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On This Day in Rock History: February 7

Jun 18

1942 – Paul McCartney is born in Liverpool, Englan…

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1942 – Paul McCartney is born in Liverpool, England. The Beatles have 20 No. 1 songs, more than any other recording act, and McCartney by himself or in duets has another nine. His biggest post-Beatles hits are “Ebony and Ivory,” a duet with Stevie Wonder that stays at No. 1 for seven weeks, and “Say Say Say,” a duet with Michael Jackson that tops the pop chart for six weeks.
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English rock singer, bass guitarist, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record producer, film producer and animal-rights activist. He gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles, with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best had previously played with the group, before Starr was asked to join. McCartney and Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships and “wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history”. After leaving The Beatles, McCartney launched a successful solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman McCartney, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine. He has worked on film scores, classical music, and ambient/electronic music; released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist; and taken part in projects to help international charities.

McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history, with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million singles. His song “Yesterday” is listed as the most covered song in history and has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American television and radio. Wings’ 1977 single “Mull of Kintyre” became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the UK, and remains the UK’s top selling non-charity single. (Three charity singles have since surpassed it in sales; the first to do so—in 1984—was Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, whose participants included McCartney.)

His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 3,000 songs, including all of the songs written by Buddy Holly, along with the publishing rights to such musicals as Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. McCartney is also an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism, and music education; he is active in campaigns against landmines, seal hunting, and Third World debt.
Early years: 1942–1957

Jim & Mary McCartney

Paul McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary, had worked as a nurse in the maternity ward. He has one brother, Michael, born January 7, 1944. McCartney was baptised Roman Catholic but was raised non-denominationally: his mother was Roman Catholic, and his father, James “Jim” McCartney, was a Protestant turned agnostic.

In 1947, he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary school. He then attended the Joseph Williams Junior School, and passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of the 90 examinees and thus gained admission to the Liverpool Institute. In 1954, while riding on the bus to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who lived nearby. Passing the exam meant that McCartney and Harrison did not have to go to a secondary modern school, which most pupils attended until they were eligible to work. It also meant that Grammar school pupils had to find new friends.

20 Forthlin Road now attracts large numbers of tourists

In 1955 the McCartney family moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton. Mary McCartney rode a bicycle to houses where she was needed as a midwife, and an early McCartney memory is of her leaving when it was snowing heavily. On 31 October 1956, Mary McCartney (who was a heavy smoker) died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer. The early loss of his mother later connected McCartney with John Lennon, whose mother, Julia, died when Lennon was 17.

McCartney’s father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac’s Jazz Band in the 1920s. He encouraged his two sons to be musical. Jim had an upright piano in the front room that he had bought from Harry Epstein’s store, and McCartney’s grandfather, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba. Jim McCartney used to point out the different instruments in songs on the radio, and often took McCartney to local brass band concerts. After the death of his wife, Mary, Jim McCartney gave McCartney a nickel-plated trumpet, but when skiffle music became popular, McCartney swapped the trumpet for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar.

McCartney, being left-handed, found the Zenith difficult to play. He then saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert, and realised that Whitman played left-handed, with his guitar strung the opposite way to a right-handed player. McCartney wrote his first song (“I Lost My Little Girl”) on the Zenith, and also played his father’s Framus Spanish guitar when writing early songs with Lennon. He later started playing piano and wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four”. Per his father’s advice, he took music lessons, but since he preferred to learn ‘by ear’ he never paid attention in them.

1957–1960: The Quarrymen and the Silver Beetles

Main articles: The Quarrymen and Lennon/McCartney

Fifteen-year-old McCartney met Lennon and The Quarrymen at the Woolton (St. Peter’s church hall) fête on July 6, 1957. At the start of their friendship Lennon’s Aunt Mimi disapproved of McCartney because he was, she said, “working class”, and called him “John’s little friend”. McCartney’s father told his son that Lennon would get him “into trouble”, although he later allowed The Quarrymen to rehearse in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road.

McCartney formed a close working relationship with Lennon and they collaborated on many songs. He convinced Lennon to allow Harrison to join The Quarrymen (Lennon thought Harrison was too young) after Lennon heard Harrison play at a rehearsal in March 1958. Harrison joined the group as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon’s art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe, on bass, although McCartney was later dismissive about Sutcliffe’s musical ability. By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including The Silver Beetles; playing a tour of Scotland under that name with Johnny Gentle. They finally changed the name of the group to The Beatles for their performances in Hamburg.

1960–1970: The Beatles

Main article: The Beatles

Starting in May 1960, The Beatles were managed by Allan Williams, who booked them into Bruno Koschmider’s Indra club in Hamburg. McCartney’s father was reluctant to let the teenage McCartney go to Hamburg until McCartney pointed out that he would earn ₤2/10s per day. As this was more than he earned himself, Jim finally agreed.
The Indra Club,Hamburg where the Beatles first played
The Indra Club,Hamburg where the Beatles first played

The Beatles first played at the Indra club, sleeping in small, “dirty” rooms in the Bambi Kino, and then moved (after the closure of the Indra) to the larger Kaiserkeller. In October 1960, they left Koschmider’s club and worked at the “Top Ten Club”, which was run by Peter Eckhorn. When McCartney and Pete Best went back to the Bambi Kino to get their belongings they found it in almost total darkness. As a snub to Koschmider, they found a condom, attached it to a nail on the concrete wall of their room, and set fire to it. There was no real damage, but Koschmider reported them for attempted arson. McCartney and Best spent three hours in a local jail and were deported, as was Harrison, for working under the legal age limit. Lennon’s work permit was revoked a few days later and he went home by train, but Sutcliffe had a cold and stayed in Hamburg, and then flew home.

The group reunited in December 1960, and on 21 March 1961, played their first of many concerts at Liverpool’s Cavern club. McCartney realised that other Liverpool bands were playing the same cover songs, which prompted him and Lennon to write more original material. The Beatles returned to Hamburg in April 1961, and recorded “My Bonnie” with Tony Sheridan. Sutcliffe left the band after the end of their contract, so McCartney reluctantly took over bass. After borrowing Sutcliffe’s Hõfner 500/5 model for a short time, he bought a left-handed 1962 500/1 model Höfner bass. On 1 October 1961, McCartney went with Lennon (who paid for the trip) to Paris for two weeks.

The Beatles were first seen by Brian Epstein at the Cavern club on 9 November 1961, and he later signed them to a management contract. The Beatles’ road manager, Neil Aspinall, drove them to London on 31 December 1961, where they auditioned the next day, but were rejected by Decca Records. In April 1962, they went back to Hamburg to play at the Star-Club, and learned of Stuart Sutcliffe’s death a few hours before they arrived. The Beatles were ready to sign a record contract on 9 May 1962, with Parlophone Records—after having been rejected by many record companies—but Epstein sacked Pete Best (at the behest of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison) before they signed the contract. “Love Me Do” was released on 5 October 1962, featuring McCartney singing solo on the chorus line. Over the course of the next two years, McCartney and his band mates would rise from relative obscurity to international stardom, an unprecedented feat at that time for a rock-music combo.

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Yesterday (1965)
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Hey Jude (1968)
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All Lennon-McCartney songs on the first pressing of Please Please Me album (recorded in one day on 11 February 1963) as well as the “Please Please Me” single, “From Me to You”, and its B-side, “Thank You Girl”, are credited to “McCartney-Lennon”, but this was later changed to “Lennon-McCartney”. They usually needed an hour or two to finish a song, which were written in hotel rooms after a concert, at Wimpole Street, at Cavendish Avenue, or at Kenwood (Lennon’s house). McCartney also wrote songs for other artists, such as Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Badfinger, and Mary Hopkin -and most notably he wrote two hit songs for the group Peter & Gordon-launching their career. One song, “World Without Love”, became a #1 hit in the U.K. & U.S. (Peter was the brother of Jane Asher, McCartney’s girlfriend at the time)
Epiphone Texan modeled after the one often used by McCartney.
Epiphone Texan modeled after the one often used by McCartney.

Lennon, Harrison, and Starr lived in large houses in the ‘stockbroker belt’ of southern England,] but McCartney continued to live in central London: in Jane Asher’s parents’ house, and then at 7 Cavendish Avenue, St John’s Wood, near the Abbey Road Studios.] It was at Cavendish Avenue that McCartney bought his first Old English Sheepdog, Martha, which inspired the song “Martha My Dear”.

McCartney often went to nightclubs alone, which offered ‘dining and dancing until 4:00 a.m.’ and featured cabaret acts. McCartney would get preferential treatment everywhere he went, which he readily accepted. He even once accepted an offer from a policeman to be allowed to park McCartney’s car. He later visited gambling clubs after 4:00am, such as ‘The Curzon House’, and often saw Brian Epstein there. The Ad Lib club (above the Prince Charles Theatre at 7 Leicester Place) was later opened for the emerging ‘Rock and Roll’ crowd of musicians, and tolerated their unusual lifestyle. After the Ad Lib fell out of favour, McCartney moved on to the Scotch of St James, at 13 Masons Yard. He also frequented The Bag O’Nails club at 8 Kingly Street in Soho, London, where he met Linda Eastman.

On 12 June 1965, The Beatles were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); they received their insignia from Queen Elizabeth II at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 26 October 1965. They stopped touring after their last concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on 29 August 1966. The other three Beatles had often talked about stopping touring, but after the Candlestick Park concert, and after having played so many concerts where they could not be heard, McCartney finally agreed that they should stop playing live concerts.
Beatles Houston sculpture
Beatles Houston sculpture

McCartney was the first to be involved in a project outside of the group, when he composed the score for the film The Family Way in 1966. The soundtrack was later released as an album (also called The Family Way), and won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme, ahead of acclaimed jazz musician Mike Turner. McCartney wrote songs for and produced other artists, including Mary Hopkin, Badfinger, and the Bonzo Dog Band, and in 1966, he was asked by Kenneth Tynan to write the songs for the National Theatre’s production of As You Like It by William Shakespeare (starring Laurence Olivier) but declined. In 1968 he co-produced the song “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and was credited as “Apollo C. Vermouth” because of contractual restrictions.

McCartney later attempted to persuade Lennon and Harrison to return to the stage, and when they had a meeting to sign a new contract with Capitol Records, McCartney suggested “going back to our roots,” to which Lennon replied, “I think you’re mad!” Although Lennon had quit the group in September 1969, and Harrison and Starr had temporarily left the group at various times, McCartney was the one who publicly announced The Beatles’ breakup on 10 April 1970—one week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney. The album included a press release inside with a self-written interview stating McCartney’s hopes about the future. The Beatles’ partnership was legally dissolved after McCartney filed a lawsuit on 31 December 1970.]

1970s: Paul McCartney (solo) and Wings

Wings (band)

Paul and Linda McCartney at the 1974 Academy Awards.
Paul and Linda McCartney at the 1974 Academy Awards.

McCartney released his debut solo album, McCartney, in April 1970. He insisted that his wife should be involved in his musical career so that they would not be apart when he was on tour. McCartney’s second solo album, Ram (1971) was credited to both Paul and Linda McCartney. In August of that year McCartney formed Wings with guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell (although membership in Wings would change several times during its existence) and released their debut album, Wild Life. In 1972, Wings started an unplanned tour of British universities and small European venues. In February of that year, they released a single called “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”, which was banned by the BBC. Wings then embarked on the 26-date Wings Over Europe Tour.

The first of Wings’ two 1973 albums Red Rose Speedway spawned the band’s first #1 in the United States, “My Love”. On 16 April, McCartney starred in a TV variety show called James Paul McCartney. Wings then released the theme song for the James Bond film Live and Let Die. It reunited McCartney with George Martin, who both produced the song and arranged the orchestral break. Their second 1973 album Band on the Run, which won two Grammy Awards is Wings’ most lauded work. From it were released the singles “Jet”, and, in 1974, “Band on the Run” (the song) as well as the non-album single “Junior’s Farm”. A jam session — with Lennon and McCartney — was recorded in California, in 1974, and released on the bootleg A Toot and a Snore in ’74. The same year, he recorded an instrumental, “Walking in the Park with Eloise”, which had been written by his father. The song featured Wings, Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins. Venus and Mars was released in 1975, which featured “Listen to What the Man Said” and “Rock Show.” Till 1976, Wings embarked on the Wings Over the World tour.

In 1977, McCartney released Thrillington under the name “Percy ‘Thrills’ Thrillington”. Wings also released “Mull of Kintyre”. It stayed at #1 in the UK for nine weeks, and was the highest-selling single in the UK until 1984, when Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas beat its record. Wings toured again in 1979, and McCartney organised the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. McCartney’s “Rockestra” theme won a Grammy award. At Christmas 1979, McCartney released his (solo) “Wonderful Christmastime”.

Although McCartney’s relationship with Lennon was troubled, they reconciled during the 1970s. McCartney would often call Lennon, but was never sure of what sort of reception he would get, such as when McCartney once called Lennon and was told, “You’re all pizza and fairytales!” McCartney understood that he could not just phone Lennon and only talk about business, so they often talked about cats, baking bread, or babies.

1980s-1990s: Solo career

Paul McCartney (solo)

McCartney played every instrument on the 1980 release McCartney II (as he had on McCartney before it), this time with an emphasis on synthesisers instead of guitars. The single “Coming Up” reached #2 in Britain and #1 in the US. “Waterfalls” was another UK Top 10 hit. McCartney’s next album, 1982′s Tug of War, reunited him with Ringo Starr and Beatles producer George Martin, and the album hit No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time as it’s lead single, a duet with Stevie Wonder, “Ebony and Ivory”, did likewise. Two further hit duets followed, both with Michael Jackson: “The Girl Is Mine”, from Jackson’s Thriller album, and “Say Say Say”, a single from McCartney’s 1983 album, Pipes of Peace.

McCartney wrote and starred in the 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street. The film and soundtrack featured the US and UK Top 10 hit “No More Lonely Nights”, and the album reached #1 in the UK, but the film did not do well commercially or critically. Roger Ebert awarded the film a single star and wrote, “You can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the sound track”. Later that year, McCartney released “We All Stand Together”, the title song from the animated film Rupert and the Frog Song, which was the supporting feature to “Broad Street” in cinemas and which, when released on video cassette would become the year’s top-seller. The following year, McCartney released Spies Like Us the title song to the Dan Ackroyd/Chevy Chase comedy which hit #7 on the Billboard chart (making it his last US Top 20 hit to date).

In the second half of the decade McCartney would find new collaborators. Eric Stewart had appeared on McCartney’s Pipes of Peace album, and he co-wrote most of McCartney’s 1986 album Press to Play. The album and its lead single, “Press”, became minor hits. McCartney returned the favour by co-writing two songs for Stewart’s band, 10cc: “Don’t Break the Promises” (…Meanwhile, 1992), and “Yvonne’s the One” (Mirror Mirror, 1995). In 1987, EMI released All the Best! which was the first compilation of McCartney’s own songs.

In 1988, he released, initially in the Soviet Union only, Снова в СССР a collection of McCartney cover-versions of his favourite vintage Rock and roll classics which later had a general release in 1991. Around this time, McCartney also began a songwriting partnership with Elvis Costello (Declan MacManus) from which songs would appear on singles and albums by both artists, notably “Veronica”on Costello’s album Spike and “My Brave Face” from McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt, (which reached #1 in the UK on releas in 1989). Further McCartney/MacManus compositions for surfaced on Costello’s 1991 album Mighty Like a Rose and McCartney’s 1993 album Off the Ground. In late 1989, McCartney started his first concert tour since Lennon’s murder, also his first tour of the US in thirteen years.

In a 1980 interview, Lennon said that the last time he had seen McCartney was when they had watched the episode of Saturday Night Live (May 1976) in which Lorne Michaels had made his $3,000 cash offer to get Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to reunite on the show. McCartney and Lennon had seriously considered going to the studio, but were too tired. This event was fictionalised in the 2000 television film Two of Us.

Reaction to John Lennon’s murder

On the morning of December 9, 1980, McCartney awoke to the news that Lennon had been murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York. Lennon’s death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of The Beatles. On the evening of 9 December, as McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by reporters and asked for his reaction to Lennon’s death. He replied, “I was very shocked, you know—this is terrible news,” and said that he had spent the day in the studio listening to some material because he “just didn’t want to sit at home.” When asked why, he replied, “I didn’t feel like it,” he was then asked when he first heard the news McCartney replied “This morning sometime” and one of the reporters asked “very early?” and said “yeah” and then asked the reporters if they all knew, they added “yeah” McCartney then added, “drag, isn’t it?” When published, his “drag” remark was criticised, and McCartney later regretted it. He furthermore stated that he had intended no disrespect but had just been at a loss for words, after the shock and sadness he felt over his friend’s murder. He was also to recall:
“ I talked to Yoko the day after he was killed and the first thing she said was, “John was really fond of you.” The last telephone conversation I had with him we were still the best of mates. He was always a very warm guy, John. His bluff was all on the surface. He used to take his glasses down, those granny glasses, and say, “It’s only me.” They were like a wall, you know? A shield. Those are the moments I treasure. ”

In 1983 Paul said:
“ I would not have been as typically human and standoffish as I was if I knew John was going to die. I would have made more of an effort to try and get behind his “mask” and have a better relationship with him.’ ”

In a Playboy interview in 1984, McCartney said that he went home that night and watched the news on television—while sitting with all his children—and cried all evening. His last telephone call to Lennon, which was just before Lennon and Yoko released Double Fantasy, was friendly. During the call, Lennon said (laughing) to McCartney, “This housewife wants a career!” which referred to Lennon’s “house-husband” years, while looking after Sean Lennon.

McCartney carried on recording after the death of Lennon but did not play any live concerts for some time. He explained that this was because he was nervous that he would be “the next” to be murdered. This led to a disagreement with Denny Laine, who wanted to continue touring and subsequently left Wings, which McCartney disbanded in 1981. Also in 1981, six months after Lennon’s death, McCartney sang backup on George Harrison’s tribute to Lennon, “All Those Years Ago,” which also featured Ringo Starr on drums. McCartney would go on to record “Here Today”, a tribute song to Lennon.

1990s: Classical music
McCartney at the Grammy Awards, February 1990.
McCartney at the Grammy Awards, February 1990.

The 1990s saw McCartney venture into classical music. In 1991 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by McCartney to celebrate its sesquicentennial. McCartney collaborated with Carl Davis to release Liverpool Oratorio. The Oratorio was premiered in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, and had its North American premiere in Carnegie Hall in New York on 18 November 1991, with Davis conducting. McCartney’s singers and musicians included the opera singers Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral. EMI Classics recorded the premiere of the oratorio and released it on a 2-CD album which topped the classical charts. His next classical project to be released (in 1995) was A Leaf, a solo-piano piece played by Royal College of Music gold-medal winner Anya Alexeyev. The Prince of Wales later honoured McCartney as a Fellow of The Royal College of Music. Other forays into classical music included Standing Stone (1997), Working Classical (1999), and “Ecce Cor Meum” (2006).

