American singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman died in a house fire at his home in Belgium on Saturday morning (January 17). His wife of over 50 years, Marie-Claire Lambert, also died in the fire, according to local news reports. Zimmerman was 84 years old.
Zimmerman and Lambert’s neighbor alerted emergency services about a fire at their house in Saint-Georges-sur-Meuse, Liège, on Saturday morning. When responders arrived, the building was already engulfed in flames. A medical examiner and forensic scientist later concluded that Zimmerman and Lambert died of asphyxiation, and the fire is being treated as accidental.
Brian Tucker Zimmerman was born on February 14, 1941, and grew up in rural Northern California. He took up the violin as a child and moved to Rome to study composition in 1966. He spent two years in London, where he met frequent David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, who produced his first album, Ten Songs. Bowie would later declare it one of his favorite albums of all time, saying in 2003: “The guy’s way too qualified for folk, in my opinion. Degrees in theory and composition, studying under composer Henry Onderdonk, Fulbright scholarship, and he wants to be Dylan. A waste of an incendiary talent? Not in my opinion. I always found this album of stern, angry compositions enthralling.”
Zimmerman and his wife soon settled down in Belgium, becoming well-known for his gigs around Europe. In the mid-1980s, Zimmerman turned his focus to writing novels, short stories, poems, and composing film music and compositions for symphonic orchestras. In 2003, he returned to songwriting alongside his band the Nightshift Trio – which included bassist Jeff Van Gool and Zimmerman’s son Quanah on guitar – and released Walking on the Edge of the Blues.
In 2024, Zimmerman released three studio albums: one with his Tucker Zimmerman Trio, the solo LP I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True, and Dance of Love, released by 4AD and featuring Big Thief as his backing band and producers. Dance of Love also memorably featured guest vocals from Lambert, rendering it a lovely, tender document of homemaking. Zimmerman’s final project was last July’s Music By River Words by Ear.
