William “Bill” Bartell, also known as Pat Fear, was found dead in his Moreno Valley, California home on Tuesday, September 24, 2013. Bartell, 52, was the guitarist and singer of punk band White Flag.

The initial report from the Riverside County coroner’s office said the death was due to natural causes, but results of the standard toxicology tests are pending. Friends said Bartell had been struggling with declining health in recent years.

Bartell founded White Flag in the early 1980s as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to the Los Angeles punk scene. The genre, founded as a way to break the rules, developed its own rules of how to be “punk,” which White Flag defied as its way of being punk. With his Flying V guitar and always-present mustache, Bartell and White Flag bent the rules, playing KISS and Blue Oyster Cult punk covers, releasing dozens of albums, singles and compilations around the world. In addition to playing in White Flag, Bartell became a reserve officer with the Beaumont Police Department in the early 1990s, and was a rodeo bullrider.

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