Brendan Mullen, author and the founder in 1977 of local punk rock club the Masque, died today after suffering a stroke while celebrating his birthday on the road with his longtime companion, Kateri Butler. From Christopher Morris at Variety:

A Scotsman by birth, Mullen emigrated from London to Los Angeles in 1973. He created the Masque -- a dank, soon graffiti-scarred 10,000-foot space at 1655 N. Cherokee, behind and beneath the Pussycat adult theater on Hollywood Boulevard -- in June 1977 as a low-rent rehearsal space for local musicians. (Mullen himself played drums in his own punk lounge act, the Satintones.)

It quickly morphed into the principal performance venue for the city's then-nascent punk scene, mounting its first show by the Skulls on Aug. 18, 1977. It served as a stage and a hangout for an honor roll of first-generation punk groups: the Germs, X, the Go-Go's, the Screamers, the Flesh Eaters, the Weirdos, the Alleycats, the Plugz, the Bags.

The freewheeling Masque, where the charming and oft-acerbic Mullen hosted the proceedings, was a magnet for the antipathy of local merchants and daily scrutiny by police, fire, and licensing officials, and was soon cited by city authorities for various licensing violations.

Closed and reopened more than once, it moved to another space on Santa Monica Boulevard before shuttering permanently in February 1979.

Randy Lewis at the L.A. Times website quotes Butler saying they had been traveling through Santa Barbara and Ventura celebrating his 60th birthday, which was Friday. "The doctors are completely perplexed," Butler said. "They can't figure out why he had a stroke -- he had none of the indicators, his cholesterol was perfect. One of the neurologists summed it up best when he said, 'Sometimes, your number is just up.' " Earlier, from Swindle magazine:

With his place in L.A. music history firmly established, it fits, then, that Brendan has also put forth great efforts to document that history. Brendan has co-written several books: We Got the Neutron Bomb, an overview of early L.A. punk, Lexicon Devil, about L.A. punk icons the Germs, and Whore, a history of Jane’s Addiction.

You may not know his name, or his face, or the sound of his voice, but Brendan Mullen’s status as an icon was cemented long ago by one simple thing: his ability to be “in the wrong place at the right time. Or is it the other way around?”

Pandora Young posted an alert earlier in the day at Fishbowl LA saying that Mullen had suffered a stroke and was not expected to survive: "Right now we're just busy being heartsick."

Photo: Adam Wallacavage / Swindle