Biography
The eccentric, rocky voiced, multitalented Tom Waits
Posten on: 2006-11-27 18:31:23
Thomas Alan Waits is an American composer, singer, musician and actor. Born on December the 7th, 1949 in Pomona, California, Waits' recording career began in 1971, after he relocated to Los Angeles and signed with Herb Cohen, manager of Frank Zappa, among others. After numerous abortive recording sessions, his first record, the melancholic, country-tinged ''Closing Time_(album)|Closing Time'' (1973) received warm reviews, but he first gained national attention when his "Ol' 55" was recorded by The Eagles in 1974. ''The Heart of Saturday Night'' showed his roots as a nightclub singer, half speaking and half crooning ballads, often with a soft jazz background. The 1975 album ''Nighthawks at the Diner'', recorded in a studio but with a small audience to capture the ambience of a live show, captures this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act.The album ''Small Change'' (1976) featuring famed drummer Shelly Manne, was jazzier still, and songs such as "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" cemented his hard living reputation, with a lyrical style pitched somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski. ''Foreign Affairs'' (1977) and ''Blue Valentine'' (1978) were in a similar vein, but showed further refinement of his artistic voice.1980 saw the commencement of a long working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who asked him to provide music for his film ''One From The Heart''. Waits tapped singer/songwriter Crystal Gayle as his vocal foil for the album. Tom Waits would also act in Coppola's ''Rumblefish'', ''The Outsiders'', ''The Cotton Club'' and ''Dracula'' (as the insane Renfield), and work with such directors as Jim Jarmusch and Robert Altman. In August 1980, he married Kathleen Brennan, whom he had met on the set of ''One From The Heart''. With his wife, he wrote and performed in ''Big Time'', a slightly surreal concert movie. His wife is regularly credited as co-author of many songs on his later released albums, and is often cited by Waits as a major influence on his work.After he left Asylum Records for Island Records in 1983, his music became less mainstream. His trio of albums from the mid-1980s, ''Swordfishtrombones'', ''Rain Dogs'' and ''Frank's Wild Years'', all featured some degree of eclectic instrumentation -- Waits' self described "Junkyard Orchestra"--often marrying soul music horn sections to avant-garde percussion reminiscent of Harry Partch's, or the distorted guitar of Marc Ribot. He also gradually altered his singing style, sounding less like the late-night crooner of the 70s, instead adopting a gravelly voice reminiscent of Howling Wolf and Captain Beefheart. The last of these albums -- an off-Broadway musical co-written with his wife -- and the later collaboration with William S. Burroughs on ''The Black Rider'' both demonstrated the increasing interest in theatre, which has resulted in a somewhat successful acting career as well as soundtrack work.In the popular perception, however, he and his work remain mostly characterised by his rocky voice, his strong personality and theatrical presence on stage and the "late night smoky bars" humour of his texts ("I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy."). Waits has been reported as having bipolar disorder. In essence, however, and despite his songs having been covered by famous stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart, Waits remains a cult performer, steadfastly outside the mainstream.Waits has steadfastly refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials and has filed several lawsuits against advertisers who used his material without permission. The first lawsuit was filed in 1988 against Frito Lay, and resulted in a US$2.6 million judgement in Waits's favor. Frito Lay had approached Waits to use one of his songs in an advertisement. Waits declined the offer, and Frito Lay hired a Waits soundalike to sing a jingle similar to "Step Right Up," which is, ironically, a song Waits has called "an indictment of advertising."In 1993, Levi's used Screamin' Jay Hawkins's version of Waits's "Heartattack and Vine" in a commercial. Waits sued, and Levis agreed to cease all use of the song, and offered a full page apology in Billboard Magazine. In 2000, an Audi commercial broadcast in Spain featured music very similar to Waits's "Innocent When You Dream", after Waits first had declined when they approached him about using the original. A Spanish court recognized there had been a violation of Waits' moral rights, in addition to the infringement of copyright. The production company, Tandem Campany Guasch, was ordered to pay compensation to Waits through his Spanish publisher.
