R.I.P. Mojo Nixon, "Elvis Is Everywhere" singer and psychobilly artist

Mojo Nixon—the incisive singer, actor, and DJ behind satirical cult hits like “Elvis Is Everywhere” and “Destroy All Lawyers”—died of a “cardiac event” onboard a country cruise he was co-hosting on Wednesday. “How you live is how you should die,” the Facebook page for his 2020 documentary, The Mojo Manifesto, posted last Wednesday night. “Passing after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners + a good breakfast with bandmates and friends. A cardiac event on the Outlaw Country Cruise is about right… & that’s just how he did it.” Nixon was 66.

Born in North Carolina, Nixon (real name Neill Kirby McMillan Jr.) was drawn to music from an early age because “it’s exciting, it’s dangerous, and it makes the church people nervous,” as he said in a 2017 interview (via The New York Times). Getting his start in a short-lived punk band known as Zebra 123, Nixon collaborated with a number of different artists in the Denver and San Diego scenes before eventually linking up with instrumentalist Skid Roper (real name Richard Banke).

Together, Nixon and Roper produced six albums, including their 1987 breakout, Bo-Day-Shus!!! The success of that record is largely thanks to Nixon’s most famous song, “Elvis Is Everywhere,” a driving, goofy ode that paints the King as a godlike deity responsible for everything from the pyramids to Stonehenge to the Bermuda Triangle. Other hits include “Destroy All Lawyers,” “I Hate Banks,” “Are You Drinkin’ With Me Jesus,” “Don Henley Must Die,” and more.

Nixon’s style can be best described as “psychobilly,” a fusion of roots music and punk rock. “A lot of people had the same idea simultaneously,” Nixon said of the genre in an interview for his documentary. “I’m a rabble-rouser who does humorous social commentary within a rock-and-roll setting,” he said of his own style in a 1990 interview with The New York Times. Later, he dubbed himself a voice of “the doomed, the damned, the weird.”

Nixon went on to release five solo albums, three albums with a new band, the Toadliquors, a live album, and a soundtrack for the video game “Redneck Rampage.” He also waded into acting with roles in the 1989 Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls Of Fire, the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. film, and 1994's Car 54, Where Are You?. Later in life, he took up DJing with some local gigs and eventually a regular spot on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel where he went by the name “the Loon in the Afternoon.”

Nixon is survived by his wife, Adaire McMillan, his sons, Rafe Cannonball McMillan and Ruben McMillan, his sister, Jane Holden McMillan, his brother, Arthur Reese McMillan, and one granddaughter.