Gabriel “The Gun” Gonzalez, the original trumpet player in No Doubt, has died aged 57.
News of his death was shared with SPIN, and it was confirmed that the musician died following a motorcycle accident that took place in Hermosa Beach, California.
Born in 1967, the musician first picked up the trumpet while he was still in school and was part of his high school band. Attending the Loara High School in Anaheim, it was here that he first met Gwen Stefani and her brother Eric.
The three of them worked together on various songs back before No Doubt chose that band name. Originally, they were going by the name Apple Core, and many of the early tracks remain unreleased.
As highlighted by Vice, some of his work did make it onto ‘The Beacon Street Collection’ – the second album shared by No Doubt, which was released in 1995. In the tracklist, he is credited as a co-writer on the song ‘Total Hate 95’. He is also given credit on the track ‘Paulina’, taken from the self-titled debut album shared in 1992.
In his work outside of No Doubt, Gonzalez took part in various musical projects around the SKA scene and contributed to releases from artists including The Untouchables, Kingston A Go-Go, Save Ferris and The Skeletones.
Taking to Instagram on July 12 – in what would be his penultimate post on the platform – the musician shared rare footage from one of No Doubt’s first televised performances.
In his most recent post, friends, family and fans have taken to the comment section to share their condolences to the musician. “RIP Gabriel. Met you only once and knew you were a genuine and good human. Thanks for all the good vibes and good tunes brother,” one wrote, while another shared: “I met him a few years ago when he worked at joes. Such a great guy. So easy to talk to and I enjoyed his stories. Wow. Can’t believe this.”
Back in January, Gonzalez spoke to SPIN about his late fellow No Doubt band member, John Spence – who died by suicide aged 18 during the band’s early days – and the group’s beginnings.
“We were all into Madness and Prince Buster and all the Trojan shit, so Eric started banging out some upbeat ska shit and we were just goofing off writing music and we’re like, ‘let’s form a group.’ Bing bang boom, that’s how it happened,” he told the outlet.
“We all kind of knew that we were creating something different, and being in the mod-ska scene in the early mid-’80s was a pretty spectacular thing.”