Posted in: Biography | Tom Waits | 0 Comments
Introducing from Liverpool - England, The Beatles
Posten on: 2006-11-21 20:36:50
The origin of the phenomenon that became the Beatles can be traced to 1957 when Paul McCartney (James Paul McCartney, 18 June 1942, Liverpool, England) successfully auditioned at a church fête in Woolton, Liverpool, for the guitarist's position in the Quarry Men, a skiffle group led by John Lennon (b. John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940, Liverpool, England, d. 8 December 1980, New York, USA). Within a year, two more musicians had been brought in, the 15-year-old guitarist George Harrison (b. 25 February 1943, Liverpool, England, d. 29 November 2001, Los Angeles, California, USA) and an art school friend of Lennon's, Stuart Sutcliffe (b. 23 June 1940, Edinburgh, Scotland, d. 10 April 1962, Hamburg, Germany). After a brief spell as Johnny And The Moondogs, the band rechristened themselves the Silver Beetles, and, in April 1960, played before impresario Larry Parnes, winning the dubious distinction of a support slot on an arduous tour of Scotland with autumnal idol Johnny Gentle. By the summer of 1960 the group had a new name, the Beatles, dreamed up by Lennon who said "a man in a flaming pie appeared and said you shall be Beetles with an a".A full-time drummer, Pete Best (b. 1941, Liverpool, England), was recruited and they secured a residency at Bruno Koschminder's Indra Club in Hamburg. It was during this period that they honed their repertoire of R&B and rock 'n' roll favourites, and during exhausting six-hour sets performed virtually every song they could remember. Already, the musical/lyrical partnership of Lennon/McCartney was bearing fruit, anticipating a body of work unparalleled in modern popular music. The image of the group was changing, most noticeably with their fringed haircuts or, as they were later known, the "mop-tops', the creation of Sutcliffe's German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr. The first German trip ended when the under-age Harrison was deported in December 1960 and the others lost their work permits. During this turbulent period, they also parted company with manager Allan Williams, who had arranged many of their early gigs. Following a couple of months" recuperation, the group reassembled for regular performances at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and briefly returned to Germany where they performed at the Top Ten club and backed Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie". Meanwhile, Sutcliffe decided to leave the group and stay in Germany as a painter. The more accomplished McCartney then took up the bass guitar. This part of their career is well documented in the 1994 feature film Backbeat.In November 1961, Brian Epstein, the manager of North End Music Store, a record shop in Liverpool, became interested in the group after he received dozens of requests from customers for the Tony Sheridan record, "My Bonnie". He went to see the Beatles play at the Cavern and soon afterwards became their manager. Despite Epstein's enthusiasm, several major record companies passed on the Beatles, although the group were granted an audition with Decca Records on New Year's Day 1962. After some prevarication, the A&R department, headed by Dick Rowe, rejected the group in favour of Brian Poole And The Tremeloes. Other companies were even less enthusiastic than Decca, which had at least taken the group seriously enough to finance a recording session. On 10 April, further bad news was forthcoming when the group heard that Stuart Sutcliffe had died in Hamburg of a brain haemorrhage. The following day, the Beatles flew to Germany and opened a seven-week engagement at Hamburg's Star Club. By May, Epstein had at last found a Beatles convert in EMI Records producer George Martin, who signed the group to the Parlophone Records label. Three months later, drummer Pete Best was sacked; although he had looked the part, his drumming was poor. An initial protest was made by his considerable army of fans back in Liverpool.His replacement was Ringo Starr (b. Richard Starkey, 7 July 1940, Dingle, Liverpool, England), the extrovert and locally popular drummer from Rory Storm And The Hurricanes. Towards the end of 1962, the Beatles broke through to the UK charts with their debut single, "Love Me Do", and played the Star Club for the final time. The debut was important, as it was far removed from the traditional "beat combo" sound, and Lennon's use of a harmonica made the song stand out. At this time, Epstein signed a contract with the music publisher Dick James, which led to the formation of Northern Songs. On 13 February 1963 the Beatles appeared on UK television's Thank Your Lucky Stars to promote their new single, "Please Please Me", and were seen by six million viewers. It was a pivotal moment in their career, at the start of a year in which they would spearhead a working-class assault on music, fashion and the peripheral arts. "Please Please Me", with its distinctive harmonies and infectious group beat, soon topped the UK charts. It signalled the imminent overthrow of the solo singer in favour of an irresistible wave of Mersey talent. From this point, the Beatles progressed artistically and commercially with each successive record. After seven weeks at the top with "From Me To You", they released the strident, wailing "She Loves You", a rocker with the catchphrase "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" that was echoed in ever more frequent newspaper headlines. "She Loves You" hit number 1, dropped down, then returned to the top seven weeks later as Beatlemania gripped the nation. It was at this point that the Beatles became a household name. "She Loves You" was replaced by "I Want To Hold Your Hand", which had UK advance sales of over one million and entered the charts at number 1.Until 1964, America had proven a barren ground for aspiring British pop artists, with only the occasional record such as the Tornados' "Telstar" making any impression. The Beatles changed that abruptly and decisively. "I Want To Hold Your Hand' was helped by the band's television appearance on the top-rated Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February (with an alleged viewing audience of over 73 million) and soon surpassed UK sales. The Beatles reached a level of popularity that even outshone their pre-eminence in Britain. By April, they held the first five places in the Billboard Hot 100, while in Canada they boasted nine records in the Top 10. Although the Beatles" chart statistics were fascinating