Susan Beschta
American musician and judge
Susan Marie Beschta (April 21, 1952 – May 2, 2019), who performed as Susan Springfield, was the founder and lead singer of Erasers, a band that headlined at CBGB in the 1970s.
She became a solo artist in the 1980s and then trained as a lawyer to start a new career. After graduating from the CUNY School of Law, she fought human rights cases for Catholic Charities. She was sworn in as a federal judge in 2018.
Early life and education
She was born Susan Marie Beschta on April 21, 1952, in Appleton, Wisconsin – one of five children of a Catholic couple, Gerald and Jean Beschta. The culture was traditional and her father was keen on sports but, while she was fond of the place, she chose a different path. After college at University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, she went to the hippy scene of California and then hitch-hiked across the country to study fine arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where she hoped to become a painter.
Art and music
Beschta was able to stay rent-free at the Fine Arts Building at 232 East 59th Street in return for looking after its photo gallery. She shared a loft with Jane Fire and they formed Erasers, a punk-rock band, in 1974, with Fire on drums and Beschta as the singer/songwriter and guitarist. Several musicians such as Richie Lure and Anton Fig tried out with the band and the most lasting were Jody Beach on bass guitar and David Ebony, a classically trained musician.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Susan Beschta” is american musician and judge. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Susan, Beschta and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q64373806. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2019, 2018 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Susan Beschta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.