Way back in 1989, I was still pretty much a cymbal-destroying metalhead when one day some of my musically hipper friends made me listen to Bob Mould’s Workbook. The main single from the album, “See a Little Light,” turned me into a bona fide fanboy for indie alt-pop, and it’s not too far off to say that my musical life was completely changed. Anton Fier played drums on that track, and now Anton Fier is dead.

In addition to Bob Mould, Fier played with the Feelies, the Lounge Lizards, Pere Ubu, and the Voidoids, and he also founded the Golden Palominos. If you were in a punk-flavored indie-alt-rock band, Fier was the dude you wanted driving your sound, a genuinely great drummer.

He died, age 66, on September 14 in Switzerland by assisted suicide. He did not have a life-ending illness, but he reportedly did decide that he had “completed life.”

Mortality is always a complicated, slippery, tricky affair. Speaking selfishly as a fan, I’m just glad we had Fier for as long as we did.