in themselves, they barely reflected the group's importance. They had established Liverpool as the pop music capital of the world and the beat boom soon spread from the UK across to the USA. In common with Bob Dylan, the Beatles had taught the world that pop music could be intelligent and was worthy of serious consideration beyond the screaming hordes of teendom. Beatles badges, dolls, chewing gum and even cans of Beatle breath showed the huge rewards that could be earned with the sale of merchandising goods. Perhaps most importantly of all, however, they broke the Tin Pan Alley monopoly of songwriting by steadfastly composing their own material. From the moment they rejected Mitch Murray's "How Do You Do It?" in favour of their own "Please Please Me", Lennon and McCartney set in motion revolutionary changes in the music publishing industry.They even had sufficient surplus material to provide hits for fellow artists such as Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, the Fourmost and Peter And Gordon. As well as providing the Rolling Stones with their second single, "I Wanna Be Your Man', the Beatles encouraged the Stones to start writing their own songs in order to earn themselves composers" royalties. By 1965, Lennon and McCartney's writing had matured to a startling degree and their albums were relying less on outside material. Previously, they had recorded compositions by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Bacharach And David, Leiber And Stoller and Goffin And King, but with each successive release the group were leaving behind their earlier influences and moving towards uncharted pop territory. They carried their audience with them, and even while following traditional pop routes they always invested their work with originality. Their first two films, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, were not the usual pop celluloid cash-ins but were witty and inventive, and achieved critical acclaim as well as box office success. The national affection bestowed upon the loveable mop-tops was best exemplified in 1965, when they were awarded MBEs for services to British industry. The year ended with the release of their first double-sided number 1 single, "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper", the coupling indicating how difficult it had become to choose between a- and b-sides.At Christmas 1965 the Beatles released Rubber Soul, an album that was not a collection of would-be hits or favourite cover versions, as the previous releases had been, but a startlingly diverse collection, ranging from the pointed satire of "Nowhere Man" to the intensely reflective "In My Life". As ever with the Beatles, there were some pointers to their future styles, including Harrison's use of sitar on the punningly titled tale of Lennon's infidelity, "Norwegian Wood". That same year, the Byrds, Yardbirds and Rolling Stones incorporated Eastern-influenced sounds into their work, and the music press tentatively mentioned the decidedly unpoplike Ravi Shankar. Significantly, Shankar's champion, George Harrison, was allowed two writing credits on Rubber Soul, "Think For Yourself" and "If I Needed Someone" (also a hit for the Hollies). During 1966, the Beatles continued performing their increasingly complex arrangements before scarcely controllable screaming fans, but the novelty of fandom was wearing frustratingly thin. In Tokyo, the group incurred the wrath of militant students who objected to their performance at Budokan. Several death threats followed and the group left Japan in poor spirits, unaware that worse was to follow. A visit to Manila ended in a near riot when the Beatles did not attend a party thrown by President Ferdinand Marcos, and before leaving the country they were set upon by angry patriots. A few weeks later Beatles records were being burned in the redneck southern states of America because of Lennon's flippant remark that: "We are more popular than Jesus now". Although his words passed unnoticed in Britain, their reproduction in an American magazine instigated assassination threats and a massed campaign by members of the Ku Klux Klan to stamp out the Beatle menace. By the summer of 1966, the group were exhausted and defeated and played their last official performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, USA, on 29 August.The controversy surrounding their live performances did not detract from the quality of their recorded output. "Paperback Writer" was another step forward, with its gloriously elaborate harmonies and charmingly prosaic theme. It was soon followed by a double-sided chart-topper, "Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby", the former a self-created nursery rhyme sung by Starr, complete with mechanical sounds, and the latter a brilliantly orchestrated narrative of loneliness, untainted by mawkishness. The attendant album, Revolver, was equally varied, with Harrison's caustic "Taxman", McCartney's plaintive "For No One" and "Here, There And Everywhere", and Lennon's drug-influenced "I'm Only Sleeping", "She Said She Said" and the mantric "Tomorrow Never Knows". The latter has been described as the most effective evocation of a LSD experience ever recorded. After 1966, the Beatles retreated into the studio, no longer bound by the restriction of having to perform live. Their image as pin-up pop stars was also undergoing a metamorphosis and when they next appeared in photographs, all four had moustaches, and Lennon even boasted glasses, his short-sightedness previously concealed by contact lenses. Their first recording to be released in over six months was "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever", which broke their long run of consecutive UK number 1 hits, as it was kept off the top by Engelbert Humperdinck's schmaltzy "Release Me". Nevertheless, this landmark single brilliantly captured the talents of Lennon and McCartney and is seen as their greatest pairing on disc. Although their songwriting styles were increasingly contrasting, there were still striking similarities, as both songs were about the Liverpool of their childhood. Lennon's lyrics to "Strawberry Fields Forever", however, dramatized a far more complex inner dialogue, characterized by stumbling qualifications ("That is, I think, I disagree"). Musically, the songs were similarly intriguing, with "Penny Lane" including a piccolo trumpet and shimmering percussive fade-out, while "Strawberry Fields Forever" fused two different versions of the same song and used reverse-taped cellos to eerie effect.It was intended that this single would be the