Joseph Byrd, the creative force behind the groundbreaking psychedelic rock band the United States of America, passed away in November at the age of 87.

His death on Nov. 2 received little public attention until his family filed a death notice with the Los Angeles Times, according to a report from the New York Times. Byrd died unexpectedly at his home in Medford, Oregon, his family stated, though no cause of death was shared.

Originally from Louisville, Kentucky and later raised in Tucson, Arizona, Byrd trained as a composer under avant garde innovators including John Cage and La Monte Young. He also took part in Cage’s Fluxus movement, which focused on experimental performance art. According to his family’s notice, Byrd’s first live appearance took place at Yoko Ono’s loft in New York.

After relocating to Los Angeles with musicologist and then partner Dorothy Moskowitz, Byrd entered UCLA’s musicology program, launched the New Music Workshop, and eventually co founded the United States of America alongside Moskowitz.

Blending experimental techniques with American folk traditions and the rising psychedelic sound of the era, the band released a single self titled album in 1968. While it failed to make a major commercial impact at the time, reaching only Number 181 on the album charts, the record has since earned recognition as one of the boldest and most forward thinking releases of the acid rock period.

In 2021, Rolling Stone named the album among the “40 Greatest One Album Wonders.” “In the Sixties, a few brave punks were not afraid to make some noise with the squawking, blipping textures of embryonic electronics,” the publication wrote. “The band jumbled all sorts of early electronics — oscillators, contact mics, synths, tape decks — into their revolution rock, creating a future model for fans like Portishead and Animal Collective.”

After the album’s release, the United States of America disbanded, but Byrd remained musically active. His later projects included 1969’s The American Metaphysical Circus, which featured early explorations of synthesizer and vocoder technology. He also contributed to Phil Ochs’ “Crucifixion” on the singer songwriter’s acclaimed album Pleasures of the Harbor and later joined Cal State Fullerton as a professor of American music.

While teaching, Byrd released his 1976 album Yankee Transcendoodle, which reworked American patriotic songs through synthesizer based arrangements. The album later appeared on our list of 10 Weird Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard.

“Byrd refashions everything from ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ to ‘John Brown’s Body’ to ‘The Internationale’ (here disguised as ‘Grand Centennial Hymn’) into a warm and casually humorous texture very much like one of Garth Hudson’s long organ introductions to ‘Chest Fever’,” Greil Marcus wrote of the LP. “Like Hudson at his most inventive and witty, Byrd plays music that a lot of people have heard primarily on merry go rounds and at parades.”

In later years, Byrd co produced Ry Cooder’s 1978 album Jazz and composed music for films by Agnes Varda and Robert Altman, including H.E.A.L.T.H. He also worked as a columnist and food critic for a northern California newspaper, taught music history at the College of the Redwoods, and created the robotic sound effects for the 1972 science fiction film Silent Running. Those robot designs later served as inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars character R2 D2.

“Joseph was a unique and quintessentially American man,” said Byrd’s friend and former wife Angela Blackthorne Biggs in the death notice. “For good or ill, freedom was his creed, and he lived life entirely on his own terms. He was a brilliant musician, who could pick up any instrument he happened upon and play a lovely tune extemporaneously. He was capable of profound empathy and eloquence. He made his mark on the world, much as he intended from the beginning.”