In the early 1990s (after another world tour), McCartney reunited with Harrison and Starr to work on Apple’s The Beatles Anthology documentary series. It included three double albums of alternative takes, live recordings, and previously unreleased Beatles songs, as well as a ten-hour video boxed set. Anthology 1 was released in 1995, and featured “Free as a Bird”, which was the first Beatles reunion track, while Anthology 2, released in 1996, included “Real Love” (1996), the second and final in the reunion series. Both reunion tracks were co produced by Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne, who had worked with Harrison in The Traveling Wilburys. Both reunion tracks were completed by adding new music and vocal tracks to Lennon’s demos from the late 1970s.

In 1997, McCartney released Flaming Pie which was produced by Lynne and Martin. It debuted at #2 in the UK and the US, and was nominated in the Grammy Awards category Album of the Year. The same year, McCartney made his second venture into classical music with Standing Stone, which was commissioned by EMI Records to mark their 100th anniversary in autumn. On 11 March 1997, he was knighted as “Sir Paul McCartney” for his “services to music”. He dedicated his knighthood to fellow Beatles Lennon, Harrison, and Starr, and to the people of Liverpool. In 1999, McCartney released another album of rock ‘n’ roll songs, titled Run Devil Run. That same year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. (Bitter that he had not been inducted sooner, McCartney brought his daughter to the stage with him and smiled as he pointed to her shirt, which read: “About Fucking Time.”) In 1999, he released Working Classical.

2000s
McCartney on Live8.
McCartney on Live8.

In 2000, McCartney released A Garland for Linda; a choral tribute album with compositions from eight other contemporary composers. The music was performed by “The Joyful Company of Singers” to raise funds for The Garland Appeal, a fund to aid cancer patients. In May 2001, he released Wingspan: An Intimate Portrait, a retrospective documentary that features behind-the-scenes films and photographs that he and Linda McCartney (who had died in 1998) took of their family and bands. Interspersed throughout the 88 minute film is an interview by Mary McCartney with her father. Mary was the baby photographed inside McCartney’s jacket on the back cover of McCartney, and was one of the producers of the documentary.

Earlier in the year, McCartney worked on what would become his new album, Driving Rain, released on November 12. Driving Rain featured uplifting songs inspired by and written for his soon-to-be wife Heather. Clearly determined to follow the example of Run Devil Run’s brisk recording pace, most of the album was recorded in two weeks, starting in February 2001. McCartney also composed and recorded the title track for the film Vanilla Sky, released later that year. The track was nominated for—but did not win—an Oscar for Best Original Song.

McCartney took a lead role in organising The Concert for New York City in response to the events of September 11. The concert took place on 20 October 2001.

In late 2001, McCartney was informed that George Harrison was losing his battle with cancer. Upon Harrison’s death on 29 November, McCartney told Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra, Good Morning America, The Early Show, MTV, VH-1 and Today that Harrison was like his “baby brother”. Harrison spent his last days in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by McCartney. On 29 November 2002—on the first anniversary of George Harrison’s death—McCartney played Harrison’s “Something” on a ukulele at the Concert for George.

In 2002, McCartney began a two-year world tour. He contributed to an album titled Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy Of Sun Records, which included a version of Elvis Presley’s song “That’s All Right (Mama)”. He performed during the pre-game ceremonies at the NFL’s Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and starred in the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005. In 2003, McCartney played a concert in Red Square, Russia. Vladimir Putin gave him a tour of the Square.

In what would be his first British music festival appearance, McCartney headlined the Glastonbury Festival in June 2004. McCartney and festival organiser Michael Eavis won the NME Award on behalf of the festival, which won ‘Best Live Event’ in the 2005 awards. McCartney performed at the main Live 8 concert on 2 July 2005, playing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with U2 to open the Hyde Park event, although Ringo Starr criticised McCartney for not asking him to play.

On November 13th, 2005, McCartney played a live concert at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, CA. Towards the end of the concert, a satellite link-up was made to the International Space Station so McCartney and those at the concert could see NASA Astronaut Bill McArthur and Russian Cosmonaut Valery Tokarev as they were awakening for the 44th day of their six month mission in space. McCartney proceeded to play the traditional wakeup song played on each space mission, a tradition that began during the moon missions. McCartney also performed “Good Day Sunshine”, and “English Tea”. Afterwards he and the concert goers talked with McArthur and Tokarev via a projection screen. This was the first time a live concert had been linked to a U.S. spacecraft.
McCartney gives a speech at the US premier of Ecce Cor Meum at Carnegie Hall..
McCartney gives a speech at the US premier of Ecce Cor Meum at Carnegie Hall..

In March 2006, McCartney finished composing a ‘modern classical’ musical work named Ecce Cor Meum [Behold My Heart]. It was recorded with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the boys of King’s College Choir, Cambridge, Magdalen College School, Oxford, and was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 3 November 2006..[141] It was voted Classical Album of the Year in 2007 in the Classical Brit Awards.[142]

On 18 June 2006, McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, as in “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Paul Vallely noted it in The Independent as “a cultural milestone for a generation. Such is the nature of celebrity, McCartney is one of those people who have represented the hopes and aspirations of those born in the baby-boom era, which had its awakening in the Sixties.”[143]

McCartney joined Jay-Z and Linkin Park onstage at the 2006 Grammy Awards in a performance of “Numb/Encore” & “Yesterday” to commemorate the recent passing of Coretta Scott King. McCartney later noted that it was the first time he had performed at the Grammys and quipped, “I finally passed the audition,” which was a reference to the Lennon comment at the end of the Let It Be film: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.”[144] McCartney was nominated for another Grammy Award in 2007 for “Jenny Wren”—a song from his 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which itself had been nominated as Album of the Year in 2006.[145]

On 21 March 2007, McCartney left EMI to become the first artist signed to Starbucks’s new record label, Los Angeles-based Hear Music, to be distributed by Concord Music Group. He made an appearance via a video-feed from London at the company’s annual meeting.[146] “For me, the great thing is the commitment and the passion and the love of music, which as an artist is good to see. It’s a new world now and people are thinking of new ways to reach the people, and that’s always been my aim”.[147]

On 2 April 2007, a fan drove through the security fence on McCartney’s Peasmarsh county estate shouting that he had to “get at” the ex-Beatle. The incident echoed the murder of Lennon and the attempted murder of George Harrison. The assailant was arrested after a chase through Sussex country lanes.[148][149][150]

McCartney played “secret gigs” in London, New York, and Los Angeles to promote his album. Several live recordings from these shows have been released as B-sides to singles from Memory Almost Full. In New York, the crowd included only a few hundred contest winners and celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberg, Elijah Wood, Kate Moss, Aidan Quinn, and Steve Buscemi.[151]
McCartney’s BBC Electric Proms performance in Camden, London.
McCartney’s BBC Electric Proms performance in Camden, London.

McCartney played at the BBC Electric Proms on October 25, 2007, at The Roundhouse in Camden, which is run by a music festival run by the British Broadcasting Corporation. On 13 November 2007, The McCartney Years, a 3-DVD set was released. It contains a commentary, behind the scenes footage, over 40 music videos, Wings’ live performances, interviews with Melvyn Bragg and Michael Parkinson, LIVE AID, the Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show and the 2005 documentary Creating Chaos at Abbey Road.[152]

In February 2008, McCartney was awarded a BRIT award for outstanding contribution, the same as a Lifetime Achievement Award.[153] The minor planet 4148, discovered in 1983 was named ‘McCartney’ in his honour.[154] Yale University conferred an honorary Doctor of Music degree on Paul McCartney on 26 May 2008.[155] On 1 June 2008 McCartney celebrated Liverpool’s year as European capital of culture by playing a concert there. It featured special guest Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Grohl played guitar and sang backing vocals on “Band on the Run” and played drums on Back in the U.S.S.R. and I Saw Her Standing There.

In April 2008 it has been revealed that McCartney was invited by Ukrainian tycoon Victor Pinchuk to play a free concert in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on 14 June, 2008. He played in the city’s main square Maidan Nezalezhnosti at a show dubbed the Independence Concert.[156] Over 350,000 concert goers braved adverse weather conditions as Paul McCartney played the biggest concert in the Ukraine’s history. Furthermore, McCartney will open a personal exhibition of his artistic works at the PinchukArtCentre[157].

Creative outlets

During the ’60s, McCartney was often seen at major cultural events, such as the launch party for The International Times, and at The Roundhouse (28 January and 4 February 1967).[158] He also delved into the visual arts, becoming a close friend of leading art dealers and gallery owners, explored experimental film, and regularly attended movie, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through John Dunbar, who introduced him to the art dealer Robert Fraser, who in turn introduced McCartney to an array of writers and artists. McCartney later became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London—John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at the Indica.[159][160] The Indica Gallery brought McCartney into contact with Barry Miles, whose underground newspaper, The International Times, McCartney helped to start.[161] Miles would become de facto manager of the Apple’s short-lived Zapple Records label, and wrote McCartney’s official biography, Many Years From Now (1998).

While living at the Asher house, McCartney took piano lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which The Beatles’ producer Martin had previously attended. McCartney studied composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio.[162] McCartney later wrote and released several pieces of modern classical music and ambient electronica, besides writing poetry and painting. McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, an arts school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys.[163] The 1837 building, which McCartney attended during his schooldays, had become derelict by the mid-1980s.[163] On 7 June 1996, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the redeveloped building.[163]

Electronica

After the recording of “Yesterday” in 1965, McCartney contacted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, London, to see if they could record an electronic version of the song, but never followed it up. When visiting John Dunbar’s flat in London, McCartney would take along tapes he had compiled at Jane Asher’s house. The tapes were mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that he had Dick James make into a demo record for him.[166] He later made tape loops by recording voices, guitars and bongos on a Brenell tape machine, and splicing the various loops together. He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the effects he wanted (which were later used on Beatles’ recordings, such as “Tomorrow Never Knows”). McCartney referred to them as electronic symphonies and was heavily influenced by John Cage at the time.[167]

In the spring of 1966, while McCartney was part of a small group which included figureheads John Dunbar and (Barry) Miles, involved with giving birth to the Indica Gallery and the newspaper International Times, he rented a ground floor and basement flat from Ringo Starr at 34 Montagu Square, to be used as a small demo studio for spoken-word recordings by poets, writers (including William Burroughs) and avant-garde musicians.[168] The Beatles’ Apple Records then launched a sub-label, Zapple with (Barry) Miles as its manager, ostensibly to release recordings of a similar aesthetic, (although few releases would ultimately result as Apple and The Beatles slid into subsequent business and personal difficulties.)[168]

In 1995, McCartney recorded a radio series called “Oobu Joobu” for the American network Westwood One, which McCartney described as being “wide-screen radio”

During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated with Youth of Killing Joke under the name of the Fireman, and have released two ambient albums; Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (in 1993) and Rushes, in 1998. In 2000, he released an album, Liverpool Sound Collage, with Super Furry Animals and Youth, utilising collage and musique concrete techniques which fascinated him in the mid-1960s. Most recently, in 2005, he worked on a project with bootleg producer and remixer Freelance Hellraiser, consisting of remixed versions of songs from throughout his solo career and released under the name Twin Freaks.

Film

McCartney was interested in animated films as a child, and later had the financial resources to ask Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called the Rupert and the Frog Song in 1981. McCartney wrote the music and the script, was the producer, and added some of the characters voices.Dunbar worked again with McCartney on an animated film about the work of French artist Honore Daumier, in 1992, which won both of them a Bafta award. They also worked on Tropic Island Hum, in 1997.In 1995, McCartney directed a short documentary about The Grateful Dead.[

Painting

In 1966, McCartney met art gallery-owner Robert Fraser, whose flat was visited by many well-known artists.[181] McCartney met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton there, and learned about art appreciation.[181] McCartney later started buying paintings by Magritte, and used Magritte’s painting of an apple for the Apple Records logo.[182] He now owns Magritte’s easel and spectacles.[183]

McCartney’s love of painting surfaced after watching artist Willem de Kooning paint, in Kooning’s Long Island barn.[184] McCartney took up painting in 1983.[185] In 1999, he exhibited his paintings (featuring McCartney’s portraits of John Lennon, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie) for the first time in Siegen, Germany, and included photographs by Linda. He chose the gallery because Wolfgang Suttner (local events organiser) was genuinely interested in his art, and the positive reaction led to McCartney showing his work in UK galleries.[186] The first UK exhibition of McCartney’s work was opened in Bristol, England with more than 500 paintings on display. McCartney had previously believed that “only people that had been to art school were allowed to paint” – as Lennon had.[186]

In October 2000, Yoko Ono and McCartney presented art exhibitions in New York and London. McCartney said,
“ I’ve been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I’m really excited about it. I didn’t tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I’m out of the closet.[187][188] ”

Writing and poetry
McCartney’s English teacher, Alan Durband, in 1946.
McCartney’s English teacher, Alan Durband, in 1946.

When McCartney was young, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. McCartney’s father was interested in crosswords and invited the two young McCartneys (Paul and his brother Michael) to solve them with him, so as to increase their “word power”.[189] McCartney was later inspired – in his school years – by Alan Durband, who was McCartney’s English literature teacher at the Liverpool Institute.[190] Durband was a co-founder and fund-raiser at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where Willy Russell also worked, and introduced McCartney to Geoffrey Chaucer’s works.[191] McCartney later took his A-level exams, but passed only one subject – Art.[192][193]

In 2001 McCartney published ‘Blackbird Singing’, a volume of poems, some of which were lyrics to his songs, and gave readings in Liverpool and New York.[194] Some of them were serious: “Here Today” (about Lennon) and some humorous (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”).[195] In the foreword of the book, McCartney explained that when he was a teenager, he had “an overwhelming desire” to have a poem of his published in the school magazine. He wrote something “deep and meaningful”, but it was rejected, and he feels that he has been trying to get some kind of revenge ever since. His first “real poem” was about the death of his childhood friend, Ivan Vaughan.[196]

In October 2005, McCartney released a children’s book called High In The Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail. In a press release publicizing the book, McCartney said, “I have loved reading for as long as I can remember,” singling out Treasure Island as a childhood favourite.[197] McCartney collaborated with author Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar to write the book.[198]

Relationships and marriages

McCartney had a three-year relationship with Dot Rhone in Liverpool, and they were due to get married until Rhone lost the baby she was expecting. In London McCartney had a five-year relationship with actress Jane Asher. They were engaged to be married until they broke up in 1968. McCartney married American photographer Linda Eastman in 1969 (McCartney was the last Beatle to get married). They had four children (Linda’s daughter Heather who was adopted by Paul, followed by three more children) and remained married until Linda’s death from breast cancer in 1998. In 2002, McCartney married former model Heather Mills and they had a child in 2003. They separated in May 2006 and they were divorced in May 2008.[199]

Widespread animosity towards McCartney’s wives was reported in 2004. “They [the British public] didn’t like me giving up on Jane Asher,” McCartney said. “I married a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn’t like that.”[200]

Relationship with Dot Rhone
McCartney and Dot Rhone on 17 March 1962, in Liverpool.
McCartney and Dot Rhone on 17 March 1962, in Liverpool.

One of McCartney’s first girlfriends was called Layla, whom McCartney remembered as having an unusual name in Liverpool at the time. Layla was slightly older than McCartney and used to ask him to baby-sit with her, which was a code word for sex. Julie Arthur, another girlfriend, was Ted Ray’s niece.[201]

McCartney’s first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959.[202] McCartney picked out the clothes he wanted Rhone to wear and told her which make-up to use. He also paid for Rhone to have her blonde hair done in the style of Brigitte Bardot, whom Lennon and McCartney idolised.[203][204] When McCartney went to Hamburg with The Beatles he wrote regular letters to Rhone, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when The Beatles played there again in 1962.[205] According to Rhone, McCartney bought her a gold ring, took her sightseeing around Hamburg and was very attentive and caring.[206] Rhone later rented a room in the same house as Cynthia Lennon was living as McCartney helped with the rent.[207] McCartney admitted that he had other girlfriends in Hamburg during his time with Rhone, and that they were usually “strippers”, who knew a lot more about sex than Liverpool girls.[208]

Shortly after McCartney returned from Hamburg in May 1962, Rhone told him that she was pregnant. They told Jim McCartney—whom they expected to be shocked at the news—but found him delighted at the prospect of becoming a grandfather. McCartney took out a marriage licence and set the wedding date for November; shortly before the baby was due.[209] Rhone had a miscarriage in July 1962, and after a few weeks, McCartney’s feelings towards Rhone “cooled off” and he finished their relationship.[210]

Rhone later emigrated to Toronto, Canada, and McCartney met her again when The Beatles played there, and then again with Wings. Rhone said that “Love of the Loved” and “P.S. I Love You” were written about her. Years later, Cynthia Lennon gave back Rhone the gold ring that McCartney had bought in Hamburg, as Cynthia had once tried it on when Rhone was washing dishes, and had forgotten to take it off. Rhone is now a grandmother and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.[211]

Relationship with Jane Asher

Jane Asher

The Beatles were performing at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, when McCartney first met British actress Jane Asher on 18 April 1963, and a photographer asked them to pose with Asher.[212] The Beatles were interviewed by Asher for the BBC, and Asher was then photographed screaming at them like a fan. McCartney later persuaded her to become his girlfriend.[213]

McCartney soon met Jane’s family: Margaret, Jane’s mother, who combined her life as the mother of three children with a full-time career as a music teacher, and Jane’s father, Richard, who was a physician. Jane’s brother, Peter, was a member of Peter and Gordon, and Jane’s younger sister, Clare, was also an actress.[214] McCartney later gave “A World Without Love” to Peter and Gordon-as well as the song “Nobody I Know”. Both songs became hits for the group.[215] McCartney took up residence at the Ashers’ house at 57 Wimpole Street, London, and lived there for nearly three years.[216] During his time there McCartney met writers such as Bertrand Russell, Harold Pinter and Len Deighton.[217] He wrote several songs at the Ashers’, including “Yesterday”, and worked on songs with Lennon in the basement music room. Jane inspired many songs, such as “And I Love Her”, “You Won’t See Me”, and “I’m Looking Through You”.[218] On 13 April 1965, McCartney bought a £40,000 three-storey Regency house, at 7 Cavendish Avenue, London, and spent a further £20,000 renovating it. McCartney created a music room on the top floor of his house, where he worked with Lennon. He thanked the Ashers by paying for the decoration of the front of their house.[219]

On 15 May 1967, McCartney met American photographer Linda Eastman at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O’Nails club in London.[220] Eastman was in the UK on an assignment to take photographs of “Swinging sixties” musicians in London. McCartney and Linda later went to The Speakeasy club on Margaret Street.[221] They met again four days later at the launch party for the Sgt. Pepper album at Brian Epstein’s house in Belgravia, but when her assignment was completed, Linda flew back to New York City.[222]

On 25 December 1967, McCartney and Asher announced their engagement, and she accompanied McCartney to India in February and March of 1968. Asher broke off the engagement in early 1968, after coming back from Bristol to find McCartney in bed with another woman.[223] They attempted to mend the relationship, but finally broke it off in July 1968. Jane Asher has consistently refused to publicly discuss that part of her life.[224]

Marriage to Linda Eastman

Main articles: Linda McCartney, Heather McCartney, Mary McCartney, Stella McCartney, and James McCartney

In May 1968, McCartney met Eastman again in New York, when Lennon and McCartney were there to announce the formation of Apple Corps.[225] In September, McCartney phoned Eastman and asked her to fly over to London. Six months later, McCartney and Eastman were married at a small civil ceremony (when Linda was four months pregnant with McCartney’s child) at Marylebone Registry Office on 12 March 1969. He later said that Eastman was the woman who “gave me the strength and courage to work again” (after the break-up of The Beatles).[226] McCartney adopted Linda’s daughter from her first marriage, Heather Louise (now a potter), and the couple had three more children together: photographer Mary Anna, fashion designer Stella Nina,[227] and musician James Louis. McCartney has claimed that he and Linda spent less than a week apart during their entire marriage, interrupted only by Paul’s incarceration in Tokyo on drug charges in January 1980.