jewel in the crown of their next album, but by the summer of 1967 they had sufficient material to release 13 new tracks on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Sgt. Pepper turned out to be no mere pop album but a cultural icon embracing the constituent elements of the 60s' youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control. Although the Beatles had previously experimented with collages on Beatles For Sale and Revolver, they took the idea further on the sleeve of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, which included photos of every influence on their lives that they could remember. The album had a gatefold sleeve, cardboard cut-out figurines, and, for the first time on a pop record, printed lyrics. The music, too, was even more extraordinary and refreshing. Instead of the traditional breaks between songs, one track merged into the next, linked by studio talk, laughter, electronic noises and animal sounds. A continuous chaotic activity of sound ripped forth from the ingenuity of their ideas translator, George Martin. The songs were essays in innovation and diversification, embracing the cartoon psychedelia of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", the music-hall pastiche of "When I'm Sixty-Four", the circus atmosphere of "Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite", the eastern philosophical promise of "Within You, Without You" and even a modern morality tale in "She's Leaving Home". Audio tricks and surprises abounded, involving steam organs, orchestras, sitars, and even a pack of foxhounds in full cry at the end of "Good Morning, Good Morning". The album closed with the epic "A Day In The Life', the Beatles" most ambitious work to date, featuring what Lennon described as "a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world". As a final gimmick, the orchestra was recorded beyond a 20,000 hertz frequency, meaning that the final note was audible only to dogs. Even the phonogram was not allowed to interfere with the proceedings, for a record groove was cut back to repeat slices of backwards-recorded tape that played on into infinity.While Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the album charts, the group appeared on a live worldwide television broadcast, playing their anthem of the period, "All You Need Is Love". The following week it entered many of the world's charts at number 1, echoing the old days of Beatlemania. There was sadness, too, that summer, for on 27 August 1967, Brian Epstein was found dead, the victim of a cumulative overdose of the drug Carbatrol, together with hints of a homosexual scandal cover-up. With spiritual guidance from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles took Epstein's death calmly and decided to look after their business affairs without a manager. The first fruit of their post-Epstein labour was the film Magical Mystery Tour, first screened on national television on Boxing Day 1967. While the phantasmagorical movie received mixed reviews, nobody could complain about the music, initially released in the unique form of a double EP, featuring six well-crafted songs. The EPs reached number 2 in the UK, making chart history in the process. Ironically, the package was robbed of the top spot by the traditional Beatles Christmas single, this time in the form of "Hello Goodbye".In 1968, the Beatles became increasingly involved with the business of running their company, Apple Corps. A mismanaged boutique near Baker Street came and went. The first Apple single, "Hey Jude", was a warm-hearted ballad that progressed over its seven-minute duration into a rousing singalong finale. Their next film, Yellow Submarine, was a cartoon, and the graphics were acclaimed as a landmark in animation. The soundtrack album was half instrumental, with George Martin responsible for some interesting orchestral work. Only four genuinely new Beatles tracks were included, with Lennon's biting "Hey Bulldog" being the strongest. Harrison's swirling "Only A Northern Song" had some brilliant Pepperesque brass and trumpets. Although "It's All Too Much" was flattered by the magnificent colour of the animation in the film, it was not a strong song. With their prolific output, the group crammed the remainder of their most recent material onto a double album, The Beatles (now known as "The White Album'), released in a stark white cover. George Martin's perceptive overview many years later was that it would have made an excellent single album. It had some brilliant moments that displayed the broad sweep of the Beatles" talent, from "Back In The USSR", the affectionate tribute to Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, to Lennon's tribute to his late mother, "Julia", and McCartney's excellent "Blackbird". Harrison contributed "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which featured Eric Clapton on guitar. Marmalade took "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to number 1 in the UK, while "Helter Skelter" took on symbolic force in the mind of the mass murderer Charles Manson. There were also a number of average songs that seemed still to require work, plus some ill-advised doodlings such as "Revolution No. 9" and "Goodnight".The Beatles revealed that the four musicians were already working in isolated neutrality, although the passage of time has now made this work a critics' favourite. Meanwhile, the Beatles' inability as business executives was becoming apparent from the parlous state of Apple, to which Allen Klein attempted to restore some order. The new realism that permeated the portals of their headquarters was even evident in their art. Like several other contemporary artists, including Bob Dylan and the Byrds, they chose to end the 60s with a reversion to less complex musical forms. The return-to-roots minimalism was spearheaded by the appropriately titled number 1 single "Get Back", which featured Billy Preston on organ. Cameras were present at their next recording sessions, as they ran through dozens of songs, many of which they had not played since Hamburg. When the sessions ended, there were countless spools of tape that were not reassembled until the following year. In the meantime, a select few witnessed the band's last "public" performance on the rooftop of the Apple headquarters in Savile Row, London. Amid the uncertainty of 1969, the Beatles enjoyed their final UK number 1 with "The Ballad Of John And Yoko", on which only Lennon and McCartney performed.In a sustained attempt to cover the cracks that were becoming increasingly visible in their personal and musical