A Butthole Surfer, Symbol of Generation X, Is Gone

Teresa Taylor, who drummed with the punk-rock band Butthole Surfers in the 1980s, has died at age 60. The band announced her death Monday, saying she "passed away peacefully this weekend after a long battle with lung disease." In her own post, Taylor's partner and caretaker, Cheryl Curtice, said she "passed away clean and sober, peacefully in her sleep" after bravely facing "her horrible disease." Taylor, also known as Teresa Nervosa, was a vital component of the Butthole Surfers' "distinctive twin-drummer approach," which saw her and King Coffey play together on separate kits, per the New York Times. The drummers had met as youth while playing in marching bands in Texas.

Taylor met singer Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary, who'd founded Butthole Surfers in 1981, when she gave them space to rent in the Austin warehouse where she was living, per the Times. After she joined the band for a jam session in 1983, Haynes asked her to become the band's second drummer. "I was like, 'Gibby, can you, in my lifetime, can you get me to Paris?'" Taylor said in a bonus clip from the The Butthole Surfers Movie, released this year. "And he said, 'I think I can.' So I called my mom and I said, 'Mom, my ship's come in!'" She left the Butthole Surfers in 1989 because "I really wasn't well," she recalled in 2008, when she resumed touring with the band for a time, per People. "I was flipping out, drinking too much, and all that."

Following her exit, she "became an emblem of Generation X aimlessness and anomie with a memorable appearance in Richard Linklater's 1990 film Slacker," per the Times. But health troubles followed her. She was diagnosed with an aneurysm and strobe light-induced seizures before announcing in November 2021 that she had end-stage lung disease. "I know I smoked like a chimney and this is to be expected," she wrote, adding there are no "harsh treatments" and "my spirits are up." "We were all fortunate to have her beautiful, strong spirit in our lives," Curtice wrote, per People. "She will live in our hearts forever," said the band. (More Butthole Surfers stories.)