Linda McCartney died of breast cancer in Tucson, Arizona, on 17 April 1998.[228] McCartney denied rumours that her death was an assisted suicide.[228][229]

McCartney now has five grandchildren: Mary’s two sons Arthur Alistair Donald (born 3 April 1999) and Elliot Donald (born 1 August 2002) and Stella’s children, Miller Alasdhair James Willis (born 25 February 2005),[230] daughter Bailey Linda Olwyn Willis (born 8 December 2006).[231], and Beckett Robert Lee (born 8 January 2008).

Marriage to Heather Mills

Main article: Heather Mills

After having sparked the interest of the tabloids about his appearances with Heather Mills at events, McCartney appeared publicly beside Mills at a party in January 2000, to celebrate her 32nd birthday.[232][233] On 11 June 2002, McCartney married Mills, a former model and anti-landmines campaigner, in an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie in Glaslough, County Monaghan, Ireland, where more than 300 guests were invited and the reception included a vegetarian banquet.[234] In October 2003, Mills gave birth to a daughter, Beatrice Milly McCartney.[235] The baby was reportedly named after Heather’s late mother Beatrice and Paul’s Aunt Milly.[236]

On 29 July 2006, British newspapers announced that McCartney had petitioned for divorce, which sparked a press furor.[237][238][239] A settlement was announced on 21 January 2007, but Mills’ lawyers denied this.[240] On March 17, 2008, the financial terms of the divorce were finalised[241] with a settlement awarding Heather Mills £24.3 million ($48.6 million).[242] The settlement will also see the former Beatle pay their four-year-old daughter Beatrice’s nanny and school fees and will pay Beatrice £35,000 ($70,000) a year until she is 18, or ends secondary education.[242][243][244][245] After the divorce ruling, Justice Bennett said that throughout the case Mills was “inconsistent, inaccurate and less than candid” while McCartney was “honest.”[246][247] On May 12, 2008, Justice Hugh Bennett issued only a preliminary divorce decree to be finalized in 6 months: “On the petition for divorce presented by Miss Heather Mills, I pronounce the decree nisi of divorce on the grounds of two years’ separation.”[248][249]

Lifestyle

McCartney’s lifestyle was greatly altered by his success and the income he earned. In the 1960s, the new availability of the first oral contraceptive and illegal drugs changed many people’s opinions—including McCartney’s—about life, marriage, and sexual relationships.[250]

Recreational drug use

McCartney’s introduction to drugs started in Hamburg, Germany.[251] The Beatles had to play for hours, and they were often given “Prellies” (Preludin) by German customers or by Astrid Kirchherr (whose mother bought them). McCartney would usually take one, but Lennon would often take four or five.[252]

After having been introduced to cannabis, by Bob Dylan in New York, in 1964, McCartney remembered getting “very high” and giggling.[253] McCartney’s use of cannabis became regular, and he was quoted in the Barry Miles book as saying that any future Beatles’ lyrics containing the words “high”, or “grass” were written specifically as a reference to cannabis—as was “Got to Get You into My Life”.[254] John Dunbar’s flat at 29 Lennox Gardens, in London, became a regular hang-out for McCartney, where he talked to musicians, writers and artists, and smoked cannabis.[166] In 1965, Miles introduced McCartney to hash brownies by using a recipe for hash fudge he found in the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.[255] During the filming of Help!, he and the other Beatles occasionally smoked a spliff in the car on the way to the studio during filming, which often made them forget their lines.[256] Help! director Dick Lester said that he overheard “two beautiful women” trying to cajole McCartney into taking heroin, but he refused.[256]
McCartney called for the legalization of Cannabis in 1967.
McCartney called for the legalization of Cannabis in 1967.

McCartney’s attitude about cannabis was made public in the 1960s, when he added his name to an advertisement in The Times, on 24 July 1967, which asked for the legalisation of cannabis, the release of all prisoners imprisoned because of possession, and research into marijuana’s medical uses. The advertisement was sponsored by a group called Soma and was signed by 65 people, including The Beatles, Brian Epstein, Graham Greene, R.D. Laing, 15 doctors, and two MPs.[257]

McCartney was introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, and it was available during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.[258][259] McCartney admitted sniffing heroin with Fraser, but did not feel any effect, and never took it again.[260]

In 1967, on a sailing trip to Greece—with the idea of buying an island for the whole group—McCartney said everybody sat around and took LSD, although McCartney first took it with Tara Browne, in 1966.[261][262][263] He took his second “acid trip” with Lennon on 21 March 1967 after a studio session.[264] McCartney was the first British pop star openly to admit to using LSD, in an interview in the now-defunct “Queen” magazine.[265] His admission was followed by a TV interview in the UK on Independent Television News on 19 June 1967, when McCartney was asked about his admission of LSD use, he said:
“ I was asked a question by a newspaper, and the decision was whether to tell a lie or tell him the truth. I decided to tell him the truth … but I really didn’t want to say anything, you know, because if I had my way I wouldn’t have told anyone. I’m not trying to spread the word about this. But the man from the newspaper is the man from the mass medium. I’ll keep it a personal thing if he does too, you know … if he keeps it quiet. But he wanted to spread it so it’s his responsibility, you know, for spreading it, not mine. ”

In another quote (cited and endorsed by The Byrds’ David Crosby at the Monterey Pop Festival), McCartney said,
“ [LSD] opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world if the politicians would take LSD. There wouldn’t be any more war or poverty or famine. ”

In spite of his statements then, and his admission (in 2004) that he had used cocaine, McCartney was not arrested by Norman Pilcher’s Drug Squad, as had been Lennon, Harrison, Donovan, and several members of the Rolling Stones.[266] In 1972, however, police found cannabis plants growing on his Scottish farm.[267]

On 16 January 1980, Wings went to Tokyo for 11 concerts in Japan. As McCartney was going through customs, officials found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis in his luggage. He was arrested and taken to a Tokyo prison while the Japanese government decided what to do. McCartney had been previously denied a visa to Japan (in 1975) because he had been convicted twice in Europe for possession of cannabis.[266] Public figures called for McCartney to be tried by a jury for drug-smuggling. Had he been tried and convicted, he would have faced up to seven years in prison. The members of Wings cancelled the tour and left Japan. After ten days in jail, McCartney was released and deported. He was told that he would not be welcome in Japan again, although a decade later he played a concert in Tokyo. In 1984, Paul and Linda McCartney were both arrested for possession of cannabis.[268][269]

Meditation

On 24 August 1967, McCartney met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton, and later went to Bangor, in North Wales, to attend a weekend ‘initiation’ conference.[270] McCartney said that although he does not meditate daily, he still uses the mantra that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave him in Bangor.[271] The time McCartney later spent in India at the Maharishi’s ashram was highly productive, as practically all of the songs that would later be recorded for The White Album and Abbey Road were composed there by McCartney, Lennon, or both together.[272] Although McCartney was told that he was never to repeat the mantra to anyone else, he did tell Linda McCartney,[273] and said he meditated a lot while he was in jail in Japan.[271]

Activism
McCartney’s campaign against landmines
McCartney’s campaign against landmines

The McCartneys became outspoken vegetarians and animal-rights activists. They said that their vegetarianism was realised when they happened to see lambs in a field as they ate a meal of lamb.[274] McCartney has also credited the 1942 Disney film Bambi – in which the young deer’s mother is shot by a hunter – as the original inspiration for him to take an interest in animal rights.[275] In his first interview after Linda’s death, he promised to continue working for animal rights.[276][277]

In 1999, McCartney spent £3,000,000 to make sure Linda McCartney’s food range remains free of GM ingredients.[278] In 2002, McCartney gave his support to a campaign against a proposed ban on the sale of certain vitamins, herbs and mineral products in the European Union.[279] Following his marriage to Heather Mills, McCartney joined with her to campaign against landmines;[280][281] both McCartney and Mills are patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield.[282] In 2003, he played a personal concert for the wife of a wealthy banker and donated his one million dollars to the charity.[283] He also wore an anti-landmines t-shirt on the Back in the World tour.[282]

In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to bring international attention to the seal hunt (their final public appearance together). Their arrival sparked attention in Newfoundland and Labrador where the hunt is of economic significance.[284] The couple also debated with Newfoundland’s Premier Danny Williams on the CNN show Larry King Live. They further stated that the fishermen should quit hunting seals and begin a seal watching business.[285] McCartney has also criticised China’s fur trade,[286][287] and supports the Make Poverty History campaign.[288]

McCartney has been involved with a number of charity recordings and performances. In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the “US Campaign for Burma”, in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi,[289] and he had previously been involved in the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, and the recording of “Ferry Cross the Mersey” (released 8 May 1989) following the Hillsborough disaster.[290][291]

Football

The Beatles made few comments about the football clubs they supported, in case they alienated fans of the group,[292] although McCartney is a supporter of Everton Football Club[293] (his father and relatives used to take him to matches) but his allegiance later encompassed Liverpool F.C. (both clubs being from the same city; Liverpool).[294] Linda McCartney said: “We spent last night listening to Liverpool football team on the radio, wanting them to win so badly. Paul supports Liverpool. He was Everton for a while because of his family – but it’s all Liverpool now”.[295][296]

Both Lennon and McCartney watched the 1966 FA Cup Final between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday, and McCartney attended the 1968 FA Cup Final (18 May 1968) which was played between West Bromwich Albion and Everton.[297] After the final whistle, McCartney shared cigarettes and whisky with other fans.[296] Liverpool player, Albert Stubbins, was the only footballer shown on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover.[292] On 28 July 1968, The Beatles were photographed in a photographer’s studio at 192-212 Gray’s Inn Road, with McCartney wearing a Liverpool F.C. Rosette on two photos.[298]

McCartney tried to listen to the Liverpool v Manchester United 1977 FA Cup Final on a radio, while sailing in the Caribbean.[292] The video for McCartney’s Pipes of Peace (1983) recreated the football game played between German and British troops during WWI.[299][300] McCartney was seen at the 1986 FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Everton,[296] and in 1989, McCartney contributed to the “Ferry Cross the Mersey” charity single that was recorded to aid victims of the Hillsborough Disaster, which happened during a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.[301]

Business

Main articles: Apple Corps, Northern Songs, and MPL Communications

McCartney is today one of Britain’s wealthiest men, with an estimated fortune of £824 million,[302] although Justice Bennett, in his judgment on McCartney’s divorce case found no evidence that McCartney was worth more than £400 million.[303] In addition to his interest in Apple Corps, McCartney’s MPL Communications owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights.[304][305] McCartney earned £40 million in 2003, making him Britain’s highest media earner.[306] This rose to £48.5 million by 2005.[307] In the same year he joined the top American talent agency Grabow Associates, who arrange private performances for their richest clients.[308] Northern Songs was established in 1963, by Dick James, to publish the songs of Lennon/McCartney.[309] The Beatles’ partnership was replaced in 1968 by a jointly-held company, Apple Corps, which continues to control Apple’s commercial interests. Northern Songs was purchased by Associated TeleVision (ATV) in 1969, and was sold in 1985 to Michael Jackson. For many years McCartney was unhappy about Jackson’s purchase and handling of Northern Songs.[310]

MPL Communications is an umbrella company for McCartney’s business interests, which owns a wide range of copyrights,[311] as well as the publishing rights to musicals,[312] and controls 25 subsidiary companies.[313] In 2006, the Trademarks Registry reported that MPL had started a process to secure the protections associated with registering the name “Paul McCartney” as a trademark.[314] The 2005 films, Brokeback Mountain[315] and Good Night and Good Luck, feature MPL copyrights.[316]

Critique and achievements

McCartney is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history,[317][318] with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold discs.[319][320] McCartney has achieved twenty-nine number-one singles in the U.S., twenty of them with The Beatles, the rest with Wings and as a solo artist.[317] McCartney has been involved in more number-one singles in the United Kingdom than any other artist under a variety of credits, although Elvis Presley has achieved more as a solo artist. McCartney has achieved 24 number-ones in the U.K.: solo (1), Wings (1), with Stevie Wonder (1), Ferry Aid (1), Band Aid (1), Band Aid 20 (1) and The Beatles (17).[321] McCartney is the only artist to reach the U.K. number one as a soloist (“Pipes of Peace”), duo (“Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder), trio (“Mull of Kintyre”, Wings), quartet (“She Loves You”, The Beatles), quintet (“Get Back”, The Beatles with Billy Preston) and sextet (“Let It Be” with Ferry Aid). McCartney’s song “Yesterday” is the most covered song in history with more than 3,500 recorded versions[322] and has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American TV and radio, for which McCartney was given an award.[323] After its 1977 release the Wings single “Mull of Kintyre” became the highest-selling record in British chart history, and remained so until 1984.

On 2 July 2005, he was involved with the fastest-released single in history. His performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with U2 at Live 8 was released only 45 minutes after it was performed, before the end of the concert.[324] The single reached number six on the Billboard charts, just hours after the single’s release, and hit number one on numerous online download charts across the world.[325] McCartney played for the largest stadium audience in history when 184,000 people paid to see him perform at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on 21 April, 1990,[326] and he played his 3,000th concert in front of 60,000 fans in St Petersburg, Russia, on 20 June 2004.[327] Over his career, McCartney has played 2,523 gigs with The Beatles, 140 with Wings, and 325 as a solo artist.[328]

In the concert programme for his 1989 world tour, McCartney wrote that Lennon received all the credit for being the avant-garde Beatle,[161] and McCartney was known as ‘baby-faced’, which he disagreed with.[329] People also assumed that Lennon was the ‘hard-edged one’, and McCartney was the ‘soft-edged’ Beatle, although McCartney admitted to ‘bossing Lennon around.’[330] Linda McCartney said that McCartney had a ‘hard-edge’—and not just on the surface—which she knew about after all the years she had spent living with him.[331] McCartney seemed to confirm this edge when he commented that he sometimes meditates, which he said is better than “sleeping, eating, or shouting at someone”.[273] In June 1983, McCartney released “We All Stand Together” from the animated film Rupert And The Frog Song, which was commercially successful, but was widely ridiculed as being “one of the worst songs in recent years”.[332]

Paul is dead rumours

Main article: Paul is dead

“Paul is Dead” is an urban legend alleging that McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike. The rumour is the subject of several books, including American journalist Andru J. Reeve’s 1994 book Turn Me On, Dead Man (ISBN 1-4184-8294-3) and English author Benjamin Fitzpatrick’s 1997 book, ‘Rumours from John, George, Ringo and Me’.”Paul is dead” analyst Joel Glazier hypothesized in a 1978 treatise that Lennon’s love of wordplay and studio editing may have been responsible for clues in later Beatles albums.[333]

1960 – Steve Vai: Widdlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddly-SCREECH! Yes

Posted in 1960s, Albums/Singles that Rock, Anniversaries, tributes, & celebrations, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Birthdays, Blues, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Copyrights & Trademarks, General, Gold, Guitarists, Industry, Misc., Platinum, Producers, Record Labels, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety) | 2 Comments »

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1960 – Steve Vai: Widdlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddly-SCREECH! Yes, it’s happy birthday to Steve Vai, born today in Long Island, N.Y. this day in rock Guitar God History!

Steven “Steve” Siro Vai (born June 6, 1960 in Carle Place, New York) is an American instrumental rock guitarist, songwriter, vocalist and producer.

After starting his professional career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, Vai would also record and tour in Zappa’s backing band starting in 1980. The guitarist began a solo career starting in 1984 and has released 13 solo albums as of 2008. Apart from his work with Frank Zappa, Vai has also recorded and toured with numerous musical artists including Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake. Vai has been a regular touring member of the G3 Concert Tour which began in 1996. In 1999 Vai started his own record label Favored Nations with the intent to showcase, as Vai describes: “…artists that have attained the highest performance level on their chosen instruments.”.

Career

1970s and 1980s
In 1974, Vai took guitar lessons from guitarist Joe Satriani, and played in numerous local bands. He has acknowledged the influence of many guitarists including Jeff Beck and fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Vai then attended the Berklee College of Music.

Vai mailed Frank Zappa a transcription of Zappa’s “The Black Page”, an instrumental song written for drums, along with a tape with some of Vai’s guitar playing. Zappa was so impressed with the abilities of the young musician that he hired him in 1979 to do work transcribing several of his guitar solos, including many of those appearing on the Joe’s Garage album and the Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar series. These transcriptions were published in 1982 in The Frank Zappa Guitar Book.

Subsequent to being hired as a transcriber, Vai did overdubs on many of the guitar parts for Zappa’s album You Are What You Is. Thereafter he became a full-fledged band member, going on his first tour with Zappa in the Autumn of 1980. One of those early shows with Vai on guitar, recorded in Buffalo was released in 2007. While touring with Zappa’s band, Vai would sometimes ask audience members to bring musical scores and see if he could sight-read them on the spot. Zappa referred to Vai as his “little Italian virtuoso” and was listed in liner notes as “stunt guitar” or “impossible guitar parts”. He would later be a featured artist on the 1993 recording, Zappa’s Universe. In 2006 he returned to playing Zappa music as a special guest on Dweezil Zappa’s ‘Zappa Plays Zappa’ tour.

After leaving Zappa in 1982 he moved to California where he recorded his first album Flex-Able and performed in a couple of bands. In 1985 he replaced Yngwie Malmsteen as lead guitarist in Graham Bonnet’s Alcatrazz with whom he recorded the album Disturbing the Peace. Later in 1985 he joined former Van Halen front man David Lee Roth’s group to record the albums Eat ‘Em and Smile and Skyscraper. This significantly increased Vai’s visibility to general rock audiences, since Roth was in a highly public battle with the Van Halen members and Vai was favorably compared by many commentators to Eddie Van Halen.

In 1986 Vai also surprised everyone by playing with ex-Sex Pistols John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd on their album Album (also known as Compact Disc or Cassette). Then in 1989 Vai stepped into guitarist Adrian Vandenberg’s shoes to record with British rock-group Whitesnake after Vandenberg injured his wrist shortly before recording was due to begin for the album Slip of the Tongue. Vai also played on the Alice Cooper album Hey Stoopid along with Joe Satriani on the song Feed my Frankenstein.