relationships, they reconvened for Abbey Road. The album was dominated by a glorious song cycle on side 2, in which such fragmentary compositions as "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Polythene Pam", "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" and "Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight" gelled into a convincing whole. The accompanying single coupled Lennon's "Come Together" with Harrison's "Something". The latter song gave Harrison the kudos he deserved, and rightly became the second most covered Beatles song ever, after "Yesterday". The single only reached number 4 in the UK, the band's lowest chart position since "Love Me Do" in 1962. Such considerations were small compared to the fate of their other songs. The group could only watch helplessly as a wary Dick James surreptitiously sold Northern Songs to ATV. The catalogue continued to change hands over the following years and not even the combined financial force of McCartney and Yoko Ono could eventually wrest it from superstar speculator Michael Jackson.With various solo projects on the horizon, the Beatles stumbled through 1970, their disunity betrayed to the world in the depressing film Let It Be, which shows Harrison and Lennon clearly unhappy about McCartney's attitude towards the band. The subsequent album, finally pieced together by producer Phil Spector, was a controversial and bitty affair, initially housed in a cardboard box containing a lavish paperback book, which increased the retail price to a prohibitive level. Musically, the work revealed the Beatles looking back to better days. It included the sparse "Two Of Us" and the primitive "The One After 909", a song they used to play as the Quarrymen, and an orchestrated "The Long And Winding Road", which provided their final US number 1, although McCartney pointedly preferred the non-orchestrated version in the film. There was also the aptly titled last official single, "Let It Be", which entered the UK charts at number 2, only to drop to number 3 the following week. For many it was the final, sad anti-climax before the inevitable, yet still unexpected, split. The acrimonious dissolution of the Beatles, like that of no other group before or since, symbolized the end of an era that they had dominated and helped to create.It is inconceivable that any group in the future can shape and influence a generation in the same way as these four individuals. More than 30 years on, the quality of the songs is such that none show signs of sounding either lyrically or musically dated. Since the break-up of the band, there have been some important releases for Beatles fans. In 1988, the two Past Masters volumes collected together all the Beatles tracks not available on the CD releases of their original albums. The first volume has 18 tracks from 1962-65; the second, 15 from the subsequent years. Live At The BBC collected together 56 tracks played live by the Beatles for various shows on the BBC Light Programme in the infancy of their career. Most of the songs are cover versions of 50s R&B standards, including nine by Chuck Berry. The first volume of Anthology, released in November 1995, collected 52 previously unreleased out-takes and demo versions recorded between 1958 and 1964, plus eight spoken tracks taken from interviews. The album was accompanied by an excellent six-part television series that told the complete story of the band, made with the help of the three remaining Beatles, and by the single release of "Free As A Bird", the first song recorded by the band since their break-up. This consisted of a 1977 track sung by Lennon into a tape recorder, and backed vocally and instrumentally in 1995 by the other three Beatles and produced by Jeff Lynne. It narrowly failed to reach number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, as did the slightly inferior "Real Love" in March 1996.The reaction to Anthology 2 was ecstatic. While it was expected that older journalists would write favourably about their generation, it was encouraging to see younger writers offering some fresh views. David Quantick of the New Musical Express offered one of the best comments in recent years: "The Beatles only made - they could only make - music that referred to the future. And that is the difference between them and every other pop group or singer ever since". Anthology 3 could not improve upon the previous collection but there were gems to be found. The acoustic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from Harrison is stunning. "Because", never an outstanding track when it appeared on Abbey Road, is given a stripped a cappella treatment. The McCartney demo of "Come And Get It" for Badfinger begs the question of why the Beatles chose not to release this classic pop song themselves.In 1999, more mass media coverage came with the release of a remixed Yellow Submarine. The remastered film delighted a new audience stunned by its still incredibly original effects. The accompanying album dispensed with the George Martin instrumentals and instead reverted to the order of tracks featured in the film. Later in the year they were confirmed as the most successful recording act of the twentieth century in the USA, with album sales of over 106 million. The following year saw further Beatles activity. The long awaited but overpriced Anthology book, on which all three surviving Beatles collaborated with Yoko Ono, was published in October. A month later, their 27 number 1 hits were compiled on 1. Though the compilation was a huge commercial success, close scrutiny reveals that classic tracks such as "Please Please Me" and the magnificent "Strawberry Fields Forever' have to be omitted as they never reached the top of the UK or US charts. Let It Be ... Naked, the stripped down version of the original 1970 album, was released in November 2003. Phil Spector's sugary production was removed, leaving a much better sounding batch of songs, albeit the Beatles" weakest collection overall.In the course of history the Rolling Stones and countless other major groups are loved, but the Beatles are universally and unconditionally adored. This was further proved in November 2001 when George Harrison lost his long battle with cancer. The worldwide mourning resulted in massive coverage in the press and on radio and television. After this, Lennon's famously flippant 1966 comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ should be taken very seriously indeed. The Beatles were, and still are, the greatest popular group of all-time. It is inconceivable that this could ever change.
