In the four decades since his death, Peter Laughner has become something of a punk rock Rorschach blot. Is he an underground icon, historical footnote, tragic figure, cautionary tale of unrealized potential, rock ’n’ roll cliché, or some combination of the above?

Laughner (pronounced LOCK-ner) , a guitarist and singer-songwriter, was a member of the Cleveland proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs, whose influence and importance far exceeded its brief nine-month existence in 1974 and 1975. It then splintered into two more well-documented groups: the Dead Boys, who went on to join the CBGB scene in New York, and Pere Ubu, where Laughner played on landmark songs in the evolution of American underground rock before he was kicked out in 1976.

His best-known track is likely “Ain’t It Fun,” recorded by the Dead Boys in 1978 and Guns N’ Roses in 1993, and Laughner spent the final two years of his life working overtime to turn its refrain — “Ain’t it fun when you know you’re gonna die young” — into a self-fulfilling prophecy. He succumbed to acute pancreatitis at 24 in June 1977, and according to friends, had been warned repeatedly by doctors that further drinking would be fatal.

“Peter Laughner had his private pains and compulsions, but at least in part he died because he wanted to be Lou Reed,” wrote the critic Lester Bangs in an angry obituary essay. “The ‘new wave’ can boast its first casualty.”