1990s and 2000s
Vai continues to tour regularly, both with his own group and with his one-time teacher and fellow guitar instrumentalist friend Joe Satriani on the G3 series of tours. Former David Lee Roth and Mr. Big bassist Billy Sheehan also joined him for a world tour. In 1990 Vai released his critically acclaimed solo album Passion and Warfare. The song For the Love of God was voted #29 in a readers’ poll of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time for the magazine Guitar World.

In 1994 Vai began writing and recording with Ozzy Osbourne. Only one track from these sessions—”My Little Man”—was released on the Ozzmosis album. Despite Vai penning the track he does not appear on the album. His guitar parts were replaced by Zakk Wylde. Vai’s band members throughout the 1990s included drummer Mike Mangini, guitarist Mike Keneally and bassist Philip Bynoe. In 1994 Vai received a Grammy Award for his performance on the Frank Zappa song Sofa from the album Zappa’s Universe.

Vai playing a twin-necked IbanezIn July 2002, Steve Vai performed with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan, in the world premiere of composer Ichiro Nodaira’s Fire Strings, a concerto for electric guitar and 100-piece orchestra. In 2004, a number of his compositions for orchestra, as well as orchestra arrangements of previously recorded pieces, were performed in The Netherlands by the Metropole Orchestra in a concert series entitled The Aching Hunger. In 2003, drummer Jeremy Colson joined Vai’s group replacing previous drummer Virgil Donati. Vai’s latest album, Sound Theories, was released in 2007.

Steve Vai released a DVD of his performance at The Astoria in London in December 2001, featuring the lineup of bassist Billy Sheehan, guitarist/pianist Tony MacAlpine, guitarist Dave Weiner and drummer Virgil Donati.

In 2004, Steve Vai was featured on Xbox’s Halo 2 Volume 1 soundtrack, performing a heavy rock-guitar rendition of the Halo theme, known as Halo Theme (Mjolnir Mix). He also performed on the track Never Surrender. He later featured in the second volume of the soundtrack, where he performed on the track Reclaimer.

In February 2005, Vai premiered a dual-guitar (electric and classical) piece that he wrote called The Blossom Suite with classical guitarist Sharon Isbin at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris. In 2006, Vai played as a “special guest” guitarist alongside additional guest Zappa band members, drummer Terry Bozzio and saxophonist-singer Napoleon Murphy Brock in the Zappa Plays Zappa tour led by Frank’s son Dweezil Zappa in Europe and the U.S. in the Spring as well as a short U.S. tour in October.

On September 21 2006, Vai made a special appearance at the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. He played two songs with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. One song being the Halo Theme, the second was for the world premier trailer for Halo 3.

Steve Vai made an appearance at the London Guitar Show 2007 on the 28th April 2007 at the ExCeL Center by doing a masterclass. In late April 2007, Vai confirmed the release of his next record, called Sound Theories, on June 26. The release will be a 2-CD set consisting mostly of previously released material that Vai rearranged and played in front of a full orchestra. Vai says that the project was a great joy because he considers himself to be a composer more than a guitarist, and he is happy to see music he has composed played by an orchestra that can play it well. A DVD will eventually accompany the record but will be released in August. He makes a guest appearance on the most recent Dream Theater album, Systematic Chaos, on the song “Repentance”. However, this appearance is vocal rather than instrumental, as Vai is one of many musical guests recorded apologizing to important people in their lives for wrongdoings committed in their pasts.

Vai is set to release a DVD of his show dated 19 September 2007 at the Minneapolis State Theater from his 2007 Tour.

Movies
Steve Vai’s music has been featured in a number of feature films, including Dudes and Ghosts of Mars. He appeared onscreen in the 1986 Ralph Macchio movie Crossroads, playing the demonically-inspired Jack Butler. At the film’s climax, Vai engages in a guitar duel with Macchio, whose guitar parts were dubbed by Vai and also Ry Cooder, who played the initial slide work in the duel and Macchio’s earlier performances in the film. The fast-paced neo-classical track entitled Eugene’s Trick Bag with which Macchio wins the competition was also composed by Vai. The body of the piece was heavily based on Paganini’s Caprice #5. He later borrowed the opening riff from the track Head Cuttin’ Duel for a song called Bad Horsie from his 1995 EP Alien Love Secrets. Later the Crossroads duel reappeared on the 2002 album The Elusive Light and Sound, volume 1.

In 1991′s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey the introductory riff to KISS’ God Gave Rock ‘N Roll To You II, as performed by the Wyld Stallyns in the Battle of the Bands was performed by Vai. He also composed and performed the soundtrack to PCU (1994), and made contributions in 2001 to the score for John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, performing on the tracks Ghosts of Mars and Ghost Poppin. His track Drive the Hell Out Of Here can be heard during 1992′s Encino Man in the scene where Brendan Fraser is taking a driving lesson.

Musical style
This section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (March 2008)

Vai performing in 2001Vai is widely recognized as a technically highly advanced rock guitarist and has been described as a virtuoso in the world of guitar music . He has mastered many performance techniques on the instrument including legato, pinch harmonics and volume swells, and is noted for his whammy bar effects and sporadic outbursts on the instrument often contrasting sweep-picking or finger tapping with slower sections to his compositions. His 1990 album Passion and Warfare and the ballad For the Love of God in particular received a significant amount of press and are often cited by critics and fans alike as amongst his best work to date .

Vai’s playing style has been characterized as quirky and angular, owing to his technical facility with the instrument and deep knowledge of music theory. Vai was the first to use the 7-string guitar in a rock context – having designed the 7-string electric guitar, and has used double and triple neck guitars on many occasions.

Equipment

Vai is an accomplished studio producer (he owns two: “The Mothership” and “The Harmony Hut” ) and his own recordings combine his signature guitar prowess with novel compositions and considerable use of studio and recording effects, such as the Eventide H3000 ultra harmonizer and Digidesign’s Pro Tools HD recording system and plug-in effects architecture.

Vai also helped design his signature Ibanez JEM series of guitars. They feature a hand grip (fondly referred to as a “monkey grip”) cut into the top of the body of the guitar, a humbucker-single coil-humbucker DiMarzio pickup configuration with several different types of pickup including Evolution, Breed and EVO 2. He also uses Floyd Rose locking tremolo system, as well as an elaborate and extensive “Vine of Life” inlay down the neck. Vai also equips many of his guitars with an Ibanez Backstop, a tremolo stabilizer that has been discontinued. Vai also has a 7-string model designed by him named Ibanez Universe. The Universe later influenced the 7-string guitars used by Korn and other bands to create nu metal sounds in the late 1990s. He also has a signature Ibanez acoustic, the Euphoria. Before he used Ibanez, he briefly endorsed Jackson guitars, but this relationship would only last for two years.

Steve Vai has also worked with Carvin Guitars and Pro Audio to develop the Carvin Legacy line of guitar amplifiers. Vai wanted to create an amp that was unique and equal in sound, versatility, and affordability to any guitar amp he had previously used. Over his long musical career, Steve Vai has used and designed an array of guitars. He even had his DNA put into the swirl paint job on one of his signature JEM guitars, the JEM2KDNA, in the form of his blood. Only 300 of these were ever made. Nowadays he mainly uses his white “Evo”, a JEM7V, and his “Flo”, which is a customized Floral Jem 777FP painted white. They are both inscribed with their names in two places, mainly in order to allow him to distinguish between the guitars he uses onstage. “Flo” is equipped with a Fernandes sustainer system.

He also has a guitar named “Mojo” in which the dot inlays are blue LED lights. Additionally, he has a custom-made triple-neck guitar that has the same basic features as his JEM7V guitars. The top neck is a 12-string guitar, the middle is a 6-string, and the bottom is a 6-string fretless guitar with a Fernandes Sustainer pickup. This guitar was featured on the G3 2003 tour on the piece I Know You’re Here. Vai’s effects pedals include a modified Boss DS-1, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Morley Bad Horsie, TC Electronics G-System, Morley Little Alligator Volume pedal, Digitech Whammy, and an MXR Phase 90. His flight cases are labeled “Mr. Vai”, or latterly, “Dr. Vai”. He used a number of rack effects units controlled via MIDI, but used a floor-based TC electronics G system instead for the Zappa Plays Zappa tour. Vai also has a signature pedal in the works with Ibanez called the “Jemini” pedal (see external links for a picture). This pedal is expected to be released at Winter NAMM 2008.

Philanthropy
In 2005, Vai signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and free lessons to children in public schools throughout the U.S.A. He sits on its board of directors as an honorary member.

Favored Nations
Vai owns Favored Nations, a recording and publishing company that specializes in internationally procuring and maintaining recording artists. Favored Nations is separated into three sections, ‘Favored Nations’, ‘Favored Nations Acoustic’ and ‘Favored Nations Cool (Jazz style)’

Artists who the Favored Nations label works or has worked with include Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather, Neal Schon, Yngwie Malmsteen, Mattias IA Eklundh, Tommy Emmanuel, Vernon Reid, The Yardbirds, Larry Coryell, Mimi Fox, Eric Sardinas, Dweezil Zappa, Dave Weiner and Johnny A.

Personal life
Vai is married to Pia Maiocco, former bass player of Vixen, who can be seen in Hardbodies. Vai and Maiocco have two children, Julian Angel and Fire. In his spare time Vai enjoys keeping bees, which regularly produce a crop of honey that Vai sells for his Make a Noise Foundation.

Band History – not including guest appearances
Frank Zappa (1980-1982)
Steve Vai (1982-1984)
Alcatrazz (1985)
David Lee Roth (1985-1986)
Public Image Ltd. (1985-1986)
Frank Zappa (1986)
David Lee Roth (1987-1988)
Whitesnake (1988-1990)
Solo (1989-present)
Ozzy Osbourne (1995)

Current band members
Steve Vai – vocals, lead guitar
Dave Weiner – rhythm guitar
Ann Marie Calhoun – Fiddle, keyboard
Brian Beller – bass guitar
Jeremy Colson – drums, percussion
Alex Depue- Violin

Discography

Solo albums
Flex-Able (1984)
Flex-Able Leftovers (1984)
Passion and Warfare (1990)
Sex & Religion (1993)
Alien Love Secrets (1995)
Fire Garden (1996)
The Ultra Zone (1999)
The 7th Song (2000)
Alive in an Ultra World (2001)
The Elusive Light and Sound, volume 1 (2002)
The Infinite Steve Vai: An Anthology (2003)
Real Illusions: Reflections (2005)
Sound Theories (2007)

Appearances on Zappa albums
Year Album Credit
1981 Tinseltown Rebellion Rhythm guitar, vocals
1981 Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar Rhythm guitar
1981 You Are What You Is Strat abuse
1982 Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch Guitar parts
1983 The Man from Utopia Guitar parts
1984 Them or Us Guitar
1984 Thing-Fish Guitar, vocals
1985 Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention Guitar
1987 Jazz from Hell Guitar
1988 Guitar Stunt guitar
1988 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore Sampler Stunt guitar
1988 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1 Stunt guitar
1989 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3 Stunt guitar
1991 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 Stunt guitar, vocals
1991 Beat the Boots I: As An Am Stunt guitar
1992 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5 Stunt guitar
1992 You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 6 Stunt guitar
1995 Strictly Commercial Guitar
1997 Have I Offended Someone? Guitar
1998 Cheap Thrills Guitar
1999 Son of Cheep Thrills Guitar, vocals

With other artists
Year Artist Album
1983 Lisa Popeil Lisa Popeil
1985 Heresy At The Door
1985 Alcatrazz Disturbing the Peace
1985 Public Image Ltd. Album
1986 Bob Harris The Great Nostalgia
1986 Shankar & Caroline The Epidemics
1986 David Lee Roth Eat ‘Em and Smile / Sonrisa Salvaje
1986 Randy Coven Funk Me Tender
1986 Western Vacation Western Vacation
1988 David Lee Roth Skyscraper
1989 Whitesnake Slip of the Tongue
1990 Rebecca The Best of Dreams
1991 Alice Cooper Hey Stoopid
1994 Whitesnake Whitesnake’s Greatest Hits
1995 Ozzy Osbourne Ozzmosis (cowriter on one song)
1996 Wild Style Cryin’
1997 Munetaka Higuchi with Dream Castle Free World
1997 Joe Satriani / Eric Johnson / Steve Vai G3: Live in Concert
1997 David Lee Roth The Best
1998 Gregg Bissonette Gregg Bissonette
1998 Al Di Meola The Infinite Desire
1999 Joe Jackson Symphony No. 1
2000 Whitesnake The Back to Black Collection
2000 Gregg Bissonette Submarine
2000 Thana Harris Thanatopsis
2000 Andrew Dice Clay Face Down, Ass Up
2001 Robin DiMaggio Blue Planet
2001 Billy Sheehan Compression
2002 Tak Matsumoto Hana
2003 Surinder Sandhu Saurang Orchestra
2002 Girls Together Outrageously (G.T.O) Solo in their cover version of “I’ll Be Around”
2003 Eric Sardinas Black Pearls
2003 Steve Lukather & Friends SantaMental
2003 Hughes Turner Project HTP 2
2003 Shankar & Gingger One in a Million
2003 Yardbirds Birdland
2004 Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen G3: Live – Rockin’ In The Free World
2004 Motörhead Inferno
2004 Bob Carpenter The Sun, The Moon, The Stars
2004 Mike Keneally Vai: Piano Reductions, Vol. 1
2005 John 5 Songs for Sanity
2005 Dave Weiner Live at Astoria DVD
2005 Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci G3: Live in Tokyo
2006 The Devin Townsend Band Synchestra
2006 Marty Friedman Loudspeaker
2006 Meat Loaf Bat out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
2007 Aki Rahimovski U vremenu izgubljenih
2007 Dream Theater (spoken voice only) Systematic Chaos
2007 Eros Ramazzotti e²

Soundtracks
Year Soundtrack Type
1986 Crossroads Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1987 Dudes Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1991 Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1992 Encino Man Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1994 PCU Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1997 Formula 1 Original Video Game Soundtrack
2001 Ghosts of Mars Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
2004 Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 1 Original Video Game Soundtrack
2006 Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 Original Video Game Soundtrack

Compilations
Year Artists Compilation
1989 Various Guitar’s Practicing Musicians
1993 Various Zappa’s Universe
1995 Various In From The Storm
1996 Various Songs of West Side Story
1997 Various A Guitar Christmas
1997 Various Angelica
1999 Various Radio Disney Kid Jams
2001 Various Roland Guitar Masters
2002 Various Guitars For Freedom
2002 Various Warmth In The Wilderness Vol. II – A Tribute to Jason Becker
2004 Various Halo 2 Original Soundtrack
2006 Various Monsters of Rock

Awards and Nominations

Grammy Winner
1994 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “Sofa” from Zappa’s Universe
2001 Best Pop Instrumental No Substitutions [Steve Vai Producer/Engineer]

Grammy Nomination
1990 Best Rock Instrumental Album Passion & Warfare
1995 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “Tender Surrender” – from Alien Love Secrets
1997 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “For the Love of God” – from G3 Live in Concert
1999 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “Windows to the Soul” – from The Ultra Zone
2001 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “Whispering a Prayer” – from Alive in an Ultra World
2006 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “Lotus Feet” — lost to Les Paul & Friends’s “69 Freedom Special”
2008 Best Rock Instrumental Performance “The Attitude Song” — lost to Bruce Springsteen’s “Once Upon a Time in the West”

Guitar Player Magazine
1995 Gallery of Greats

1995 Best Rock Guitarist (Tie with Jimmy Page)

1995 Best Overall Guitarist 3rd Place

1995 Best Experimental Guitarist (Tie with Buckethead)

1995 Best Metal Recording 3rd Place

1995 Best Overall Guitar Recording 2nd Place

1995 Best Metal Guitarist 3rd Place

1990 Best Rock Guitarist

1990 Best Overall Guitarist

1990 Best Guitar Album

1990 Best Metal Guitarist

1989 Best Rock Guitarist

1988 Best Rock Guitarist

1987 Best Rock Guitarist

1987 Best Overall Guitarist

1986 Best Rock Guitarist

Guitar World
1990 Most Valued Player (tie with Stevie Ray Vaughan)

1990 Best Album

1990 Best Rock Guitarist

1990 Best Guitar Solo (For the Love of God)

1989 Best Rock Guitarist

International Music Awared Nomination
1990 Best Guitarist

Select Magazine (UK)
1990 Best Album (Passion and Warfare)

1990 Best Musician

1990 Sexiest Male

Guitar for the Practicing Musician
1993 Editor’s Choice Award

1990 Reader’s Choice – Guitar Album of the Year

1990 Best Instrumental Guitarist of the Year

1988 Rock Guitarist of the Year

1987 Hall of Fame

1986 Guitar in the 90’s Award

Kerrang (UK)
1993 Best Hard Rock Performance

1990 Guitarist of the Year

1989 Best Rock Guitarist

Young Guitar (Japan)
1997 Best Rock Guitarist

1991 Best Rock Guitarist

Rock Brigade
1996 Best Guitarist

1997 Best Guitarist

RAW
990 Best Selling Album (No. 10)

1990 Best Selling LP Sleeve (No. 1)

1990 Best Selling Promo Video (No. 5, I Would Love To)

1990 Best Selling Promo Video (No. 7, The Audience is Listening)

1990 Best Sex Object (No. 6)

1990 Best RAW Cover (No. 3)

Player
1995 Best Hard Rock Guitarist – 2nd Place

Making Music
1990 Best Album

1990 Best Guitarist

1990 Best Musician

Metal Hammer
1990 Best Guitarist (Reader’s Poll)

California Music Awards
2001 Outstanding Guitarist (nominee)

From Wikipedia

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Nov 03

2002 – Lonnie Donegan, known as the “king of skiff…

Posted in 2000s, Albums/Singles that Rock, Alternative or something else, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Deaths, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

2002 – Lonnie Donegan, known as the “king of skiffle’ dies in his sleep in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. He is 71.

Lonnie Donegan MBE (29 April 1931 – 3 November 2002) was a skiffle musician, possibly the most famous of them all, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is also known as the King of Skiffle and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s.

Early life and trad jazz

He was born Anthony James Donegan in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra. His father was unemployed in the 1930s, and in 1933 the family moved to East London. In the early 1940s he mostly listened to Swing jazz and vocal acts, and became interested in the guitar. Country & western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest and he bought his first guitar at the age of fourteen, around 1945. From listening to BBC radio broadcasts in the following years he began learning songs such as “Frankie and Johnny”, “Puttin’ On the Style”, and “The House of the Rising Sun”. By the end of the 1940s he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.

The first band he played in was the trad jazz band led by Chris Barber, who approached him on a train asking him if he wanted to audition for his band. Barber had heard that Donegan was a good banjo player; in fact, Donegan had never played the banjo at this point, but he bought one and tried to bluff his way through the audition. More on personality than playing, he was brought into Barber’s band. His stint with the band was interrupted when he was called up for National Service in 1949, but his military service in Vienna gave him contact with American troops, and access to records as well as the opportunity to listen to the American Forces Network radio station.