Posted in: Biography | Beatles | 0 Comments
One of the precursors of the alternative movement
Posten on: 2006-11-08 18:50:07
Born in Toronto on the 12th of November 1945, a brilliant songwriter, a quirky, high-pitched singer, and a guitarist whose piercing style has influenced an entire generation of young alternative rock fans, Young has spent his career exploring nearly every genre of popular music. Beginning with the countrified pop/rock of '60s legends Buffalo Springfield, he has played rock (Neil Young, 1968), hard rock (Re*Ac*Tor, 1981), singer/songwriter-style pop (After The Goldrush, 1970), synth-rock (Trans, 1983), '50s-style rock and rockabilly (Everybody's Rockin', 1983), country music (Old Ways, 1985), rhythm & blues (This Note's For You, 1988), protest rock (Freedom, 1989), feedback-heavy art rock ( Arc, 1991), and, of course, the mandatory MTV Unplugged (1993) set. Through it all, though, he has always sounded like Neil Young--which may be the major reason he remains such a vital artist.Neil Young began as a folk singer in Toronto, where he first met future bandmates Stephen Stills and Richie Furay in the early '60s and played in the Mynah Birds with future R&B star Rick James, Steppenwolf's Goldy McJohn, and bassist Bruce Palmer. In 1966, Young drove with Palmer to Los Angeles, where he soon met up with Stills and Furay; together with drummer Dewey Martin, the five musicians formed Buffalo Springfield and were soon signed to Atco Records. The group recorded three classic albums between 1966-68, then disbanded; each member then pursued a career either in a solo or new group context, with Young, Stills, and Furay achieving the most notable success.Though Young's 1969 solo debut Neil Young failed to chart, in some ways it remains one of his best--and most overlooked--efforts. A stylistic extension of his better work with Buffalo Springfield (particularly his collaborations with producer/arranger Jack Nitzsche), the album featured Young working within a gorgeously melodic pop structure; including some of his best early material such as "The Loner" (covered the next year by Three Dog Night), "I've Been Waiting For You," and "What Did You Do To My Life," the album also featured two atmospheric instrumentals and the extended, surrealistic folk-dirge "The Last Trip To Tulsa."Needing a band, Young soon found one in Crazy Horse, who as the Rockets had already recorded a 1968 album for White Whale Records. Backed by guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina, Young then recorded Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, an album that has since assumed classic status in his canon. Crazy Horse were a near-perfect match for Young; by no means sessioned studio pros, they played hard and emotionally, providing drama and adrenalized surges to Young's sometimes bare-boned songs. Featuring "Cinnamon Girl," "Cowgirl In The Sand," and "Down By The River"--a song that would be covered by Buddy Miles, Roy Buchanan, and every high school band formed in the next 10 years--Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was the first of eight albums Young would record with Crazy Horse.In the meantime, Young had rejoined his former bandmate Stephen Stills as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Always seeming more an appendage than part of the original core trio, Young played with the group at Woodstock, and contributed to both 1970's multi-platinum Deja Vu and the next year's live 4 Way Street. That group's immense popularity helped set up the success of his third album, 1970's After The GoldRush, which went top 10, stayed on the charts 66 weeks, and was certified double-platinum. His success was further consolidated by its follow-up, Harvest--his all-time bestseller, thanks largely to its No. 1 gold single "Heart Of Gold" and top 40 hit "Old Man."The Neil Young heard on Harvest was a far cry from the rocker of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; a soft, countryish singer-songwriter-style album (with appearances by both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt), the disc might have established Young as a soft-rock superstar, had he so desired. But he didn't. On his 1976 compilation Decade, Young revealingly wrote of the track "Heart Of Gold": "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."The "ditch," as Young described it, comprised a series of seeming slapdash, erratic albums that were the antithesis of the smooth, polished sound of Harvest. Among them were the confusing soundtrack to Young's rarely-seen film Journey Through The Past (1972), a rough-sounding live set by Young and his new band the Stray Gators called Time Fades Away (1973), the sluggish, but semi-return to form On The Beach (1974), and Young's all-time depressing landmark, Tonight's The Night (1975), a harrowing, emotional tribute to Crazy Horse guitarist and Danny Whitten and CSN&Y roadie Bruce Berry, both victims of drug overdoses.Since then Young has enjoyed two major career surges. First in 1979, when his Rust Never Sleeps album found him again paired triumphantly with Crazy Horse; the title track, which mentioned punk rock star Johnny Rotten by name, both opened and closed Young's most captivating album in over a decade. Followed by a live album (Live Rust, 1979) and a film documentary of the same name, the period was one of artistic renewal for Young, who unlike his former bandmates in Crosby, Stills & Nash, still seemed a vibrant, probing artist. The second peak came 10 years later, with Freedom, not incidentally his first gold album since Live Rust. Young--more politically outspoken than he'd been since penning "Ohio" for CSN&Y in 1970--took on the subjects of homelessness and crime (belittling President George Bush's "thousand points of light" phrase in the powerful "Rockin' In The Free World"), yet balanced that harshness with acoustic tracks such as "Hangin' On A Limb," which featured guest vocalist Linda Ronstadt. Young then rejoined Crazy Horse for 1990's much-praised Ragged Glory and the live WELD, which featured the bizarre, 35-minute instrumental bonus CD Arc--a so-called "sonic pastiche" digitally edited by Young and featuring waves of feedback and grungy electronic howl.If there was a low point in Neil Young's career, it came in the mid-'80s. After delivering a series of stylistically quirky albums (from 1983's Trans through 1987's Life) to Geffen Records, with whom he'd signed in 1983, the label actually sued him for producing "non-typical" work. It was extremely ironic, since Young's work had habitually flitted from style to style for a decade previous to his Geffen signing.The one constant in Young's body of work, however, is Crazy Horse, whose playing on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1975's Zuma, Rust Never Sleeps, and Ragged Glory made the albums the most acclaimed in Young's catalog. Why hasn't he simply made the group his permanent band? "I saw where Crazy Horse worked the best," Young said in 1990, "and I saw where what I tried to do got in the way of what Crazy Horse did. And my answer to that was to not use Crazy Horse to do things Crazy Horse shouldn't do--and to be more careful, and more respectful of what I have with Crazy Horse than to ever try to make it something it isn't."Twenty years after Harvest, Young returned to "complete the circle" with the warmly accessible Harvest Moon, which stylistically echoed its predecessor in large part due to its inclusion of the Stray Gators, who'd played on the original. It was his first top 20 album in 13 years. Young's follow-up was his 1993 Unplugged session, which included material spanning his career from Buffalo Springfield, through his early solo days and underrated Trans period, on through Harvest Moon.Young's status as a cross-generational icon was further cemented twice over soon after--first with 1994's Sleeps With Angels--which acknowledged the death of Nirvana 's Kurt Cobain (who had quoted a Young lyric in his suicide note), then with 1995's Mirror Ball, recorded with longtime fans Pearl Jam. And yet again, following a summer tour with Crazy Horse, Young released another live album--this one titled Year Of The Horse *.
