San Diego plane crash is a devastating loss to the alternative rock
music community
[May 24, 2025]
By MARIA SHERMAN
NEW YORK (AP) — The alternative music community is in mourning after a
private jet hit a power line in foggy weather early Thursday and crashed
into a San Diego neighborhood, killing multiple people on board.
Among them was the groundbreaking music executive Dave Shapiro, a pillar
of his music scene, and Daniel Williams, a former drummer for the
popular Ohio metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada. Also killed were two
employees of Shapiro's Sound Talent Group agency: Kendall Fortner, 24,
and Emma Huke, 25.
Both Williams and Shapiro served as success stories for their respective
rock music scenes — proof that these subcultural sounds had real
mainstream appeal.
Williams' band, which had two releases reach the Top 10 of the Billboard
200, was a client of Sound Talent Group. He co-founded the company in
2018 with fellow agents Tim Borror and Matt Andersen, who previously
worked at the Agency Group and United Talent Agency.
Sound Talent Group’s roster focused on bands in and across pop-punk,
metalcore, post-hardcore and other popular hard rock sub-genres — such
as Sum 41, Pierce the Veil, Parkway Drive, Silverstein, I Prevail — plus
pop acts like the '90s brother-boy band, Hanson, best known for their
song “MMMBop,” and “A Thousand Miles (Interlude)” singer-songwriter
Vanessa Carlton.
The post-hardcore band Thursday called Shapiro, 42, an inspiration “who
despite achieving success never forgot the scenes and the communities
they came from.”
“It’s hard to put into words how much this man meant to so many of us,”
Pierce the Veil, which has been performing for nearly two decades
including a sold-out concert this week at New York's Madison Square
Garden, said in a tribute on the social platform X.
The World Alive, a band signed on Shapiro's label, said he was among
“the most influential and positive forces in our music scene and beyond.
And Dan was one of the most influential and positive forces behind the
kit.”
Shortly after punk rock entered the cultural zeitgeist in the late ’70s,
it inspired musical sub-movements fueled by its “do-it-yourself,”
community-minded ethics: hardcore punk begat post-hardcore, metalcore,
emo and so on. Across decades, these music genres evolved in sound and
scope, moving from underground popularity at concerts held in garages
and basements to real mainstream fame, while refusing to abandon its
independent ethos.
Thomas Gutches, who manages Beartooth and Archetypes Collide, recalled a
time when now-popular bands like The Devil Wears Prada were getting
their start playing in “DIY shows” in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in
which you could see 10 bands perform for $5.
Shapiro was “single-handedly developing this next wave of bands that are
coming in,” Gutches said. “He was able to take those bands, package them
together and put them on a larger scale. ... He took a risk in being
like, ‘Okay, I’m going to go and take them to that next level.'”
These artists reached a kind of apex in the 2000s and 2010s.
Once-obscure bands that had found audiences on early online social media
platforms like MySpace, at the mall goth haven Hot Topic, or in the
pages left-of-center publications like “Alternative Press” became MTV
staples, celebrities in their own right.
[to top of second column]
|
Music executive Dave Shapiro poses for a portrait on Dec. 3, 2024,
in Nashville. (Stephanie Siau/Sound Talent Group via AP)
Although many of these acts played
similar-yet-different music — think of the blast beats of metalcore
and the palm-muted power chords of pop-punk associated with the Vans
Warped Tour — they were brought together by a shared punk rock
spirit. And for the last few decades, these tight-knit groups have
proven to be the dominant force in alternative rock, according to
Mike Shea, founder of “Alternative Press,” who used the word
“community” to describe the scene.
Shea said Shapiro was “vital” in bringing these punk rock
subcultures to the masses.
“In this music industry, there are just too many people ripping
people off and using people,” he said. “Dave was not like that. He
was a beautiful soul, and beautiful person, a guiding force, just
someone who would end up being an inspiration for so many people.
And he will continue to be an inspiration.”
And it was not only musicians but also many booking agents, band,
and tour managers and promoters that got their big breaks because of
Shapiro, Gutches said.
The bands Shapiro represented are many of the most popular of their
genre and scene, like the Grammy-nominated Sum 41 or the
platinum-selling Pierce the Veil.
That also includes The Devil Wears Prada, one of the best-known
metalcore bands of the last few decades, celebrated for their
ability to marry melodic punk rock with metallic detouring. When
Williams “was in the band, that's when they broke out,” Shea said.
Gutches said Williams captivated audiences at shows with his
drumming as much as a band's front man does: “Daniel was putting on
a show from his style of playing.”
The tributes will continue for both, Shea said, as more and more
artists reveal the impact Williams and Shapiro had on their lives.
Case in point: “There is no single person more responsible for my
identity as a professional adult than Dave Shapiro,” metalcore band
Issues bassist Skyler Acord said via Instagram.
His band coined a phrase they would use when things got heated "to
remind us to chill out and try to understand each other,” he wrote.
“We'd say, ‘Do it for Dave.’”
___
Associated Press writer Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