In 1952 he formed his first group, the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which found some work around London. On one occasion they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson at the Royal Festival Hall. Donegan was a big fan of Johnson, and took his first name as a tribute to him. The story goes that the host at the concert got the musicians’ names confused, calling them “Tony Johnson” and “Lonnie Donegan”, and Donegan was happy to keep the name.

In 1953 cornetist Ken Colyer, enjoying hero status for having spent time in a New Orleans jail (due to a visa problem), returned to England and, when invited to play with Chris Barber’s band, became the moving figure in it, more or less taking it over and running it as if it were his own creation. It actually was very much a cooperative. With the new name, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, the group, with Donegan, made its initial public appearance on 11 April 1953 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The following day, Chris Albertson recorded the group (as well as a Monty Sunshine Trio, with Donegan and Barber) for Storyville Records. These were Lonnie Donegan’s first commercially released recordings.

Skiffle

Donegan was the first person to become famous playing skiffle in the United Kingdom, and went on to have an influential hit in Britain and America with “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour”, released in 1959 and 1961 respectively.

While playing in Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played both guitar and banjo as part of their Dixieland jazz, and also began playing with two other band members during the intervals to provide what was called on their posters a “skiffle” break, a name suggested by Ken Colyer’s brother Bill after recalling the Dan Burley Skiffle Group of the 1930s. In 1954 Colyer left, and the band became Chris Barber’s Jazz Band.

With a washboard, a tea-chest bass and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan had a lot of fun entertaining the audiences with folk songs and blues by artists such as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, casually giving the impression that anyone could do it. This proved so popular that in July 1954 he recorded a fast-tempoed version of Leadbelly’s “Rock Island Line”, featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with “John Henry” on the B-side. It was an enormous hit in 1956 (which also later inspired the creation of a full LP album, “An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs”, released in America on the Mercury label in the early 60s) but ironically, because it was a band recording, Lonnie made no money from it beyond his original session fee. It was the first debut record to go gold in Britain, and reached the top ten in the United States, and Donegan has suggested that it might have influenced the beginnings of white rock and roll, and certainly was an influence of a hybrid version of American country-rock later called Rockabilly.

The skiffle style encouraged amateurs to get started, and one of the many skiffle groups that followed was The Quarrymen formed in March 1957 by John Lennon. Donegan’s “Putting On The Style” / “Gamblin’ Man” single was number one on the British charts in July 1957, when Lennon first met Paul McCartney.

After splitting from Barber, Donegan went on to make a series of popular records as “Lonnie Donegan’s Skiffle Group”, with successes including “Cumberland Gap” and, particularly “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour”, his only hit song in America, released on Dot Records. He turned to a music hall style with “My Old Man’s a Dustman” which was not well received by skiffle fans, or in an attempted but ultimately unsuccessful American release by Atlantic Records in 1960, but reached number one in the UK singles charts. Donegan’s group had a flexible line-up, but was generally formed by Denny Wright or Les Bennetts (of Les Hobeaux and Chas McDevvit’s skiffle groups) playing lead guitar and singing harmony vocals, Pete Huggett on upright bass, Nick Nichols – later Pete Appleby – on drums or percussion and Lonnie playing acoustic guitar or banjo and singing the lead. Despite appearances that the style was simple and somewhat ‘unpolished’, all were accomplished and highly talented musicians.

Later career

Donegan was unfashionable and generally ignored through the late 1960s and 1970s (although he wrote “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” for Tom Jones in 1969), and he began to play on the American cabaret circuit. There was a reunion concert with the original Chris Barber band in Croydon in June 1975 – notable for a bomb scare, meaning that the recording had to be finished in the studio, though patrons were treated to an impromptu concert in the car park.

He suffered his first heart attack in 1976 while in the United States. Donegan underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to the public’s attention in 1978, when he made a record of his early songs with such figures as Ringo Starr, Elton John and Brian May called Putting on the Style. In 1992 Donegan underwent further bypass surgery following another heart attack.

Then in 1994, the Chris Barber band celebrated 40 years, with a long tour with both bands, rather than just a concert. Pat Halcox was still on trumpet (a position he retains as of 2006). The reunion concert and the tour, were recorded on CD, and also on video (and later released on DVD, though the quality isn’t up to digital standard). As is Chris Barber’s normal style, he generously featured Lonnie in the concerts and the whole original band were much more relaxed than in 1954, making these real collectors’ items as the stereo was real and not electronically created.

He experienced another late renaissance when in 2000 he appeared on Van Morrison’s album The Skiffle Sessions – Live In Belfast 1998, a critically acclaimed album featuring Donegan sharing vocals with Van Morrison and also featuring Chris Barber, with a guest appearance by Dr John. He also played at the Glastonbury Festival, and was awarded the MBE in 2000.

His last CD was “This Y’ere the Story”, which tells his story – complete with the inaccuracies as to his introduction to the banjo and the Barber band as related above…

Donegan’s influence on the generation of musicians that followed him is unquestioned. He inspired both John Lennon and Pete Townshend to learn to play the guitar, and was responsible for hundreds of other skiffle groups being formed. One of them, The Quarrymen, later evolved into The Beatles.

Personal life

Lonnie married three times. He had two daughters by his first wife, Maureen Tyler (divorced 1962), a son and a daughter by his second wife, Jill Westlake (divorced 1971), and three sons by his third wife, Sharon, whom he married in 1977.

Death

Lonnie died in 2002 aged 71, after suffering a heart attack in Peterborough mid-way through a UK tour and shortly before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison. He had suffered from cardiac problems since the 1970s and had several heart attacks in his last years.

Legacy

Musician Mark Knopfler released a tribute song to Lonnie Donegan called “Donegan’s Gone” on his 2004 album Shangri-La and said that he was one of his greatest musical influences. Donegan’s music formed the basis for a musical starring his two sons. Lonnie D – The Musical took its name from the Chas & Dave tribute song which starts the show. Subsequently, Peter Donegan formed a new band that performs his father’s material. Lonnies eldest son Anthony also formed his own band under the name Lonnie Donegan Jnr

Quotations

* “In England, we were separated from our folk music tradition centuries ago and were imbued with the idea that music was for the upper classes. You had to be very clever to play music. When I came along with the old three chords, people began to think that if I could do it, so could they. It was the reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did that.” — Interview, 2002.
* “He was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts, and we studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man.” — Paul McCartney
* “He really was at the very cornerstone of English blues and rock.” — Brian May.

Discography

* Rock Island Line/ John Henry (1955)
* Diggin’ My Potatoes/ Bury My Body (1956)
* On A Christmas Day/ Take My Hand Precious Lord (1956)
* Lonnie Donegan Showcase (December 1956)
* Jack O’Diamonds/ Ham ‘N’ Eggs (1957)
* Lonnie (November 1957)
* The Grand Coulee Dam/ Nobody Loves Like An Irishman (1958)
* Midnight Special/ When The Sun Goes Down (1958)
* Sally Don’t You Grieve/ Betty Betty Betty (1958)
* Lonesome Traveller/ Times Are Getting Hard Boys (1958)
* Lonnie’s Skiffle Party Pt.1/ Pt.2 (1958)
* Tom Dooley/ Rock O’ My Soul (1958)
* Tops with Lonnie (September 1958)
* Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour/ Aunt Rhody (1959)
* Fort Worth Jail/ Whoa Buck (1959)
* Fort Bewildered/ Kevin Barry / It Is No Secret / My Lagan Love Buck (1959)
* Battle Of New Orleans/ Darling Corey (1959)
* Sal’s Got A Sugar Lip/ Chesapeake Bay (1959)
* San Miguel/ Talking Guitar Blues (1959)
* Lonnie Rides Again (May 1959)
* My Old Man’s A Dustman/ The Golden Vanity (1960)
* I Wanna Go Home (Wreck Of the John B.)/ Jimmy Brown The Newsboy (1960)
* Lorelei/ In All My Wildest Dreams (1960)
* Lively/ Black Cat (Cross My Path Today) (1960)
* Virgin Mary/ Beyond The Sunset (1960)
* (Bury Me) Beneath The Willow/ Leave My Woman Alone (1961)
* Have A Drink On Me/ Seven Daffodils (1961)
* Michael Row the Boat/ Lumbered (1961)
* The Comancheros/ Ramblin’ Round (1961)
* Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It’s Flavor (On The Bedpost Over Night) (1961)
* More! Tops with Lonnie (April 1961)
* The Party’s Over/ Over the Rainbow (1962)
* I’ll Never Fall In Love Again/ Keep On The Sunny Side (1962)
* Pick A Bale Of Cotton/ Steal Away (1962)
* The Market Song/ Tit-Bits (1962)
* Sing Hallelujah (December 1962)
* Losing My Hair/ Trumpet Sounds (1963)
* It Was A Very Good Year/ Rise Up (1963)
* Lemon Tree/ I’ve Gotta Girl So Far (1963)
* 500 Miles Away From Home/ This Train (1963)
* Beans In My Ears/ It’s A Long Road To Travel (1964)
* Fisherman’s Luck/ There’s A Big Wheel (1964)
* Get Out Of My Life/ Won’t You Tell Me (1965)
* Louisiana Man/ Bound For Zion (1965)
* The Lonnie Donegan Folk Album (August 1965)
* World Cup Willie/ Where In This World Are We Going (1966)
* I Wanna Go Home/ Black Cat (Cross My Path Today) (1966)
* Aunt Maggie’s Remedy/ (Ah) My Sweet Marie (1967)
* Toys/ Relax Your Mind (1968)
* My Lovely Juanita/ Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1969)
* Lonniepops–Lonnie Donegan Today (1970)
* Speak To The Sky / Get Out Of My Life (1972)
* Jump Down Turn Around (Pick a Bale of Cotton) / Lost John Blues (1973 – Australia only)
* Lonnie Donegan Meets Leinemann (1974)
* Country Roads (1976)
* Puttin’ On The Style (February 1978)
* Sundown (May 1979)
* Muleskinner Blues (January 1999)
* The song Lost John was used to open the John Peel tribute album
* This Y’ere The Story (2000?)
* The Last Tour (2006)

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Jun 21

2001 – Bluesman John Lee Hooker, believed to be 83…

Posted in 2000s, Albums/Singles that Rock, Anniversaries, tributes, & celebrations, Billboard charts, Blues, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Deaths, General, Gold, Guitarists, Industry, lyrics, Misc., Other Awards/Honors, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers, TV, Movies, Radio, Internet, & itunes | No Comments »

2001 – Bluesman John Lee Hooker, believed to be 83, dies of natural causes at his home in Los Altos, Calif. The singer/guitarist began his career in 1949, when his Modern Records single “Boogie Chillen” became a No. 1 R&B hit.

Lyrics:

Boom boom boom boom
I’m gonna shoot you right down,
right offa your feet
Take you home with me,
put you in my house
Boom boom boom boom
A-haw haw haw haw
Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm

I love to see you strut,
up and down the floor
When you talking to me,
that baby talk
I like it like that
Whoa, yeah!
Talk that talk, walk that walk

When she walk that walk,
and talk that talk,
and whisper in my ear,
tell me that you love me
I love that talk
When you talk like that,
you knocks me out,
right off of my feet
Hoo hoo hoo
Talk that talk, and walk that walk

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an influential American post-war blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter born in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi. From a musical family, he was a cousin of Earl Hooker. John was also influenced by his stepfather, a local blues guitarist, who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. John developed a half-spoken style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was rhythmically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include “Boogie Chillen” (1948) and “Boom Boom” (1962).

Biography

Early life

Hooker was born on August 22, 1917 in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871–1923), a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (1875–?). Hooker and his siblings were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs, with his earliest musical exposure being the spirituals sung in church. In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided John’s first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style). The year after that (1923), John’s natural father died; and at age 15, John ran away from home, never to see his mother and stepfather again.

Throughout the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he worked on Beale Street and occasionally performed at house parties. He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, drifting until he found himself in Detroit in 1948 working at Ford Motor Company. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit’s east side. In a city noted for its piano players, guitar players were scarce. Performing in Detroit clubs, his popularity grew quickly, and seeking a louder instrument than his crude acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.

Career

Hooker’s recording career began in 1948 when his agent placed a demo disc, made by Hooker, with the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern Records label. The company initially released an up-tempo number, “Boogie Chillen”, which became Hooker’s first hit single. Though they were not songwriters, the Biharis often purchased or claimed co-authorship of songs that appeared on their labels, thus securing songwriting royalties for themselves, in addition to their streams of income.

Sometimes these songs were older tunes renamed (B.B.King’s “Rock Me Baby”), anonymous jams (“B.B.’s Boogie”) or songs by employees (bandleader Vince Weaver). The Biharis used a number of pseudonyms for songwriting credits: Jules was credited as Jules Taub; Joe as Joe Josea; and Sam as Sam Ling. One song by John Lee Hooker, “Down Child” is solely credited to “Taub”, with Hooker receiving no credit for the song whatsoever. Another, “Turn Over a New Leaf” is credited to Hooker and “Ling”.

Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as “if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town”), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch. Recording studios in the 1950s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Due to his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as “John Lee Booker”, “Johnny Hooker”, or “John Cooker.”

His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman. John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians who were not accustomed to Hooker’s musical vagaries: As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden pallet. For much of this time period he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland, who is still performing as of 2008. Later sessions for the VeeJay label in Chicago used studio musicians on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies very well. His biggest UK hit, “Boom Boom”, (originally released on VeeJay) had a horn section to boot!

He appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. Due to Hooker’s improvisatory style, his performance was filmed and sound-recorded live at the scene at Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, in contrast to the usual “playback” technique used in most film musicals. Hooker was also a direct influence in the look of John Belushi’s character Jake Blues, borrowing his trademark sunglasses and soul patch.

In 1989, he joined with a number of musicians, including Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt to record The Healer, for which he and Carlos Santana won a Grammy Award. Hooker recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including “Never Get Out of These Blues Alive”, “The Healing Game” and “I Cover the Waterfront”. He also appeared on stage with Van Morrison several times, some of which was released on the live album A Night in San Francisco. The same year he appeared as the title character on Pete Townshend’s The Iron Man: A Musical.

Hooker recorded over 100 albums. He lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where, in 1997, he opened a nightclub called “John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room”, after one of his hits.

He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83. The last song Hooker recorded before his death, is “Ali D’Oro”, a collaboration with the Italian soul singer Zucchero, in which Hooker sang the chorus “I lay down with an angel”. He was survived by eight children, nineteen grandchildren, numerous great-grandchildren and a nephew.

Among his many awards, Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, “Boogie Chillen” and “Boom Boom” were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. “Boogie Chillen” was included as one of the Songs of the Century. He was also inducted in 1980 into the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2000, Hooker was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Music

Hooker’s guitar playing is closely aligned with piano Boogie Woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are “Boogie Chillen”, about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, “Baby Please Don’t Go”, a blues standard first recorded by Big Joe Williams, and “Tupelo Blues”, a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi in April 1936.

He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing.

His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers’. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound.

Though Hooker lived in Detroit during most of his career, he is not associated with the Chicago-style blues prevalent in large northern cities, as much as he is with the southern rural blues styles, known as delta blues, country blues, folk blues, or “front porch blues”. His use of an electric guitar tied together the Delta blues with the emerging post-war electric blues.

His songs have been covered by The White Stripes, MC5, The Doors, George Thorogood, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, The Yardbirds, The Animals, R. L. Burnside, the J. Geils Band and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Awards and Recognition

* A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
* Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980
* Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991

Grammy Awards:

* Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1990 for “I’m in the Mood” (with Bonnie Raitt)
* Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1998 for Don’t Look Back
* Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, 1998, “Don’t Look Back” (with Van Morrison)
* Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000

* Two of his songs, “Boogie Chillen” and “Boom Boom” were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. “Boogie Chillen” was included as one of the Songs of the Century.

Quotes

* “It don’t take me no three days to do no album.” (during the recording of the double album Hooker ‘N’ Heat with Canned Heat.)

* “I don’t play a lot of fancy guitar. I don’t want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.” (when describing his own music in an article from The Daily News, Atlanta, Ga. 1992)

* “Women are like wet bars of soap. Hold on to em too hard and they pop outta your hands.” (as spoken to Randy Wilkinson in New Orleans 1983, friend and road manager)

* “His [Grateful Dead keyboardist/singer Ron 'Pig Pen' McKernan's] wife can cook but Pig can’t cook, I told him ‘Man, I can’t eat your cookin’.” (during the recording of Hooker ‘N Heat.)

* “Elvis Presley – one of the greatest people ever been born.”

Discography

Singles

Hooker issued a large number of singles, with almost a hundred releases by 1960.
Here are ten of his early classic recordings:

* Detroit September 1948 – Boogie Chillen’ – Modern 627 (11/48) R&B #1 (Crown LP “The Blues”)
* Detroit September 1948 – Hobo Blues – Modern 663 (3/49) R&B #5 (Crown LP “The Blues”)
* Detroit September 1948 – Crawling King Snake – Modern 715 (10/49) R&B #6 (Crown LP “The Blues”)
* Detroit August 7, 1951 – I’m In the Mood – Modern 835 (9/51) R&B #1 (Crown LP “The Blues”)
* Detroit Early 1955 – The Syndicator b/w Hug And Squeeze – Modern 966 (8/55) (Crown LP “Sings The Blues”)
* Chicago March 17, 1956 – Dimples – Vee-Jay 205 (8/56) (VJ LP “I’m John Lee Hooker”)
* Chicago June 10, 1958 – I Love You Honey – Vee-Jay 293 (9/58) R&B #29 (VJ LP “I’m John Lee Hooker”)
* Chicago March 1, 1960 – No Shoes – Vee-Jay 349 (4/60) R&B#21 (VJ LP “Travelin’”)
* Chicago Late 1961 – Boom Boom – Vee-Jay 438 (4/62) R&B #16 (VJ LP “Burnin’”)
* Chicago Mid 1964 – It Serves Me Right (To Suffer) – Vee-Jay 708 (11/65) (VJ/Dynasty LP “In Person”)

Albums

There are many John Lee Hooker albums out there. Below you will find the original albums with notable reissues.

