Jan Kuehnemund, a founding member and lead guitarist of the all-girl hard rock band Vixen, passed away on October 10, 2013 from cancer. She was 51.

Instrumental in starting the group in 1980, the band was signed to EMI eight years later, and released a self-titled debut album that held its own in the male dominated hard rock/metal genre that was sonic stock and trade at that time. The songs “Edge of a Broken Heart” and “Cryin'” (not to be confused with Aerosmith’s single released a bit later) remain memorable hits for the band, who toured in support of headline acts like Bon Jovi. Vixen would ultimately go on to release two more records. The band broke up by 1991, but have reformed in various incarnations through the years, mostly with original members, the latest one being in 2009; the record Live in Sweden remains an aural document of those proceedings.

The news of Kuehnemund’s passing was revealed via the Vixen Facebook page. The surviving members of the group have been playing under the name JSRG and they posted a statement on Facebook which you can check out here, in which they give loving tribute to their ex-guitarist and good friend. The band seemed to have a sort of unity that transcended to their fans and to themselves. Although sales may have waned since the women’s glory years of the late 1980s, the cult still holds up for Vixen for the most part, and it will be many of that cult, along with music aficionados around the globe, that will lament the untimely passing of Jan Kuehnemund.

RIP Jan Kuehnemund
November 18, 1961 – October 10, 2013

Video: Vixen – “Edge Of A Broken Heart”

[Source via Loudwire]