Posted in: Biography | Neil Young | 0 Comments
The most influencial band in the world
Posten on: 2006-11-01 05:07:26
Pink Floyd is the premier space rock band. Since the mid-'60s, their music relentlessly tinkered with electronics and all manner of special effects to push pop formats to their outer limits. At the same time they wrestled with lyrical themes and concepts of such massive scale that their music has taken on almost classical, operatic quality, in both sound and words. Despite their astral image, the group was brought down to earth in the 1980s by decidedly mundane power struggles over leadership and, ultimately, ownership of the band's very name. After that time, they were little more than a dinosaur act, capable of filling stadiums and topping the charts, but offering little more than a spectacular recreation of their most successful formulas. Their latter-day staleness cannot disguise the fact that, for the first decade or so of their existence, they were one of the most innovative groups around, in concert and (especially) in the studio.While Pink Floyd are mostly known for their grandiose concept albums of the 1970s, they started as a very different sort of psychedelic band. Soon after they first began playing together in the mid-'60s, they fell firmly under the leadership of lead guitarist Syd Barrett, the gifted genius who would write and sing most of their early material. The Cambridge native shared the stage with Roger Waters (bass), Rick Wright (keyboards), and Nick Mason (drums). The name Pink Floyd, seemingly so far-out, was actually derived from the first names of two ancient bluesmen (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). And at first, Pink Floyd were much more conventional than the act into which they would evolve, concentrating on the rock and R&B material that were so common to the repertoires of mid-'60s British bands.Pink Floyd quickly began to experiment, however, stretching out songs with wild instrumental freak-out passages incorporating feedback; electronic screeches; and unusual, eerie sounds created by loud amplification, reverb, and such tricks as sliding ball bearings up and down guitar strings. In 1966, they began to pick up a following in the London underground; on-stage, they began to incorporate light shows to add to the psychedelic effect. Most importantly, Syd Barrett began to compose pop-psychedelic gems that combined unusual psychedelic arrangements (particularly in the haunting guitar and celestial organ licks) with catchy melodies and incisive lyrics that viewed the world with a sense of poetic, childlike wonder.The group landed a recording contract with EMI in early 1967 and made the Top 20 with a brilliant debut single, "Arnold Layne," a sympathetic, comic vignette about a transvestite. The follow-up, the kaleidoscopic "See Emily Play," made the Top Ten. The debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, also released in 1967, may have been the greatest British psychedelic album other than Sgt. Pepper's. Dominated almost wholly by Barrett's songs, the album was a charming fun house of driving, mysterious rockers ("Lucifer Sam"); odd character sketches ("The Gnome"); childhood flashbacks ("Bike," "Matilda Mother"); and freakier pieces with lengthy instrumental passages ("Astronomy Domine," "Interstellar Overdrive," "Pow R Toch") that mapped out their fascination with space travel. The record was not only like no other at the time; it was like no other that Pink Floyd would make, colored as it was by a vision that was far more humorous, pop-friendly, and lighthearted than those of their subsequent epics.The reason Pink Floyd never made a similar album was that Piper was the only one to be recorded under Barrett's leadership. Around mid-1967, the prodigy began showing increasingly alarming signs of mental instability. Barrett would go catatonic on-stage, playing music that had little to do with the material, or not playing at all. An American tour had to be cut short when he was barely able to function at all, let alone play the pop star game. Dependent upon Barrett for most of their vision and material, the rest of the group was nevertheless finding him impossible to work with, live or in the studio.Around the beginning of 1968, guitarist Dave Gilmour, a friend of the band who was also from Cambridge, was brought in as a fifth member. The idea was that Gilmour would enable the Floyd to continue as a live outfit; Barrett would still be able to write and contribute to the records. That couldn't work either, and within a few months Barrett was out of the group. Pink Floyd's management, looking at the wreckage of a band that was now without its lead guitarist, lead singer, and primary songwriter, decided to abandon the group and manage Barrett as a solo act.Such calamities would have proven insurmountable for 99 out of 100 bands in similar predicaments. Incredibly, Pink Floyd would regroup and not only maintain their popularity, but eventually become even more successful. It was early in the game yet, after all; the first album had made the British Top Ten, but the group was still virtually unknown in America, where the loss of Syd Barrett meant nothing to the media. Gilmour was an excellent guitarist, and the band proved capable of writing enough original material to generate further ambitious albums, Waters eventually emerging as the dominant composer. The 1968 follow-up to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, made the British Top Ten, using Barrett's vision as an obvious blueprint, but taking a more formal, somber, and quasi-classical tone, especially in the long instrumental parts. Barrett, for his part, would go on to make a couple of interesting solo records before his mental problems instigated a retreat into oblivion.Over the next four years, Pink Floyd would continue to polish their brand of experimental rock, which married psychedelia with ever-grander arrangements on a Wagnerian operatic