THE DETROIT YEARS (recordings 1948-1955)

* 1960 – The Blues (Crown) – reissued on United, also as “The Greatest Hits” (Kent, 1971) Modern tracks
* 1960 – House Of The Blues (Chess) 1951-52 tracks
* 1961 – Sings The Blues (Crown) – reissued on United, also as “Driftin’ Thru The Blues” (Custom) Modern tracks
* 1961 – Plays And Sings The Blues (Chess) 1950-52 tracks
* 1961 – Sings Blues (King) – reissued as “Moanin’ and Stompin’”, and “Don’t You Remember Me” (Charly) Texas Slim 1948-50 tracks
* 1962 – Folk Blues (Crown) – reissued on United (Modern tracks)
* 1963 – The Great John Lee Hooker (Crown) – reissued as “The Great Blues Sounds of” (United) Modern tracks
* 1963 – Don’t Turn Me from Your Door – John Lee Hooker Sings His Blues (Atco) 1953 and 1961
* 1963 – Big Maceo Merriweather / John Lee Hooker (Fortune) 1/2 of an LP
* 1964 – Original Folk Blues (Kent) Modern compilation – reissued on United
* 1967 – John Lee Hooker & his Guitar (Advent) British bootleg; early tracks
* 1969 – No Friend Around (Red Lightnin’) early tracks, bootleg compilation
* 1970 – Alone (Specialty) 1949-1951 tracks
* 1971 – Goin’ Down Highway 51 (Specialty) 1949-1951 tracks
* 1972 – Coast to Coast Blues Band – Anywhere Anytime Anyplace (United Artists) 1948-1952 tracks
* 1972 – Johnny Lee (Greene Bottle) early Besman alternates (not issued on CD)
* 1973 – Hooker, Hopkins, Hogg (Specialty) half an LP of 1954 recordings
* 1973 – Slim’s Stomp (Polydor) King’s “Sings Blues” plus bonus tracks
* 1973 – John Lee Hooker’s Detroit (United Artists) Besman alternate 1948-1952 tracks
* 1973 – Mad Man Blues (Chess) compilation 1950s and 1966
* 1979 – Southern Blues (Savoy) 1948 tracks on half an LP
* 1981 – Blues For Big Town (Chess) compilation featuring unissed early 1950s
* 1987 – Gotham Golden Classics – Rare Recordings (Collectables) 1951-52 tracks – also issued as “Detroit Blues, 1950-51″ (Krazy Kat with bonus tracks)
* 1989 – 40th Anniversary Album (DCC) – also issued on Demon as “The Detroit Lion” (compilation of early tracks)
* 1990 – Boogie Awhile (Krazy Kat) unissued early Elmer Barbee recordings
* 1999 – Savoy Blues Legends, 1948-1949 (SavoyJazz/Atlantic) – reissued on Savoy (Elmer Barbee recordings)
* 2000 – The Unknown John Lee Hooker (Krazy Kat, 1951 tracks) – reissued as “Jack 0′Diamonds” (Eagle, 2004)

THE CHICAGO YEARS (recordings 1955-1964)

* 1959 – I’m John Lee Hooker (Vee Jay 1955-1959)
* 1960 – Travelin (Vee Jay)
* 1961 – The Folk Lore of John Lee Hooker (Vee Jay)
* 1962 – Burnin’ (Vee Jay)
* 1962 – The Big Soul of John Lee Hooker (Vee Jay)
* 1962 – The Best of John Lee Hooker (Vee Jay) – compilation
* 1962 – Gold (Vee Jay) – compilation
* 1963 – John Lee Hooker On Campus (Vee Jay) – reissued as “Big Band Blues” (Buddah)
* 1965 – … And Seven Nights (Verve-Folkways) British recordings of 1964 (re-issued with brass overdub as “On The Waterfront” on Wand) – and reissued in several versions later
* 1965 – Is He The World’s Greatest Blues Singer? (Vee Jay) compilation – reissued on Exodus
* 1974 – In Person (VeeJay/Dynasty) late Vee-Jay tracks
* 1993 – John Lee Hooker on Vee-Jay 1955-1958 (VeeJay) compilation

THE FOLK YEARS (recordings 1959-1963)

* 1959 – The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker (Riverside) – reissued as “How Long Blues” (Battle, 1963)
* 1960 – That’s My Story – JLH Sings the Blues (Riverside) – reissued as “The Blues Man” (Battle, 1963)
* 1962 – John Lee Hooker (Galaxy) – reissued as “The King of Folk Blues” (America)
* 1963 – Live At Sugar Hill (Galaxy)
* 1964 – Burning Hell (Riverside) recorded 1959
* 1964 – Concert At Newport (Vee Jay) – reissued with bonus tracks as “Live At Newport” (Fantasy)
* 1966 – Teachin’ The Blues (Guest Star) half an LP of recordings from 1961
* 1969 – That’s Where It’s At! (Stax) recordings of 1961
* 1971 – Detroit Special (Atlantic) compilation (“Don’t Turn Me From Your Door” plus bonus tracks)
* 1972 – Boogie Chillun (Fantasy) (“Live at Sugar Hill” plus bonus tracks) – reissued on Ace as “Live at Sugar Hill Vol. 1 & 2″
* 1979 – Sittin’ Here Thinkin (Muse) – reissued as “Sad And Lonesome” (Savoy recordings of 1961)
* 2002 – Live At Sugar Hill, Vol. 2 (Fantasy) unissued recordings from 1961 (featuring a “third session”)

THE ABC YEARS (recordings 1965-1974)

* 1966 – It Serves You Right To Suffer (Impulse)
* 1966 – The Real Folk Blues (Chess) new Chicago recordings
* 1967 – Live at the Cafè Au Go-Go (Bluesway)
* 1968 – Urban Blues (Bluesway)
* 1969 – Simply The Truth (Bluesway)
* 1969 – If You Miss ‘Im … I Got ‘Im (Bluesway)
* 1969 – On The Waterfront (Wand) (… And Seven Nights” with brass overdub)
* 1970 – I Wanna Dance All Night (America) Europe recordings – reissued with the next as “Black Rhythm & Blues” (Festival)
* 1970 – I Feel Good (Carson) Europe recordings – reissued on Jewel (1972)
* 1971 – Endless Boogie (ABC)
* 1971 – Get Back Home In The USA (Black & Blue) Europe recordings – reissued with bonus tracks as “Get Back Home”
* 1971 – Hooker ‘N’ Heat (Liberty) – reissued as “Infinite Boogie” (Rhino)
* 1972 – Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive (ABC)
* 1972 – Live at Kabuki Wuki (Bluesway)
* 1973 – Live At Soledad Prison (ABC)
* 1973 – Born In Mississippi, Raised Up In Tennessee (ABC)
* 1974 – Free Beer And Chicken (ABC)
* 1991 – More Real Folk Blues – The Missing Album (Chess) – also issued with “The Real Folk Blues” as “The Complete Chess Folk Blues Sessions”

THE ROSEBUD YEARS (recordings 1975-2001)

* 1976 – Alone Vol 1 (Labor) live – reissued on Tomato
* 1976 – Alone – Live in New York Vol 2 (MMG) – reissued on Tomato
* 1978 – Live + Well (Ornament)
* 1978 – The Cream (Tomato) live recordings – reissued with bonus tracks on Charly
* 1979 – Live in 1978 (Lunar)
* 1981 – Hooker ‘n’ Heat Recorded Live at the Fox Venice Theatre (Rhino, various artists)
* 1986 – Jealous (Pulsa) – reissued on Pointblank 1996 – and on Shout!Factory with bonus tracks
* 1989 – The Healer (Chameleon)
* 1990 – The Hot Spot (Featuring Miles Davis)
* 1991 – Mr. Lucky (Pointblank)
* 1992 – Boom Boom (Pointblank) – reissued on Shout!Factory with bonus tracks
* 1995 – Chill Out (Pointblank) – reissued on Shout!Factory with bonus tracks
* 1997 – Don’t Look Back (Pointblank/Virgin) – reissued on Shout!Factory with bonus tracks
* 1998 – The Best of Friends (Pointblank) compilation 1986-1998 incl one new track – reissued on Shout!Factory download with bonus track
* 2003 – Face to Face (Eagle) new recordings

Selected CD Compilations

* 1990 – That’s My Story/The Folk Blues of (Ace) – the two original Riverside LPs on one CD
* 1990 – That’s Where It’s At (Stax) reissue of Florida recordings from 1961
* 1991 – The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990 (Rhino 2CDbox)
* 1991 – Half A Stranger (Mainstream) Modern tracks 1948-1955 incl unedited masters
* 1991 – Free Beer And Chicken (BeatGoesOn/MCA) recorded 1974
* 1991 – Don’t Turn Me From Your Door (Atlantic/Atco) 1953 and 1961 (incl the bonus tracks)
* 1992 – Graveyard Blues (Specialty/Ace) 1948-1950 Besman/Sensation tracks
* 1992 – The Best of John Lee Hooker 1965 to 1974 (Universal) Impulse and ABC/Bluesway recordings
* 1993 – Everybody’s Blues (Specialty/Ace) Besman tracks of 1950-51 plus two 1954 sessions direct for Specialty
* 1993 – The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948-1954 (Flair/Ace) the original singles
* 1994 – The Boogie Man (Charly DIG 5) anthology box featuring 1948-1966 (excluding Modern)
* 1995 – Alternative Boogie – Early Studio Recordings, 1948-1952 (Capitol 3CD) Besman alternates
* 1996 – Live at the Café Au Go-Go (and Soledad Prison) (Universal) 1966 with Muddy Waters’ band and 1972
* 1998 – The Complete 50′s Chess Recordings (Chess 2CD) anthology featuring the tracks from “House of the Blues” and “Plays and Sings the Blues” (1951-52) plus several bonus tracks from Fortune 1954 incl “Blues For Big Town”
* 2000 – The Complete 1964 recordings (RPM) last Vee-Jay session 1964 plus British London recordings – the British tracks reissued with brass overdubs as “The London 1965 Sessions” on Sequel
* 2000 – I’m John Lee Hooker (Charly -with bonus tracks) his very first LP, 1955-1959 recordings – reissued on SNAP in 2003 and without bonus tracks on Shout!Factory in 2007
* 2000 – Travelin’ (Charly -with bonus tracks) the great LP session of 1960- reissued on SNAP in 2003
* 2000 – The Folk Lore of John Lee Hooker (Charly -with bonus tracks) his third VJ LP – reissued on SNAP in 2003
* 2000 – Burnin’ (Charly -with bonus tracks) the fourth VJ LP, 1962 – reissued on SNAP in 2003
* 2000 – The Complete – Vol. 1 1948-49 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2000 – The Complete – Vol. 2 1949 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2001 – The Complete – Vol. 3 1949-50 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2001 – House Rent Boogie (Ace) Modern compilation of rare early 1950s recordings
* 2001 – Testament – 3CDbox featuring some of the very best Vee-Jay recordings (Charly/Snapper)
* 2002 – The Complete – Vol. 4 1950-51 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2002 – The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues (Chess) 1966 recordings; reissue of the 1991 CD “The Complete Chess Folk Blues Sessions”
* 2003 – Boogie Chillen’ (Audio Fidelity) 1949 – 1952 Besman and Siracuse (engineer) compilation
* 2003 – Blues Kingpins – Blues Immortal (Virgin) 1948-1955 Modern anthology
* 2004 – Early Years – The Classic Savoy Sessions (Metro Doubles 2CD) recorded 1948 and 1961 – comprising the tracks from “Savoy Blues Legends” (Savoy in 1999 and 2003) and the 1961 Savoy recordings from “Sittin’ Here Thinkin’” (32Blues in 2004 with the bonus track)
* 2004 – I’m A Boogie Man (Varése Sarabande) Vintage 1948 – 1953 Texas Slim and John Lee Booker (King/DeLuxe tracks featuring all the King singles)
* 2004 – The Complete – Vol. 5 1951-53 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2005 – The Complete – Vol. 6 1953-54 [Body & Soul 2CD]
* 2006 – Hooker (a terrific 4CD Box chronological anthology covering his whole career) (Shout!Factory)
* 2006 – The Boogie Man 1948 – 1955 (Charly 4 CDBox) – not identical to Charly’s rare CD DIG 5 (but this time also featuring Modern recordings)
* 2007 – Gold (Hip-O Select 2CD) 1948-2001 chronological anthology

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Jun 24

1999 – Eric Clapton parts with 100 of his guitars …

Posted in 1990s, Agents & Lawyers, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Guitarists, Industry, Off the Hook, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers, TV, Movies, Radio, Internet, & itunes | No Comments »

1999 – Eric Clapton parts with 100 of his guitars and generates over $5 million for his Crossroads Centre at Antigua, and alcohol and drug-dependency treatment center in the West Indies. Among the stringed beauties auctioned off is “Brownie,” a 1956 sunburst Fender upon which he recorded his hit “Layla”; the instrument goes for a record-breaking $450,000.

FEATURED

from: http://www.xs4all.nl/~slowhand/ecfaq/guitars.html

Q: What was Clapton’s first guitar?
A: His first guitar was an acoustic Spanish Hoya. His first electric guitar was a double cutaway Kay.

Q: Where did “Blackie” come from?
A: In 1970, Clapton bought a handful of Stratocasters, Telecasters, and various other Fenders for $100.00 each at the Sho-Bud shop in Nashville, Tennessee. He took them back to England and gave one to George Harrison, one to Steve Winwood, and one to Pete Townshend. Clapton disassembled the remaining three and constructed “Blackie” out of the best components from each of them.

Q: Where is “Blackie” now?
A: “Blackie” was retired in 1985 after 15 years of faithful service. According to Clapton: “It’s at home. It’s off the road completely. I play it at home occasionally, but it is too precious for me to take out for fear of loss or breakage or something like that.”

Q: What is the Eric Clapton Signature Strat?
A: Dan Smith, the head of Fender guitars, approached Clapton to discuss a plan to create a guitar to Clapton’s specifications and market it under his name. Clapton told them to make an exact copy of “Blackie” (his favorite Strat), especially the shape of the neck. Clapton’s favorite neck was the “V” neck, like the early Martins. Fender made up a neck and put it on a Strat Elite guitar body for Clapton to try. In the meantime, Fender made another prototype with a less V’ed neck that Clapton liked even more. Among the Elite’s features was a “mid boost” control, which on the Elite was meant to mimic the output and sound of a Gibson Les Paul. Clapton loved the boost (which he calls a “compressor”) and told Fender to keep it, but he wanted “more of the compressor”. The original prototype had 14 db of boost but Clapton wanted more than that. So, they put the guitar together with Lace Sensor pick-ups and a circuit that had a 25 db boost in the midrange at around 500 Hz [Guitar World, Dec 1989] The guitar can be seen in an interview with Lee Dickson that ran in a 1985 issue of Guitar Player magazine. It’s a black Elite body with a different neck attached (quite easy to tell). The fact that Clapton’s favorite guitar was a Fender, apparently had nothing to do with the fact that his signature guitar is marketed by that company. The original production guitar was available in three colors — charcoal gray, Torino red, and 7-Up green. Per Clapton’s request, the color black was not offered initially, but was added as an option around 1991. Alpine white was also added about the time of the “Nothing But the Blues” tour.

Q: Where is Clapton’s famous psychedelic SG guitar from his days with the band Cream?
A: . The design on Clapton’s 1961 SG/Les Paul was done by The Fool, the Dutch group of artists (Simon and Marijke) that designed the album sleeve for the first pressing of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers” album. Clapton first purchased this guitar in 1966/67, and was used on the first two Cream albums (Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears), and on the Wheels of Fire live recordings.
The guitar is now in the collection of Todd Rundgren and the paint has been touched up.

Q: What kind of strings does Clapton use?
A: At least on his Strats, he uses Ernie Ball Regular Slinkies (.010) or Super Slinkies (.009).

Q: How did he do that?
A: Tabs of many of Clapton’s songs are available at The Slowhand Blues World tab archive. The tone and feeling is up to you, but the notes are here! In printed form, Hal Leonard (check in your local music store) sells many Clapton songbooks and stylebooks — some even contain a CD for easy playing.

Q: Has Clapton always played Fender guitars?
A: No. From about June 1965 until around 1970, Clapton played Gibson electric guitars almost exclusively. His reputation as a guitarist (i.e. “Clapton is God”) was developed with a Gibson guitar. In June 1965, when Clapton bought a second-hand, cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul guitar, little did anyone know that he was about to change the history of the electric guitar. Clapton created a new electric guitar sound and employed an overdriven Marshall amplifier that provided the distortion, feedback, and sustain he needed for his trademark sound. Although not the first to use these electrical “by-products” to his advantage, he refined their use and combined them with his virtuoso abilities and, most importantly, angst-driven passion. Clapton’s blues solos during his days with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers could send shivers down the spine while bringing tears to the eyes.

The Gibson Les Paul model guitar that Clapton played, however, was a discontinued model, having been produced from 1952-1960. He subsequently purchased several more, but his favorite one was stolen during early Cream rehearsals in the summer of 1966. Clapton’s popularizing of the Les Paul model guitar affected the electric guitar world so much that Gibson decided to re-introduce and reissue the guitar in 1968.

If Clapton had not popularized the Gibson Les Paul guitar, it would have been consigned to the dust-bin of history. Today, vintage Gibson Les Paul sunburst guitars from the 1958-1960 are collector’s items.

Q: How did Clapton get the famous “woman-tone” in Cream?
A: According to Clapton, the “woman-tone” is achieved by rolling the tone control all the way off on either the neck or the bridge pickup of a guitar with humbucking pickups and the volume all the way up. Heavy strings and a bassy-sounding amp at high volume also helps to achieve that wooing, whooshing tone. In fact, a lot of Clapton’s “woman tone” was achieved this way [with a wah-wah pedal], with the pedal about three-quarters back from the forward position. (from Guitar Player magazine, Gear Guru, March 1993)

Q: What equipment set-up did Clapton use during [fill-in band name/date/tour here] ?
A: During his tenure with the Yardbirds, Clapton used a Vox AC-30 amplifier and a Fender Telecaster guitar.

In John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, Clapton used a 1960 model Les Paul Standard through a 45-watt, model-1962 Marshall 2-12 combo. The amp was stock except that the output tubes were replaced with KT66′s (which have a more refined mid-range and clearer top end than either EL34s or 6L6s). The amp was almost always turned up full volume, even in the studio. When the engineer complained that Clapton’s amp was too loud, Eric replied “That’s the way I play.” Clapton-fan and researcher, DeltaNick, has extensively researched the history of the Clapton Les Paul and contributed the following article, Clapton’s Bluesbreakers 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard Guitar.

In Cream, Clapton switched to 100-watt Marshall heads (JTM 45) and 4-12 cabinets (two full stacks). He also used a Vox wah-wah and occasionally a fuzz. After his Blues Breakers-era Les Paul was stolen, Clapton had several more Les Paul model guitars (presumably 1960 models because the neck on the 1960 model was significantly thinner than on previous models). He used Les Paul guitars exclusively until 1967, having used at least three different Les Paul Standard model guitars in 1966 (the latter two — one of which was borrowed — with Cream). Sometime in 1967, Clapton started using the 1961 Gibson SG-style Les Paul (the famous psychedelic guitar). He switched to a single pick-up Gibson Firebird I during the Spring of 1968 and then switched between the Firebird and a Gibson ES-335 “block” guitar for the remainder of Cream and for Cream’s farewell concert.

In Blind Faith, Clapton used a Gibson Firebird through either Fender Dual Showman or Marshall amps; and at the debut performance played a Fender Telecaster with a Stratocaster neck (supposedly Clapton didn’t like the Tele neck). [Guitar World, Dec 1989]

During Derek and the Dominoes, Clapton switched to maple neck Fender Stratocasters and Fender tweed Champ amps for recording the “Layla” album.[Guitar Player January 1999]. On stage, he used either Marshalls or a Fender Showman.

From 1972 to 1987, Clapton used his famous “Blackie” guitar as his basic stage guitar.

