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Terry Reid<\/a>, the British rock singer and songwriter, who turned down offers to front Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple to embark on a solo career that earned him the nickname Superlungs, has died. Cleopatra Records<\/a> shared the news in an email, and Reid\u2019s representative gave confirmation to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>. No cause of death was given, but Reid had been raising funds<\/a> as he received treatment for health issues including cancer. He was 75 years old.<\/p>\n Terrance James \u201cTerry\u201d Reid grew up in the British county of Cambridgeshire, where he formed his first band, the Redbeats, as a teenager. After they supported Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, Reid was invited to join the more established group. He was 16 when they joined the the Rolling Stones on tour, as part of a support bill alongside Ike & Tina Turner and the Yardbirds.<\/p>\n When the Jaywalkers split in 1967, Reid went solo, recorded early albums Bang, Bang You\u2019re Terry Reid<\/em> and 1969\u2019s self-titled, and accepted an invitation to join the Rolling Stones on two forthcoming tours. The Yardbirds were also in the midst of a split, and Jimmy Page, impressed by Reid\u2019s performances with the Jaywalkers, invited him to front a new band he was forming\u2014soon to become Led Zeppelin. As Reid considered the offer, he watched Robert Plant and John Bonham perform as Band of Joy and suggested Page hire them instead. \u201cIt was a perfect combination,\u201d Reid told The Independent<\/em><\/a> in 2007. \u201cWho\u2019s to say what would have happened if Jim and I had got a band? It might have been a bloody failure.\u201d<\/p>\n Deep Purple repeatedly asked Reid to replace their outgoing lead singer the following year, but, by then, Reid was focused on his solo career. After a celebrated performance at the first Glastonbury<\/a> festival, in 1970, he believed his time would come with the release of his new album, River<\/em>. But when he delivered the finished LP\u2014now a cult classic\u2014to Atlantic, the label saw little appeal in its borderless mix of rock, blues, soul, funk, and Latin rhythms. Their reluctance to promote the album helped confine Reid to an underground status that stuck with subsequent albums Seed of Memory<\/em> and Rogue Waves<\/em>.<\/p>\n The subsequent decades entailed scattered work as a session musician, working out of his adopted home of Santa Monica. He briefly re-emerged in 1991 with The Driver<\/em>, a Trevor Horn\u2013produced album that Reid came to hate and whose title track, a collaboration with Hans Zimmer, was rejected as the theme song of Days of Thunder<\/em>. He returned to front-of-stage in the 2000s, when he began a residency at Los Angeles the Joint with drop-in appearances<\/a> from friends such as Robert Plant\u2014who said on stage that Reid \u201ccould have had [his] life\u201d\u2014Keith Richards, and Bobby Womack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n