Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp Dead at 70
Tom Rapp, founder and frontman of psychedelic folk band Pearls Before Swine, has died, a representative from Drag City has told Pitchfork. He was 70 years old. Tom Rapp formed Pearls Before Swine in 1965 with high school classmates in Florida. They released their debut record, One Nation Underground, in 1967; it was reissued last year by Drag City. Rapp released six LPs with various iterations of Pearls Before Swine, before embarking on a solo career that included four records.
In 1999, the same year that he released his final solo album A Journal of the Plague Year, Rapp covered “After the Gold Rush” for the compilation This Note’s for You Too! A Tribute to Neil Young. In addition to his musical career, Rapp was a civil rights lawyer.
