Minnesota punk rock hero Beej Chaney of the Suburbs, 68, dies while swimming in the Pacific Ocean

Beej Chaney, always a bold adventurer as a guitarist and performer, had a ritual of swimming in the Pacific Ocean almost daily. The Twin Cities-reared musician did so Sunday around sunset, and his body was found on Hermosa Beach that night, according to his friends and bandmates.

Chaney, the colorful cofounder of the popular Twin Cities band the Suburbs, was 68.

“We texted a bunch over Christmas and he said ‘how ‘bout we talk on Sunday night?’ and I said, ‘just call me by 10 o’clock Minnesota time,” said Suburbs drummer Hugo Klaers, who had seen Chaney a lot over the past year. “He didn’t call me Sunday night. I wasn’t surprised because that happens with Beej. His time clock is way different than anybody else’s.”

Then Klaers received a text from Chaney’s ex-wife on Tuesday morning with the news.

In a report from the Hermosa Beach Police Department, police and fire crews responded to a call around 7 p.m. Sunday when the body of a man washed ashore along an area called the Strand. His death was deemed an accident by officials. Police are still not publicly identifying the man, but Chaney’s personal assistant and driver, Adam Fitzpatrick, said the victim in the report was Chaney.

Klaers pointed out that Chaney, who was living in the Hermosa Beach/Manhattan Beach area, survived a near-death incident last year after a long swim in the Pacific. At the time, he collapsed on the beach.

“His body temperature had dropped to like 75 degrees,” Klaers said Tuesday. “They put him in an induced coma for three days, and he actually came back, and the doctor called him ‘her little miracle’ because she said most people when their body temperature gets this low don’t survive. They told him he couldn’t swim for a month and any future swimming he had to wear a wet suit because he was only wearing swim trunks when he was swimming in the ocean.”

After the Suburbs initially disbanded in 1987, Chaney moved to Los Angeles in 1990. When the band reunited in ‘92, Chaney’s involvement was inconsistent. He participated in their 2013 album, “Si Sauvage,” their first new release in 27 years, but he officially exited the Suburbs the following year.

Chaney’s departure from the band was announced via the Suburbs’ social media pages, which read: “Beej Chaney is taking a leave of absence from the band to take care of some health and personal issues that have been weighing heavily on his mind and body. ... The whole Suburbs camp wish Beej strength and healing.”

“We had a long history,” Suburbs frontman Chan Poling, who had known Chaney since they were teenagers, said Tuesday. “He was an original.”

After the Suburbs’ other original guitarist Bruce Allen died in 2009, one of Chaney’s longtime peers and admirers, Steve Brantseg, joined the band. “He and Chan were so different as frontmen, their contrasting styles complemented each other,” Brantseg said.

When the Suburbs performed at the Whiskey A-Go-Go in Los Angeles in 2018, Chaney came out to see his old band perform and showed no sign of ill will toward them, Brantseg said: “He hung out a long time and was super excited to see us all.”

Calling Chaney’s contributions to the Suburbs “priceless,” Klaers said, “His lyrics, his singing, his guitar playing, everything about him were super unique. There’s not a guitarist in the world that plays a guitar like Beej. Granted he was not a guitar virtuoso, but he was very, very profound.

“He was more passionate about music than anyone in the band. He just lived and breathed to play music.”

Blaine John Chaney — Beej is a childhood nickname — grew up in Deephaven. He got into rock through his older brother, who took him to see Jimi Hendrix at age 11, and Led Zeppelin on his 12th birthday. Coveting a black Gibson Les Paul guitar like the stars played, he saved $450 working at his dad’s landscaping business at 14 years old, bought the guitar and never looked back.

The Suburbs formed in 1977, recording for the influential Minneapolis-based Twin/Tone Records. The group, which melded punk and new wave into an ahead-of-its-time dance rock, went on to make albums on the Phonogram and A&M labels before disbanding in 1987. A popular live attraction in Minnesota, the group is probably best known for the 1983 song “Love Is the Law,” which became a theme song for the same-sex marriage movement in the ‘10s.

After moving to Los Angeles, Chaney released a solo album on his own label, and in the late ‘90s bought Shangri-La, the legendary Malibu residential recording studio used by Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, The Band and others.

Said Klaers: “Mark Knopfler was at Shangri-La recording and Beej was such a fan he said, ‘You don’t have to pay me. It’s a privilege to have you in the studio.”

After Weezer and Metallica recorded there, Chaney sold the studio to super-producer Rick Rubin in 2011.

“Beej put a lot of work into preserving and upgrading Shangri-La,” his longtime personal assistant Fitzpatrick said. “He was very happy the legacy of it will live on after he’s gone.”

Fitzpatrick said Chaney was also very excited to be making music once again.

He and longtime Minnesotan friend Robby Vee, son of early-‘60s pop hitmaker Bobby Vee, spent the past year working on a rockabilly/punk hybrid album intended to come out this month, titled “Shake It All Up.” Chaney co-wrote, sang and played guitar on all the songs, which brought the ex-Suburb back to Minnesota several times over the past year.

“I made sure there’s a lot of ‘Beejtar’ all over the record,” said Vee, referencing the term often used to describe Chaney’s percussive guitar style. “It’s incredibly disappointing he’s not going to see it released.

“We had so much fun doing it,” added Vee, who recounted sparking the idea for the album when he heard Chaney was no longer making music. “I asked him, ‘Why don’t you join me on a record and we’ll get you back in the music business?’ And he said he’d love to.”

Vee said Chaney would swim past the breakers off the California coast nearly every day and just float as a form of meditation. “He was a really good swimmer — and surfer, too — and just lived in the ocean,” Vee said.

In a return visit to Minnesota last summer, Chaney performed with Vee at Whitney Park in St. Cloud. He also paid his first visit to First Avenue in many years for a concert by Prince’s old band the Revolution, where he visited with friends, many of whom commented afterward that he looked healthy and happy.

“He was in a good place,” Klaers said. “He had gotten himself healthy. He was in treatment for three years. He was so much more himself, funny and energetic. He wasn’t walking around in a fog. He was super happy. He was happy about these songs he had. So it’s just devastating.”

Chaney is survived by three daughters, Jessie, Kit and Cali.