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Keith LeBlanc, Session Drummer For Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, NIN Dies at 69

Keith LeBlanc, a beloved session drummer/producer and engineer on tracks by Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, NIN and Sinead O'Connor dead at 69.

Over the course of a four-decade career that began with his gig working along bassist Doug Wimbish and guitarist Skip “Little Axe” McDonald as part of the house band for rap pioneers the Sugarhill Gang in the early 1980s, LeBlanc played with and performed on records that spanned electronica, rock and pop. In a nod to his versatility, LeBlanc spent the 1980s and 1990s playing sessions with a wide variety of acts, from Ministry to R.E.M., Seal and Annie Lennox, as well as adding his production and engineering expertise to Nine Inc Nails’ landmark 1989 industrial rock classic debut, Pretty Hate Machine. “Cutting records simultaneously as Fats Comet (for the more dancefloor-oriented material) and Tackhead (for their more aggressive political tracks), they also became the second incarnation of The Maffia, the uncompromising backing band of Mark Stewart [the Pop Group].

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