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Guru Josh Suicide: Report Claims He ‘Was Feeling Down Over Christmas’

By Jonathan Franks
Published on: 08:54 PST, Dec 30, 2015

British musician Guru Josh reportedly died by suicide at the age of 51.

According to TMZ, the “Infinity” musician was found dead in his home by his manager. The report states that his manager, who shared the apartment with Guru Josh, was initially there to pick up his client and take him to the airport Sunday morning.

An inside source reportedly opened up to TMZ about Guru Josh, whose real name was Paul Walden, about his battle with depression and recent emotional state.

“He been suffering from depression for some time and was feeling down over Christmas. We’re told he decided to book a flight home to see his father.”

The source also claimed that Guru Josh contacted his manager via e-mail at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, asking for him to pick him up at 11 a.m.

In a July 2014 interview, according to BeatsMedia, Guru Josh opened up about how the music industry has changed drastically since the 1990s. When asked about the positive and negative changes that he has noticed, he apparently focused on the silver lining of the dark cloud of illegal downloads.

“Yes the industry has changed, a lot of paid hype, false hits chart buy ins, social network fake likes – buy to be popular has messed up the scene completely. Now crap tunes can get into the charts on false data alone. Positive, Infinity 145 million illegally downloaded, that got my name out and did results in 12 million legal sales, 9 million ring tones, 986 compilations and 1.4 billion youtube hits, so theft of my track has some good benefits. Hey the world changes you just have to find a way to move with it.”

Guru Josh’s career in the music industry began several decades ago in the early 1980s. Initially, it seemed as if he would follow in the footsteps of his father Harold Walden by becoming a dentist. According to the Guardian, he even attended dental school. He then started his career as an entertainer by working at a nightclub in Jersey as a keyboard player.

He apparently struck a goldmine when he released the single “Infinity” — the title track from his debut album — in 1989.

Guru Josh reportedly admitted that his starting point with playing house music occurred back in 1988 when someone popped an ecstasy tab in his mouth while he performed at a London pub. He claimed that he called up a saxophone player that worked alongside him in a rock band to play on his “Infinity” track.

Even though it became the biggest hit of his career, Guru Josh stated that the initial reactions that he received for the song were not very pleasant at all.

“We pressed up 500 copies and 480 people threw it in the bin. Everybody said: ‘You’ve got a saxophone on it, you’re nuts – you can’t do that.’ But [Hacienda DJ] Mike Pickering played it and the rest is history.”

Nearly two decades later, “Infinity” found its way back into the spotlight after being remixed and released, bringing Guru Josh along for the ride. Perhaps the most popular remix of the original song was the hit 2008 remix “Infinity 2008” by German DJ Klass.

[Photo Courtesy of Ahmad Nawawi via Flickr | Cropped and Resized | CC BY-SA 2.0]

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