Bernie Lynch, founding member of Australian band Eurogliders, has passed away.
Fellow band member of the Perth-founded pop group, Grace Knight, announced the news in a statement posted to their social media accounts, confirming that Lynch died last Thursday in palliative care after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2024.
“I am heartbroken and don’t know how to proceed without him,” Knight wrote.
“I arrived in Australia as a 21-year-old in 1977 and met Bernie not too long after, we’ve been in each other’s lives ever since. I can’t imagine what our lives would have looked like had we not crossed paths with each other. I don’t know how many shows Eurogliders have done over the years, it must be thousands, and for every single one of them, I’ve had Bernie there, standing beside me. It’s been such a wonderful, wonderful journey and I’m so very proud and honoured to have shared it with him.
“Bernie was an incredibly kind and caring person and generous to a fault. He’d fuss about making sure the band were happy and had after-show cheese and biscuits, and a refreshing beverage. He’d come to stay at my house and turn up with bags of food and take over the kitchen. He was funny and intelligent and engaging. If you weren’t well, or life had thrown you a curve ball, he’d be the first one on the phone to see how you were going. He was a people person and loved a chat.”
“And, of course, there’s the songs. Without Bernie’s songs there would be no Eurogliders.”
Signed to Sony Music, Eurogliders went on to have global success with hits as “Heaven”, “We Will Together” and “Absolutely”. They went Top 5 in the US charts and on MTV’s New Year’s Eve party in New York, broadcast to over 65 million people.
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The band released four albums between 1982-1988 before calling it quits. They eventually reunited in the 2000s and released their fifth self-titled record in 2005. Eurogliders would release two more albums – Don’t Eat the Daisies in 2014 and The Blue Kiss Project in 2021.
Eurogliders were inducted into the WA Hall of Fame in 2017.
