Walter Steding, avant-garde one-man band and portraitist, dies at 75

Walter George Steding died in mid-November at his apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He was 75. The cause of death, which was not widely reported at the time, is not yet known, his daughter, Georgeanna Tisdale Steding, said. He died a few days before he was scheduled to perform at a memorial service for photographer Marcia Resnick at the Cooper Union in Manhattan.

Born on Sep. 7, 1950, in Pittsburgh and raised from age 8 in Harmony, Pa., Mr. Steding hitchhiked to New York around 1972 with two brown-bag lunches and a two-year degree from a commercial art school. Self-taught and interested in what he called "the aesthetics of sound," he experimented with an electric violin, a synthesizer he built and an EEG machine, and performed as an otherworldly one-man band wearing flashing goggles and a biofeedback device.

He showed work at places such as White Columns and performed at clubs including CBGB, the Ritz and the Mudd Club, and was the bandleader for Glenn O’Brien’s public-access show "TV Party." Andy Warhol managed Mr. Steding — the first and only act Warhol managed after the Velvet Underground — and helped him with odd jobs at the Factory and with recordings and videos.

Mr. Steding also painted, producing hundreds of portraits of Factory visitors and others in Manhattan’s underground creative class; his distorted figures were said to recall John Currin and Fernando Botero.

Key Topics

Culture, Walter Steding, Andy Warhol, Tv Party, Glenn O'brien, Factory