful, shielding a lusty yet tender heart behind a brash attack. Shelley deliberately used gender-neutral pronouns, addressing love songs to “you,” and he was matter-of-fact about his bisexuality.

As the first wave of punk crested in Britain, Buzzcocks had hits there with songs like “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)?” in 1978. They disbanded in 1981 but regrouped in 1989 and had been led by Shelley, with personnel changes, ever since.

On solo albums between stints with the band, Shelley explored synth-pop, dance music and more abstract electronic compositions. The title track of his 1981 solo album, “Homosapien,” was a pop hit in Canada and Australia, but was banned by the BBC for “explicit reference to gay sex” because of the lyrics “Homo superior/In my interior.”

“Buzzcocks pretty much invented a style that would influence multiple generations of lonesome hearts and weirdos,” Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day said in a post on Instagram. “Never shy about writing beautiful melodies into loud fast punk.”

On the Buzzcocks website, the band described Shelley as “one of the U.K.’s most influential and prolific songwriters.”

Shelley was born Peter Campbell McNeish on April 17, 1955, in Leigh, England, west of Manchester. He attended Bolton Institute of Technology in the town of Bolton, also near Manchester. Howard Trafford, a fellow student, posted a bulletin-board ad looking for musicians interested in playing the Velvet Underground’s relentless 17-minute two-chord churn, “Sister Ray”; McNeish answered.

They two traveled to a Sex Pistols show in early 1976 and arranged for the Sex Pistols to perform at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, a concert that famously catalyzed Manchester’s own post-punk and dance-music scene. When the Sex Pistols returned to Manchester a few months later, Buzzcocks — with its leaders renamed Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto — were the opening act.

“I was doing philosophy and comparative European literature when Buzzcocks started,” Shelley told the website Quietus in 2009. “We found this whole other world of ideas, but tried to temper all that meaningful stuff with humor. Really, punk was about questioning things.”

Buzzcocks formed its own independent label, New Hormones, to release “Spiral Scratch,” an early example of punk’s do-it-yourself tactics. After Devoto left the band, Shelley turned out ample material; the band’s bassist, Steve Diggle, also wrote some songs. Amid tours with the Clash and other bands, Buzzcocks made three studio albums — “Another Music in a Different Kitchen,” “Love Bites” and “A Different Kind of Tension” — along with singles and EPs, before disbanding in 1981.

Shelley expanded beyond punk’s guitars-bass-drums lineup, embraced synthesizers and slowed down some tempos on his solo albums in the 1980s, moving closer to the rock mainstream. In 1987, Fine Young Cannibals had a hit with a remake of “Ever Fallen in Love?,” spurring Shelley and Diggle to reassemble Buzzcocks, joined by other musicians through the years, and return to punk’s speed and blare.

By the 1990s, the band was recording new albums — its most recent was “The Way,” in 2014 — and was widely hailed by bands in its wake. Nirvana chose Buzzcocks to open European arena shows on its last tour, in 1994. The band celebrated its 40th anniversary with a tour in 2016.

After the death of taste-making British disc jockey John Peel in 2005, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)?” was remade as a tribute single, with Shelley joined by Elton John, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and others.

Shelley also continued to record outside the band, making solo albums and, in 2002, collaborating again with Devoto on an album of electronic pop as ShelleyDevoto.

He is survived by his wife; a son, Alex; and his brother, Gary McNeish.