The Unsolved Murder of Musician Peter Ivers

The musician was bludgeoned to death in his Skid Row loft, but no one has ever been arrested for the crime.

Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash

Peter Ivers had a knack for the odd and the curious. A gifted musician, the Harvard Alum had friends in high places, including Harold Ramis, David Lynch, and John Belushi.

The Illinois native moved around during his formative years. With an ill father who eventually died, his mother married a businessman from Boston, where the family would end up. After attending Harvard University, he chose to pursue music and began playing the harmonica in the band, Street Choir. He would later open for Fleetwood Mac as they toured Rumours.

Peter had begun a solo career at the end of the ‘60s with the release of Knight of the Blue Communion. The album presented a strange mix of musical variants and featured Yolande Bavan. As a review on Amazon claims, there’s nothing else like it.

In 1974, Peter signed a record deal with Warner Bros through his friend Van Dyke Parks, and two years later, his old friend David Lynch asked him to write a song for his new movie, Eraserhead. After writing the haunting In Heaven, Peter scored Grand Theft Auto for Ron Howard.

In an interview with The Washington Post, screenwriter Josh Frank explained why Peter Ivers was so important to Hollywood.

“He was the centerpiece of the wheel that our pop culture history turned around in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though his output didn’t necessarily stick, in one way or another he helped many of the other artists of his time get their success — like David Lynch. He was a connector — he connected people. Also, he was ahead of the curve when it came to video art and mixing video and music.”

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, artists had begun to leave their usual neighbourhoods and move to big warehouses just off Skid Row. Peter Ivers was one of them, alongside his girlfriend film exec Lucy Fisher.

Around the same time, Peter and Franne Gold were writing songs for Diana Ross, Phyllis Hyman and the Pointer Sisters, cementing them as lucrative songwriters. Peter was creating music and had huge commercial success from multiple hit records, so when he was found…