In 1976, Clapton used a Gibson ES-335 for slide playing. It was strung with Ernie Ball Super Slinky’s .009-.042 and an Isis medium slide. He utilized Modified Music Man amps (HD 130 Reverb) with the bias up all the way and special open-back cabinets. He also used a Leslie cabinet with JBL components and had a special foot switch with fast/slow and on/off positions so that the guitar could go either through the amp, through both the amp and the Leslie, or just through the Leslie at either fast or slow speeds (as in the song “Badge”). He also used a Cry Baby Wah-wah pedal.

On the Journeyman album, Clapton used the Eric Clapton Signature Strat and the Gibson ES-335 on “Hard Times”.

On the song “Forever Man” from the Journeyman album, Clapton achieved that “fat” tone by using a different Strat with heavy strings and tuned the guitar down to “D” — not a “D” tuning, but down a whole step down from concert (normal) pitch.

On the Behind the Sun tour, Clapton used an effects board similiar to the one used by Jeff Pocaro. The effects board from right to left ; Jim Dunlop Cry baby re-issue, the Bradshaw foot controller, a Roland 700 synthesizer bank. The rack is controlled by a pedal board consisting of an Ibanez Harmonics/Delay, a DBX 160 compressor, a Roland SDE-3000 delay, a Tri Stereo CVhorus [Dyno-My-Piano], a Boss CE-1 chorus, and a Boss Heavy Metal pedal but actually only uses the one chorus and then a deeper chorus. Clapton switched from Music Man amps to Marshall 800 series heads (50 watts) during this time. The amp settings were: presence 3; bass and middle 1 o’clock; treble 8; and volume just under 9. The strings he used were Ernie Balls .010-.046. He used his usual array of Strats, including Blackie and Brownie. He also used a Dean Markely head— possibly a 130 with Marshall cabinets. Ernie Ball strings (.009), Picks: Ernie Ball heavys.

On the ARMS tour, Clapton used a ’57 blonde Fender Twin, Blackie, a Gibson Explorer, a Martin acoustic, and other Fender Strats.

In recording the album From The Cradle, Clapton used approximately 50 guitars from his collection, including a dot-neck Gibson ES-335 (a tobacco sunburst model from the early 60s), and his famous cherry-red model from Cream. He also used his white Eric Clapton Model Strat from the Fender Custom Shop, several different Gibson L-5′s, Byrdlands, and some Super 400′s. He also played straight through a Soldano head. The acoustic guitars he used included several Martins, a Tony Zemaitis 12-string, and several Dobros in different tunings. He used an old Fender Twin with no effects and occasionally an old Fender Champ amp [Guitar World, Dec 1994], plus a Silverface Fender Deluxe and a Blonde Showman head.

Jason Richlar was a Clapton fanatic. He spent hours assembling this guitar list. He waited anxiously for it to go onto the site and then wrote in with corrections. Jason passed away sometime in 1996. Most Slowhanders never met Jason, but his memory lives here. This list was contributed by Jason and is dedicated to his memory.

Danelectro paisley/psychedelic painted	Blind Faith, (Weiler p. 39)
Dobro
Dobro #45 (ornate fingerboard)
Epiphone Bard 12 string	1969; now in Miami Hard Rock Cafe
Fender Bass VI, block inlays	“Tears in Heaven” video
Fender Electric XII	“Tears in Heaven” video
Fender Electric XII (gold, block inlays)	“Tears in Heaven” video
Fender Jazzmaster	Yardbirds
Fender Stratocaster black w/ black pickguard	(Life and Music p. 156)
Fender Stratocaster Natural ?	(Life and Music p. 92)
Fender Stratocaster red rosewood neck	(Weiler p. 86)
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. 7-Up green
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. black
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. charcoal grey
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. dark metallic blue	Modena 1996
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. olympic white
Fender Stratocaster Signature E.C. red
Fender Stratocaster sunburst
Fender Stratocaster sunburst
Fender Stratocaster sunburst 1956	“Layla”; given to Ron Wood???
Fender Stratocaster (Blackie)	Assembled from 3 different 1950s Strats
Fender Telecaster blonde 1952
Fender Telecaster red	Yardbirds
Fender Telecaster (Strat neck)	Blind Faith
Fender Telecaster (sunburst)	“Tears in Heaven” video
Gibson Byrdland natural alnicos	From the Cradle
Gibson Byrdland natural humbuckers	Concert for Bangladesh
Gibson Byrdland sunburst alnicos	From the Cradle
Gibson Chet Atkins gut string
Gibson ES 150	“Motherless Child” video
Gibson ES 175	Now in Chicago Hard Rock Cafe
Gibson ES 335 Cherry Red block neck	Yardbirds onward; originally Gibson deluxe tuners (see L&M pp. 31,44 and Weiler p.42, later Grovers?)
Gibson ES 335 natural dot neck
Gibson ES 335 sunburst dot neck	From the Cradle
Gibson ES 350 T	Chuck Berry’s Hail Hail Rock and Roll
Gibson Explorer	ARMS concerts
Gibson Explorer (sawed off top)	given to Julian Marvin
Gibson Firebird I	Cream; Delaney & Bonnie
Gibson L5 ??	“Wish it Would Rain” video
Gibson L5CES	From the Cradle tour
Gibson L7 (with engraved fingerboard)
Gibson Les Paul Custom Black 3 pickups (covers removed later??)	Cream (Strange Brew p. 93) Delaney & Bonnie; Plastic Ono Band; given to Albert Lee
Gibson Les Paul Goldtop humbuckers
Gibson Les Paul Goldtop (1955, P90s)	Given to Delaney Bramlett
Gibson Les Paul Red	Beatles’ White Album ; given to George Harrison; Rainbow Concert (see July, 1995 Guitar World)
Gibson Les Paul Standard Sunburst	1987 Prince’s Trust
Gibson Les Paul Standard Sunburst	John Mayall and the Blues Breakers; Cream
Gibson Les Paul Standard with Bigsby	Cream (New Visual Documentary p. 13)
Gibson Les Paul/SG (painted by The Fool)	Cream; now owned by Todd Rundgren
Gibson SG Standard	1970s; backup
Gibson Switchmaster	(see Guitar Player August, 1976)
Giffin Stratocaster (blue)	For slide; 1980s
Gretsch 6120	Yardbirds
Guild F112 12 string	“Anyone for Tennis” TV
Guild F50 1968
Guild Catalogue and onward
Guild G46	Replacement from Guild for guitar donated to Prince’s Trust
Guild G46/GF 60R	Endorsed 1987-88 (see Guitar Player August 1988, p.89); donated to Prince’s Trust; model number changed by Gruhn
Guild Songbird Hagstrom?	electric 12; Blind Faith (Life and Music of p.44)
Hoya First Guitar Kay Jazz II	Yardbirds
Lowden 0-38 1997	Grammy Awards
Martin 000 28 EC
Martin 000-28 (w/ style 45 fingerboard and headstock)	ARMS tour
Martin 000-42 E.C. (#s 1 and 461)
Martin 000-42 (1939)
Martin 000-45
Martin 12 string (slotted head)
Martin D12-28
Martin D-28 (with Barcus-Berry bridge pickup)
Martin D-45	Derek and the Dominos’ Lyceum debut (Life and Music p.58)
Martin J-40 12
Martin OM-42
Martin ?? with pickup	From the Cradle tour
National Duolian (pre-decal, NOT slot headstock)	Given to Delaney Bramlett
National Resophonic	Rush
Ovation acoustic	Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking tour
Pensa Suhr Custom, EMG pick ups (black)	Royal Albert Hall 1988; owned by Clapton, or Knofler??
Ramirez gut string	“Tears in Heaven”
Roland Synthesizer guitar	Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking tour
Stahl (Larson Bros) 1940s	“Anyone for Tennis”; given to Hendrix
Taylor 514C	Modena 1996
Taylor 855 – 12
Zemaitis (w/cutaway)	(Life and Music p. 104)
Zemaitis 12 string	Custom Built for Clapton circa Cream

Lot # DescriptionNote:Photos of the guitars can be seen on the Shun & Lisa Eric Clapton Fan Page Estimated ValueIn U.S. Dollars Final BidIn U.S. Dollars Purchased By
1 1994 Martin J12-40 (natural) 4 – 6,000 26,000 in person
2 1996 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (midnight blue) 6 – 8,000 35,000 in person
3 1951 Gibson J-185 (sunbrust) 6 – 8,000 14,000 in person
4 1998 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (sunburst) 5 – 7,000 22,000 in person
5 Gibson ES-335 DOT (natural) 6 – 8,000 38,000 by telephone
6 1996 Martin OM-28 VR (natural) 6 – 8,000 35,000 by telephone
7 1995 Gibson Les Paul Custom (sunburst) 6 – 8,000 28,000 in person
8 c. 1960′s Silvertone (sunburst) signed by Les Paul 1 – 2,000 24,000 in person
9 1995 Gibson B.B. King Lucille (black) signed by B.B. – bought at a charity auction 6 – 8,000 45,000 by telephone
10 1996 Gibson Explorer (black) bought at a Stevie Ray Vaughan Benefit Auction 2 – 3,000 24,000 in person
11 c. 1960 Harmony Stratotone Mars Model (sunburst) 1 – 2,000 16,000 ?
12 1985 Martin Shenandoah 000-2832 (natural) generally used by Andy Fairweather-Low 3 – 5,000 21,000 by telephone
13 1994 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (cream) 6 – 8,000 50,000 Mike D. of California
14 1991 Gibson Firebird (red) given to Clapton by a fan 2 – 3,000 34,000 in person
15 1970′s Gibson Les Paul Custom (cherry red) 5 – 7,000 26,000 in person
16 1999 Gibson Les Paul Standard (sunburst) 3 – 5,000 26,000 in person
17 c. 1962 Gibson SG Les Paul Standard (cherry red) 5 – 7,000 30,000 in person
18 1958 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean (translucent red) 5 – 7,000 22,000 in person
19 1959 Martin 00-17 (natural) 4 – 6,000 17,000 in person
20 Late 1950′s Hofner Club 60 (natural) gift from Roger Forrester 2 – 3,000 24,000 in person
21 1959 Gibson ES-335TDN (natural) 20 – 30,000 45,000 in person
22 1990s Vicente Sanchis Flamenco Model 41 (cypress) 3 – 5,000 26,000 by telephone
23 1960s Coral Sitar (red/black crackle) 6 – 8,000 36,000 in person
24 1919 Martin 0-18 (ntaural) 4 – 6,000 44,000 by telephone
25 c. 1920 Gibson L-3 (red mahogany sunburst) 2 – 3,000 24,000 in person
26 1940 Gibson L-7 (sunburst) 5 – 7,000 22,000 Jeff Gale
27 1990s Beltona Tri-cone (nickel) 6 – 8,000 35,000 in person
28 1970s Gibson Les Paul Recording Model (walnut) signed by Les Paul 6 – 8,000 40,000 by telephone
29 c. 1962 Gibson SG Les Paul Junior (cherry red) 3 – 5,000 30,000 in person
30 c. 1928 Gibson L-3 (sunburst) 2 -3,000 16,000 in person
31 c.1940s Gibson L-50 (sunburst) 4 – 6,000 20,000 ?
32 c. 1949 Gibson ES-125 (sunburst) used on Motherless Child video 6 – 8,000 32,000 Michael J. Fox
33 c. Late 1930s Kalamazoo (sunburst) 1 – 2,000 l 7,000 Steve & Anna Fern, England
34 1960 Gibson ES-330TD (sunburst) 3 – 5,000 24,000 in person
35 1994 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (cream) used on film score of The Van 6 – 8,000 50,000 in person
36 1959 Gibson ES-225TD (sunburst) 2 – 3,000 18,000 in person
37 1953 Gibson ES-295 (sunburst) 6 – 8,000 21,000 by telephone
38 Fender/Versace Guitar Strap 800 – 1,200 14,000 in person
39 1996 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (black/green) 6 – 8,000 52,000 by telephone
40 c.1940 Gibson ES-100 (sunburst) 4 – 6,000 17,000 Debra Berg-McCarthy
41 1960 Gibson ES-330T (sunburst) 3 – 5,000 22,000 in person
42 1956 Gibson Byrdland (sunburst) 15 – 20,000 52,000 in person
43 Fender/Versace Guitar Strap 800 – 1,200 9,000 in person
44 1996 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (black/green) 6 – 8,000 50,000 in person
45 Late c. 1930s Kalamazoo (sunburst) 1 -2,000 24,000 in person
46 1959 Gibson ES-335TD (sunburst) 20 – 30,000 70,000 Gill Southworth, who owns Southworth Vintage guitars in Bethesda, Maryland
47 1993 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (ivory shite) 6 – 8,000 42,000 in person
48 1957 Gibson Byrdland (sunburst) 10 – 15,000 38,000 in person
49 1947 Fender Broadcaster Relic (blonde) 5 – 7,000 19,000 in person
50 1994 Fender Stratocaster 40th Anniversary Concert Edition Model (wine red) 5 – 7,000 28,000 by telephone
51 1941 Martin 00-18G (natural) 5 -7,000 24,000 in person
52 Late 1950s Fender Twin Amplifier 2 – 3,000 12,000 by telephone
53 1958 Fender Stratocaster (Mary Kay – translucent blonde) 20 – 40,000 55,000 in person
54 c. 1952 Gibson Super 400C (sunburst) 12 – 18,000 26,000 in person
55 1956 Gibson Super 300C (sunburst) 10 – 15,000 26,000 in person
56 1990 National Reso-phonic Model M-1 (sunburst) used on film Rush 6 – 8,000 42,000 Peter Morton’s Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas)
57 Fender D’Aquisto (natural) used on Retail Therapy 5 – 7,000 22,000 by telephone
58 1991 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton “Blackie” Signature Model (smoker’s model) 5 – 7,000 68,000 in person
59 1987 Guild GF-60NT (natural) on the 25 Years tour programme 2 – 3,000 20,000 in person
60 1989 Guild F-46NT (sunburst) 3 – 5,000 16,000 in person
61 1982 Gibson Chet Atkins Standard (natural) 5 – 7,000 35,000 in person
62 1986 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (pewter) 10 – 15,000 95,000 in person
63 1987 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (Torino red) 6 – 8,000 60,000 in person
64 1987 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (7-Up green) 6 – 8,000 50,000 in person
65 1988 Guild G-60NT (natural) 2 – 3,000 18,000 by telephone
66 1988 Guild F-61RNT (natural) 2 – 3,000 17,000 in person.
67 1987 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (Torino red) 3 – 5,000 50,000 by telephone.
68 Late 19th Century Salvador Ibanez (natural) 3 – 5,000 42,000 Jeff Gale
69 1990 James Trussart Steel Deville (chrome) 3 – 5,000 35,000 in person
70 1990s Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Model (gold with snow leopard) 5 – 7,000 42,000 in person
71 1982 Fender Stratocaster ’57 Re-issue model (sunburst) 5 – 7,000 28,000 by telephone
72 1992 Fender Telecaster 40th Anniversary model (sunburst) custom made for Clapton 5 – 7,000 62,000 in person
73 1988 Pensa-Suhr (honey) gift from Mark Knopfler 5 – 7,000 45,000 in person
74 1982 Roland G-505 (candy apple red) with two synthesizers – used during Edge of Darkness period 3 – 5,000 29,000 in person
75 1986 Guild Nightbird (green metallic) 3 – 5,000 26,000 Jonathan Mikos (VH1 contest winner)
76 1980s Fender Stratocaster XII (sunburst) 6 – 8,000 42,000 ?
77 1991 Taylor 955-C (natural) gift from Richie Sambora 5 – 7,000 30,000 by telephone
78 1987 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature Model (7-Up green) 6 – 8,000 55,000 by telephone
79 1990 Gibson Chet Atkins Standard 5 – 7,000 35,000 in person
80 Fender/Versace Guitar Strap 800 – 1,200 15,000 in person
81 1990 Fender Stratocaster Eric Clapton Signature ‘Blackie’ Model 5 – 7,000 48,000 ?
82 Late 1950s Fender Twin Amplifier 2 – 3,000 16,000 ?
83 1956 Gibson ES-350TN (natural) played at Chuck Berry tribute 15 – 20,000 62,000 ?
84 1959 Gibson J-200 (sunburst) 8 – 12,000 78,000 ?
85 c.1964 Gibson ES-345TD (sunburst) 15 – 20,000 32,000 ?
86 c.1980 Santa Cruz F-13 (sunburst) pictured with cat 4 – 6,000 35,000 ?
87 c.1980 Santa Cruz FTC-15 (natural) 3 – 5,000 35,000 ?
88 1960s National Studio 66 Model (black) used on film Water 1 – 2,000 28,000 ?
89 1980s Fender Stratocaster Elite (cream) 5 – 7,000 30,000 ?
90 1980s Roger Giffin (blue metallic) 5 – 7,000 42,000 Jeff Gale
91 1980s Fender Stratocaster Elite (black) 5 – 7,000 26,000 ?
92 1958 Gibson Explorer (natural) used in ARMS concert unknown 120,000 ?
93 1979 Fender Stratocaster Anniversary Model (silver metallic) 5 – 7,000 35,000 ?
94 c. 1930s National Duolian (nickel) 6 – 8,000 35,000 Michael J. Fox
95 1978 Guild D-55NT (natural) 5 – 7,000 32,000 ?
96 1974 Martin 000-28 (natural) rodeo man sticker 12 – 18,000 155,000 ?
97 c.1975 Telecaster (translucent blonde) 6 – 8,000 42,000 ?
98 1956 Fender Stratocaster (sunburst ) 20 – 30,000 80,000 ?
99 Dobro Electric 12-string (natural) 2 – 3,000 28,000 ?
100 c.1930 Gibson L-4 (sunburst ) 6 – 8,000 50,000 ?
101 1930s D’Angelico (sunburst ) 20 – 25,000 55,000 ?
102 1930s D’Angelico Excel (sunburst ) 20 – 30,000 42,000 ?
103 1954 Fender Stratocaster (sunburst ) 20 – 30,000 190,000 ?
104 1952 Fender Telecaster (natural) gift from Carl Radle 15 – 20,000 90,000 ?
105 ‘Brownie’ – 1956 Fender Stratocaster (used on Layla album) 80 – 100,000 450,000 by telephone
These prices were confirmed by Christie’s TOTAL $4,452,000 Total (including premium) $5,072,350

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Sep 30

1997 – Bob Dylan releases Time Out of Mind. Critics call it a masterpiece this day

Posted in 1990s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Copyrights & Trademarks, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1997 – Bob Dylan releases Time Out of Mind. Critics call it a masterpiece this day in rock history!

Time Out of Mind is Bob Dylan’s 30th studio album, released in 1997 by Columbia Records.

For fans and critics, the album marked Dylan’s artistic comeback after he struggled with his musical identity throughout the 1980s, and hadn’t released any original material since the release of Under the Red Sky in 1990. Upon release, Time Out of Mind was hailed as one of the singer-songwriter’s best albums, and it went on to win three Grammy awards, including Album of the Year in 1998. It also made Uncut magazine’s Album of the Year.

