Trevor Bolder, the British bassist and session musician best known for being a member of David Bowie’s backing band The Spiders From Mars, died yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 62 years old.

Bolder’s career in music began with a band called The Rats, which also featured Mick Ronson on lead guitar. It was Ronson who brought Bolder into David Bowie’s backing band following the departure of Bowie’s original bassist Tony Visconti. As a bassist and occasional trumpeter, Bolder provided crucial contributions to some of Bowie’s best work, including Hunky Dory (1971), Aladdin Sane (1973), and, of course, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars (1972). 

After Bowie disbanded the Spiders From Mars following Pin Ups (1973), Bolder joined Uriah Heep in 1976. Playing on the albums Firefly, Innocent Victim, Fallen Angel, and Conquest during his first run with the band, Bolder was also instrumental in re-uniting Uriah Heep for various albums in the 1980s and 1990s. His last album with Uriah Heep, Into The Wild, came out in 2011.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, Bowie said of his former bandmate: “Trevor was a wonderful musician and a major inspiration for whichever band he was working with. But he was foremostly a tremendous guy, a great man.”