Updated:2007-01-09 09:53:46
Flying Burrito Brother 'Sneaky' Pete Dies
Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Jan. 9) - Pedal steel guitarist "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, who co-founded influential 1960s country-rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers, has died from complications of Alzheimer's disease, associates said Monday. He was 72.


"Sneaky" Pete: Founding Father of Country Rock
When Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman left The Byrds in 1968, they wanted to start a new group that fused rock with the purest elements of country. The Flying Burrito Brothers were that group, and Kleinow helped bridge the two styles with his psychedelic pedal steel playing.


The boogie-beated 'Lazy Day' offers Pete a chance to stretch.
Here he flows seamlessly over 1969's 'Christine's Tune.'
Kleinow, who died Saturday, had been living in a nursing facility in Petaluma, Calif., about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

The Flying Burrito Brothers, led by two former members of the Byrds, Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, formed in 1968 and won a cult following by playing soulful country music with a rock 'n' roll attitude.

Largely ignored at the time, the band would influence such acts as the Rolling Stones and the Eagles. It released two albums before the hard-living Parsons was fired in 1970. Kleinow soon quit for lucrative session work on albums by the likes of John Lennon ("Mind Games"), Fleetwood Mac ("Heroes are Hard to Find") and Joni Mitchell ("Blue").

He later returned to his original calling as a visual effects artist in film and television. Before the Burritos, he had worked on NBC's "The Gumby Show." His later credits included the first two "Terminator" films, and he shared an Emmy for his work on the TV miniseries "The Winds of War."

In 2000, he founded the country-rock group Burrito Deluxe, named after the Flying Burrito Brothers' second album. His last public performance was in October 2005 at a Gram Parsons festival in Georgia.