Fred Cole, a guitarist and singer who became a cult hero of the Pacific Northwest music scene as the leader of the long-running garage-rock band Dead Moon, died on Thursday at his home in Clackamas, Ore. He was 69.

The cause was cancer, said his wife and bandmate, Toody Cole.

As the grunge gold rush in the 1990s made stars of young bands in and around Seattle like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Mr. Cole and Dead Moon remained beloved local stars despite being decades older than their peers.

Well into his 40s by then, Mr. Cole had been a regular of the garage-rock circuit — playing a rough and raw sound that long predated grunge’s noisy take on punk — since the mid-1960s, when he was a member of the Lollipop Shoppe, which had a minor hit in 1968 with “You Must Be a Witch.”

But with Dead Moon and various other groups over the years, Mr. Cole set a standard for do-it-yourself perseverance. He and his wife released records on their own label, Tombstone, with a dark, handmade aesthetic. He even cut lacquer discs, used to make vinyl records, on an old mono lathe at their home outside Portland; according to legend, it was the same machine used to make the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” in 1963.