scale. Hidden underneath the pulsing, reverberant organs and guitars and insistently restated themes were subtle blues and pop influences that kept the material accessible to a wide audience. Abandoning the singles market, they concentrated on album-length works, and built a huge following in the progressive rock underground with constant touring in both Europe and North America. While LPs like Ummagumma (divided into live recordings and experimental outings by each member of the band), Atom Heart Mother (a collaboration with composer Ron Geesin), and More... (a film soundtrack) were erratic, each contained some extremely effective music.By the early '70s, Syd Barrett was a fading or nonexistent memory for most of Pink Floyd's fans, although the group, one could argue, never did match the brilliance of that somewhat anomalous 1967 debut. Meddle (1971) sharpened the band's sprawling epics into something more accessible, and polished the science fiction ambience that the group had been exploring ever since 1968. Nothing, however, prepared Pink Floyd or their audience for the massive mainstream success of their 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, which made their brand of cosmic rock even more approachable with state-of-the-art production; more focused songwriting; an army of well-time stereophonic sound effects; and touches of saxophone and soulful female backup vocals.Dark Side of the Moon finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. More astonishingly, it made them one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. Dark Side of the Moon spent an incomprehensible 741 weeks on the Billboard album chart. Additionally, the primarily instrumental textures of the songs helped make Dark Side of the Moon easily translatable on an international level, and the record became (and still is) one of the most popular rock albums worldwide.It was also an extremely hard act to follow, although the follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), also made number one, highlighted by a tribute of sorts to the long-departed Barrett, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Dark Side of the Moon had been dominated by lyrical themes of insecurity, fear, and the cold sterility of modern life; Wish You Were Here and Animals (1977) developed these morose themes even more explicitly. By this time Waters was taking a firm hand over Pink Floyd's lyrical and musical vision, which was consolidated by The Wall (1979).The bleak, overambitious double concept album concerned itself with the material and emotional walls modern humans build around themselves for survival. The Wall was a huge success (even by Pink Floyd's standards), in part because the music was losing some of its heavy-duty electronic textures in favor of more approachable pop elements. Although Pink Floyd had rarely even released singles since the late '60s, one of the tracks, "Another Brick in the Wall," became a transatlantic number one. The band had been launching increasingly elaborate stage shows throughout the '70s, but the touring production of The Wall, featuring a construction of an actual wall during the band's performance, was the most excessive yet.In the 1980s, the group began to unravel. Each of the four had done some side and solo projects in the past; more troublingly, Waters was asserting control of the band's musical and lyrical identity. That wouldn't have been such a problem had The Final Cut (1983) been such an unimpressive effort, with little of the electronic innovation so typical of their previous work. Shortly afterward, the band split up -- for a while. In 1986, Waters was suing Gilmour and Mason to dissolve the group's partnership (Wright had lost full membership status entirely); Waters lost, leaving a Roger-less Pink Floyd to get a Top Five album with Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987. In an irony that was nothing less than cosmic, about 20 years after Pink Floyd shed their original leader to resume their career with great commercial success, they would do the same again to his successor. Waters released ambitious solo albums to nothing more than moderate sales and attention, while he watched his former colleagues (with Wright back in tow) rescale the charts.Pink Floyd still had a huge fan base, but there's little that's noteworthy about their post-Waters output. They knew their formula, could execute it on a grand scale, and could count on millions of customers -- many of them unborn when Dark Side of the Moon came out, and unaware that Syd Barrett was ever a member -- to buy their records and see their sporadic tours. The Division Bell, their first studio album in seven years, topped the charts in 1994 without making any impact on the current rock scene, except in a marketing sense. Ditto for the live Pulse album, recorded during a typically elaborately staged 1994 tour, which included a concert version of The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. Waters' solo career sputtered along, highlighted by a solo recreation of The Wall, performed at the site of the former Berlin Wall in 1990, and released as an album. Syd Barrett continued to be completely removed from the public eye except as a sort of archetype for the fallen genius.Discography"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967)"A Saucerful of Secrets" (1968)"Ummagumma" (1969) (2LP, live and studio)"Atom Heart Mother" (1970)"Meddle" (1971)"Relics" (1971) (out-takes and b-sides)"Dark Side of the Moon" (1973)"Wish You Were Here" (1975)"Animals" (1977)"The Wall" (1979) (2LP)"The Final Cut" (1983)"A Momentary Lapse of Reason" (1987)"The Division Bell" (1994)"Dark Side of the Moon" (30th anniversary edition) (2003)"The Final Cut - Reissue" (2004)Soundtrack albums"Music From the Film More" (1969)"Zabriskie Point" (1970) (soundtrack; various artists)]"Obscured By Clouds" (1972)
Posted in: Biography | Pink Floyd | 0 Comments
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