Variety and the Los Angeles Times report that Lewis Largent, a well-known MTV VJ who hosted the show 120 Minutes and was a former music director of the Los Angeles radio station KROQ, has passed away.
Variety received confirmation from his family that Largent had passed away on February 20 following a “long illness.” He was 58.
Largent, who was raised in Southern California, started playing golf as a teenager and later obtained employment at a country club.
He met the general manager of KROQ there by chance, and the latter was so impressed by his depth of alt-rock expertise that he offered Largent an internship there in 1985.
By 1989, Largent had quickly risen through the ranks to become the music director of the alt-rock station. Largent agreed to a job offer from MTV in 1992 to take a vice president position in music programming.
He immediately took over as host of the channel’s alternative music-focused Sunday night program 120 Minutes, where he conducted interviews with legends of the time like David Bowie, Radiohead, Pavement, Björk, Trent Reznor, Dinosaur Jr., and PJ Harvey.
In 1995, Largent handed off hosting duties to Matt Pinfield and switched his attention to the production side of things, rising to the position of Director of Music Programming at MTV. Vice President of Music and Artist Development was his later position.
Lewis Largent’s cause of death
According to reports, Lewis Largent passed away after a long illness. However, details of his illness weren’t made public.