Alex Ligertwood passed away peacefully in his sleep at his longtime home in Santa Monica, California, with his beloved dog Bobo by his side — just two weeks after performing his final concert. He was 79 years old, and the music world that loved him is only now beginning to absorb the full weight of what it has lost. His wife of twenty-five years, Shawn Brogan, announced his passing with the words of a woman saying goodbye to a man she had known and loved for thirty-six years: “It’s with great sadness and heartache to announce the passing of my sweet dear Alex. He was loved by so many.

Soar and sing with the angels, my love.” Born in Drumchapel, Glasgow in 1946, Alex Ligertwood built a voice that eventually covered nearly four octaves — a Scottish boy from a musical family who grew up singing in school choirs, playing in a Boys’ Brigade pipe band, and absorbing the skiffle boom of the 1950s before the music took him on a journey that would eventually land him on the same stage as Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, and some of the most enduring names in rock history. He served as Santana’s lead vocalist across five different stints between 1979 and 1994, bringing some of their biggest hits to life including “Winning,” “Hold On,” and “All I Ever Wanted,” and the voice he brought to those songs — soulful, powerful, completely his own — became part of the soundtrack of an era that millions of music lovers carry with them still. Guitarist Brandon Paul, who toured with Alex as part of Icons of Classic Rock, called him “a world-class professional” whose voice was “a force of nature — soulful, from the heart, and legendary every single night.”