Rick Steele was born Richard Warwick Steele in Auckland, New Zealand, on March 9, 1948 – died Perth March 10, 2025, aged 77
‘BLUESMAN WITH A HEART OF GOLD’
by Simon Collins, in The West, Wednesday March 12, 2025, page 14
Local bluesman Rick Steele, patriarch of WA’s first family of music, has died aged 77.
The respected long-serving president of the Perth Blues Club, which he founded in 1992, and leader of The Hot Biscuit Band, died on Monday — the day after his birthday — following a long battle with illness.
After forging a music career in his birth country of New Zealand, Steele permanently moved to Perth in 1981 with wife Liz to work as a teacher.
The WA Music Hall of Fame inductee performed thousands of gigs, even while busy helping his four children pursue their own musical dreams.
Second eldest son Luke Steele was frontman of alternative rockers The Sleepy Jackson and ARIA Award-winning electro-pop duo Empire of the Sun, which scored a massive international hit with 2008 single Walking On A Dream.
Rick Steele opened for The Sleepy Jackson at the Bowery Ballroom in New York in 2006 and supported Empire of the Sun on a 2017 North American tour.
Katy Steele earned acclaim as the singer for pop group Little Birdy, while her twin brother Jake makes electronic music as Tobacco Rat.
Eldest son Jesse played in the first line-up of The Sleepy Jackson before working in the US as an environmental scientist.
Rick Steele was inducted into the WA Music Hall of Fame in 2016, joining AC/DC legend Bon Scott, the Farriss brothers of INXS, comedian Tim Minchin and Baby Animals singer Suze DeMarchi.
The same year, a classroom at Mt Lawley Senior High School, where all four Steele siblings studied, was officially named the Steele Family Music Classroom.
Luke Steele paid tribute to his father as “a true legend, a voice and a shepherd for the common man, a story teller, a bluesman with a heart of gold”.
Oz
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