The album features a particularly atmospheric sound, the work of producer (and past Dylan collaborator) Daniel Lanois, whose innovative work with carefully placed microphones and strategic mixing was detailed by Dylan in the first volume of his memoirs, Chronicles, Vol. 1. Despite being generally complimentary to Lanois, especially his work on the 1989 album Oh Mercy, Dylan has voiced dissatisfaction with the sound on Time Out of Mind. He has gone on to self-produce his subsequent albums.

Further details

Shortly after completing the album, Dylan became seriously ill with near-fatal pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac around the heart. His forthcoming tour was cancelled, and Dylan spent most of June 1997 in excruciating pain.

Time Out of Mind’s revitalization of Dylan’s career extended all the way to the Grammys where it won multiple awards, including “Album of the Year” in early 1998. It was also voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. With all the media attention and praise, U.S. sales soon passed platinum, a feat that a Bob Dylan album had not reached in nearly two decades.

Recording sessions

Back in April 1991, Dylan told Paul Zollo that “there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them.”

Dylan’s last album of original material came in 1990′s Under the Red Sky, a critical and commercial disappointment. Since then, he had released two albums of folk covers and a live album of older compositions; yet, there was no signs of any fresh compositions until 1996.

According to Jim Dickinson, Dylan first began writing for Time Out of Mind during the winter of that year. Snowed in on his farm in Minnesota, Dylan phoned his manager, Jeff Kramer, and said, “Well, I’m snowed in, so I’m writing songs. But I’m not going to record them.” Dylan would later change his mind, and he scheduled studio reservations in January of 1997 at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami, Florida. Dylan later admitted that Time Out of Mind was “the first album I’ve done in a while where I’ve protected the songs for a long time.”

Dylan even demoed some of the songs in the studio, something he rarely did. According to drummer Winston Watson, elements of Dylan’s touring band (including Watson himself) were involved in these sessions. Dylan also used these loose, informal sessions to experiment with new ideas and arrangements. At one point during the sessions, Dylan improvised a country-blues riff of indeterminate origin which was later sampled as the backing track for “Dirt Road Blues.” (“He made me pull out the original cassette, sample 16 bars and we all played over that

In a televised interview with Charlie Rose, Lanois recalled Dylan talking “about spending a lot of late nights working on this chapter of work. And, when he finished the words, he believed that the record is done, the record was written. He said, ‘you know, we can do a waltz version, we can do this in 4/4, it can be up, it can be down, it can be these kind of chords, you know whatever we decide to do with it, that’s that.’ But what’s important is that it’s written.”

Dylan continued rewriting lyrics until January 1997, when the official album sessions began. It would mark the second collaboration between Dylan and his chosen producer, Daniel Lanois, who had previously produced Dylan’s 1989 release, Oh Mercy. Lanois had just finished producing Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball when Dylan asked him to produce the sessions for Time Out of Mind. According to Lanois, “What we…did this time was make reference to some old records from the 1950s that Bob really likes because they had a natural depth of field which was not the result of a mixing technique. You get the sense that somebody is in the front singing, a couple of other people are further behind and somebody else is way in the back of the room. So we set up the studio like that.”

“The recording process is very difficult for me,” Dylan conceded. “I lose my inspiration in the studio real easy, and it’s very difficult for me to think that I’m going to eclipse anything I’ve ever done before. I get bored easily, and my mission, which starts out wide, becomes very dim after a few failed takes and this and that.”

By now, new personnel were hired for the album, including slide guitarist Cindy Cashdollar and drummers Jim Keltner and Brian Blade. Both Cashdollar and Blade were hired by Lanois while Dylan brought in Keltner, who had previously toured with Dylan in 1979. Dylan also hired Nashville guitarist Bob Britt, Duke Robillard, organist Augie Meyers, and Jim Dickinson to play at the sessions.

With two different sets of players competing in performance and two producers with conflicting views on how to approach each song, the sessions were far from disciplined. Years later, when asked about Time Out of Mind, Dickinson replied, “I haven’t been able to tell what’s actually happening. I know they were listening to playbacks, I don’t know whether they were trying to mix it or not!

Dickinson does admit that “even with the twelve people playing, it would be, like, an hour to an hour and a half of chaos, and then like eight or ten minutes of just clarity and beauty. During that ten minutes we’d nail it to the wall.

“In the past, when my records were made, the producer, or whoever was in charge of my sessions, felt it was just enough to have me sing an original song,” said Dylan. “There was never enough work put into developing the orchestration, and that always made me feel very disillusioned about recording. Time Out of Mind is more illuminated, rather than just a song and the singing of that song. The arrangements or structures are really an integral part of the whole.”

Lanois admitted some difficulty in producing Dylan. “Well, you just never what you’re going to get. He’s an eccentric man, and you might get something great on the first take, or

In a later interview, Lanois elaborated, saying “Bob and I…would step out into the parking lot because he would never discuss anything openly in front of the band, in terms of intimate details of the songs,” recalled Lanois. “Like the song ‘Standing In The Doorway.’ We were in the parking lot, and I said ‘listen, I love ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands.’ Can we steal that feel for this song?’ And he’d say ‘you think that’d work?’ Then we’d sit on the fender of a truck, in this parking lot in Miami, and I’d often think, if people see this they won’t believe it! Me and Bob Dylan just sitting here, strumming guitars, working out chords for a session!”, let’s try that.’”

Asked why Dylan did not “discuss anything” in front of musicians, Lanois responded, “Well, he doesn’t like too much democracy…he respects my commitment, knows I love him and want the best for him. He also knows he can’t bulldoze me too hard; I’ll put up a fight. So it’s a two-way street.”

In subsequent interviews, Dylan cited Buddy Holly as an influence during the recording sessions. “You know, I don’t really recall exactly what I said about Buddy Holly,” said Dylan, “but while we were recording, every place I turned there was Buddy Holly. You know what I mean? It was one of those things. Every place you turned. You walked down a hallway and you heard Buddy Holly records like ‘That’ll Be the Day.’ Then you’d get in the car to go over to the studio and ‘Rave On’ would be playing. Then you’d walk into this studio and someone’s playing a cassette of ‘It’s So Easy.’ And this would happen day after day after day. Phrases of Buddy Holly songs would just come out of nowhere. It was spooky.

With Time Out of Mind, Lanois “produced perhaps the most artificial-sounding album in ‘s canon,” says author Clinton Heylin, who described the album as sounding “like a Lanois CV.” In a March 1999 interview in Guitar World Magazine, Dylan discussed the sound of Time Out of Mind in relation to past works like Highway 61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, and Infidels:

“Those records were made a long time ago, and you know, truthfully, records that were made in that day and age all were good. They all had some magic to them because the technology didn’t go beyond what the artist was doing. It was a lot easier to get excellence back in those days on a record than it is now. I made records back then just like a lot of other people who were my age, and we all made good records. Those records seem to cast a long shadow. But how much of it is the technology and how much of it is the talent and influence, I really don’t know. I know you can’t make records that sound that way any more. The high priority is technology now. It’s not the artist or the art. It’s the technology that is coming through. That’s what makes Time Out of Mind… it doesn’t take itself seriously, but then again, the sound is very significant to that record. If that record was made more haphazardly, it wouldn’t have sounded that way. It wouldn’t have had the impact that it did. The guys that helped me make it went out of their way to make a record that sounds like a record played on a record player. There wasn’t any wasted effort on Time Out of Mind, and I don’t think there will be on any more of my records.”

The songs

A few critics, including NPR’s Tim Riley, drew parallels between the album’s title and the Steely Dan song of the same name (first issued on their 1980 album, Gaucho), but the phrase goes back at least to 1596 when Shakespeare used it in Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in Act 1.4 of Romeo and Juliet.

In a 1997 interview, Dylan said that the songs on Time Out of Mind “naturally hung together because they share a certain skepticism. They’re more concerned with the dread realities of life than the bright and rosy idealism popular today.”

In an article published in The Chicago Tribune on September 28, 1997, Greg Kot writes, “Dylan projects the unease of someone adrift in a world that he ceases to understand, and that ceases to understand him. Yet he finds a strange comfort in his surroundings. ‘You could say I’m on anything but a roll,’ he sings , one of many instances of the album’s gallows humor. The music, anchored by Dylan contemporaries such as pianist Jim Dickinson and organist Augie Myers, hovers like an eerie David Lynch soundtrack and echoes the solo-free groove and grind of Dylan’s ’60s masterpieces. With Lanois’ painterly production giving the songs a three-dimensional depth, the arrangements frame Dylan’s voice as few recent recordings have.

“Dylan does not push his voice beyond its limits, but rather sing-speaks barely above a hush, as though holding an imaginary conversation with a distant lover, perhaps even his long-departed audience. He sings about love gone cold, but until the epic closing song, ‘Highlands,’ that loss never acquires a human face. In this 16+ minute epic, the singer briefly recaptures the conversational, playful and erotically charged tone of his youth.

“If the Dylan of World Gone Wrong echoed Flannery O’Connor, the Dylan of Time Out of Mind evokes playwright Samuel Beckett and his spare, unsentimental poetry of despair. He is confident of only one thing: ‘When you think you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.’

“Not Dark Yet” is arguably the most celebrated song on Time Out of Mind, and is perhaps the clearest example of John Keats’ influence on Dylan’s writing; it is even possible that “Not Dark Yet” was grown out of Keats’ own work. In his book, Dylan’s Visions of Sin, Christopher Ricks, a Boston University professor of humanities, draws parallels between “Not Dark Yet” and the Keats poem Ode to a Nightingale. Broken down line for line, “similar turns of phrase, figures of speech, felicities of rhyming” can be found throughout “Not Dark Yet” and the Ode. Ricks also argues that “there is a strong affinity with Keats in the way that in the song night colours, darkens, the whole atmosphere while never being spoken of,” just as Keats used winter to color and darken the atmosphere in another poem he wrote, To Autumn. “Dylan’s refrain or burden is ‘It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.’ He bears it and bares it beautifully, with exquisite precision of voice, dry humour, and resilience, all these in the cause of fortitude at life’s going to be brought to an end by death.”

The longest composition ever recorded by Dylan, the 16-minute “Highlands” took its central motif (“My heart’s in the highlands,”) from a chorus in a stall ballad called “The Strong Walls of Derry.” Jim Dickinson later recalled Dylan “leaning over the equipment case working on the lyrics…with a pencil.”

Outtakes

Fifteen compositions were recorded for Time Out of Mind, of which eleven would make the final cut. The four that did not were “Mississippi”, which was re-recorded for “Love and Theft”, “No Turning Back”, the Elizabeth Cotten composition “Shake Sugaree” and, according to Jim Dickinson “the best song there was from the session”, “Girl from the Red River Shore”.

On past albums, some fans have criticized Dylan for some of the creative decisions made with his albums, particularly with song selection. Time Out of Mind was no different except this time the criticism came from colleagues who were disappointed to see their personal favorites left on the shelf. When Dylan accepted the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, he mentioned Columbia Records chairman Don Ienner, who “convinced me to put

Unlike past sessions, none of these outtakes have circulated among collectors, something unprecedented for a Bob Dylan album. “With all of my records, there’s an abundance of material left over – stuff that, for a variety of reasons, doesn’t make the final cut. And other people seem to think they have some kind of right to it. That it’s their property even, which is baffling to me. I mean, you don’t drive a car out of the showroom without paying for it, do you? You don’t leave the supermarket without passing through the check-out with your goods. It’s called stealing. Why the principle should be thought to be any different when it comes to music, I really don’t know.”

According to Dylan, “If you had heard the original recording , you’d see in a second” why it was omitted and recut for Love and Theft. “The song was pretty much laid out intact melodically, lyrically and structurally, but Lanois didn’t see it. Thought it was pedestrian. Took it down the Afro-polyrhythm route – multirhythm drumming, that sort of thing. Polyrhythm has its place, but it doesn’t work for knifelike lyrics trying to convey majesty and heroism.

“Maybe we had worked too hard on other things, I can’t remember,” Dylan continues, “but Lanois can get passionate about what he feels to be true. He’s not above smashing guitars. I never cared about that unless it was one of mine. Things got contentious once in the parking lot. He tried to convince me that the song had to be ‘sexy, sexy and more sexy.’ I know about sexy, too. He reminded me of Sam Phillips, who had once said the same thing to John Prine about a song, but the circumstances were not similar. I tried to explain that the song had more to do with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than witch doctors, and just couldn’t be thought of as some kind of ideological voodoo thing. But he had his own way of looking at things, and in the end I had to reject this because I thought too highly of the expressive meaning behind the lyrics to bury them in some steamy cauldron of drum theory. On the performance you’re hearing, the bass is playing a triplet beat, and that adds up to all the multirhythm you need, even in a slow-tempo song. I think Lanois is an excellent producer, though.”

Aftermath

Before the album was officially released, Dylan suffered a serious heart infection called pericarditis. A potentially serious condition (caused by the fungal infection histoplasma capsulatum), it makes breathing very difficult. “It was something called histoplasmosis that came from just accidentally inhaling a bunch of stuff that was out on one of the rivers by where I live,” said Dylan. “Maybe one month, or two to three days out of the year, the banks around the river get all mucky, and then the wind blows and a bunch of swirling mess is in the air. I happened to inhale a bunch of that. That’s what made me sick. It went into my heart area, but it wasn’t anything really attacking my heart.”

“Bob was starting to get a little sick when we were sequencing the album,” recalled Lanois. “We had finished the record but then, at that point, what hit him was fluid around the heart and it probably had been building up for a while.”

Following Dylan’s May 1997 health scare, a number of columnists speculated that the songs on Time Out of Mind were inspired by an increased awareness of his own mortality. This, of course, was despite the fact that all of the songs were completed, recorded, and even mixed before he was hospitalized. Some critics like the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau tried to tame such speculations, with Christgau writing “I’m convinced that Time Out of Mind is in no intrinsic way ‘about death’… the mortality admirers hear in it is their own…The timelessness people hear in it…what Dylan has long aimed for – simple songs inhabited with an assurance that makes them seem classic rather than received.”

In interviews following its release, Dylan, for the most part, downplayed these speculations with much reserve. However, he did give a blunt assessment in a 2001 interview published in The Times Magazine: “Where? Show me…I don’t see it like that. But again, that’s the story of my life…From ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ onwards, people have misconstrued my words. They’ve attached the wrong meanings to them. That’s the status quo. That’s what happens, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

In the same interview, Dylan re-assessed Time Out of Mind, admitting some dissatisfaction with the results. “My recollection of is that it was a struggle. A struggle every inch of the way. Ask Daniel Lanois, who was trying to produce the songs. Ask anyone involved in it. They all would say the same. I didn’t trust the touring band I had at the time to do a good job in the studio, and so I hired these outside guys. But with me not knowing them, and them not knowing the music, things kept on taking unexpected turns. Repeatedly, I’d find myself compromising on this to get to that. As a result, though it held together as a collection of songs, that album sounds to me a little off…There’s a sense of some wheels going this way, some wheels going that, but hey, we’re just about getting there…But that’s my truthful memory of it, and that memory overshadows any gratification about its acceptance.”

In 1999, Guitar World Magazine asked Dylan if Time Out of Mind would have made a satisfactory final release: “No, I don’t think so. I think we are just starting to get my sound on disc, and I think there’s plenty more to do. We just opened up that door at that particular time, and in the passage of time we’ll go back in and extend that. But I didn’t feel like it was an ending to anything. I thought it was more the beginning.”

In 2003, the album was ranked number 408 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Track listing

All songs were written by Bob Dylan.

1. “Love Sick” – 5:21
2. “Dirt Road Blues” – 3:36
3. “Standing in the Doorway” – 7:43
4. “Million Miles” – 5:52
5. “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” – 5:21
6. “‘Til I Fell in Love with You” – 5:17
7. “Not Dark Yet” – 6:29
8. “Cold Irons Bound” – 7:15
9. “Make You Feel My Love” – 3:32
10. “Can’t Wait” – 5:47
11. “Highlands” – 16:31

Personnel

* Bucky Baxter – acoustic guitar, pedal steel (3,5,7,8)
* Brian Blade – drums (1,3,4,6,7,10)
* Robert Britt – martin acoustic, Fender Stratocaster (3,6,7,8)
* Chris Carrol – assistant engineer
* Cindy Cashdollar – slide guitar (3,5,7)
* Jim Dickensen – keyboards, Wurlitzer electric piano, pump organ (1,2,4,5,6,7,10,11)
* Bob Dylan – guitar, acoustic and electric rhythm lead, harmonica, piano, vocals,producer
* Geoff Gans – art direction
* Tony Garnier – electric bass, acoustic upright bass
* Joe Gastwirt – mastering engineer
* Mark Howard – engineer
* Jim Keltner – drums (1,3,4,5,6,7,10)
* David Kemper – drums on “Cold Irons Bound”
* Jeff Kramer – manager
* Daniel Lanois – guitar, mando-guitar, firebird, martin 0018, gretch gold top, rhythm, lead , producer, photography
* Tony Mangurian – percussion (3,4,10,11)
* Augie Meyers – vox organ combo, hammond b3 organ, accordion
* Susie Q. – photography
* Duke Robillard – guitar, electric l5 gibson (4,5,10)
* Mark Seliger – photography
* Winston Watson – drums on “Dirt Road Blues”

Title

Its title is probably a reference to a speech by Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (Act 1, Scene 4), but it dates back earlier than this-

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;

It is included in the “Act of Submission” of the Narragansett Indians from 1644-

Nor can we yield over ourselves unto any, that are subjects themselves in any case; having ourselves been the chief Sachems, or Princes successively, of the country, time out of mind; and for our present and lawfull enacting herof, being so farre remote from His Majestie, wee have, by joynt consent, made choice of foure of his loyall and loving subjects, our trusty and well-beloved friends…

(The World Turned Upside Down, Calloway 1994)

It is also quoted in Greenblatt’s Invisible Bullets from Thomas Harriot’s account of Algonquian Indians:

The disease was so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest man in the country never happened before, time out of mind

(Invisible Bullets, Greenblatt)

The phrase “Time Out of Mind” is also used on the first pages of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
It is the last line of the second verse of Warren Zevon’s song “Accidentally Like A Martyr”.
It is also mentioned in Part Two of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and the title of a novel by Richard Cowper.

It is also in W.B Yeats’s 1910 poem: ‘Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation’, in the lines: ‘How should the world be luckier if this house,/ Where passion and precision have been one/ Time out of mind, became too ruinous/ To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun?’

It is also used in “The Voice”, a poem by Sara Teasdale.
It is also the title of a Steely Dan song from their album Gaucho (album) It is also found in “Dirge Without Music”, a poem by Edna St.Vincent Millay

It is also found in the song “The no where man” by The Veils

The phrase “Time Out of Mind” is a synonym for “time beyond memory”, or “time immemorial”. The Oxford English Dictionary gives quotations for the phrase dating back to 1480, and variants as early as 1407.

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Sep 19

1987 – Pink Floyd release A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The comeback

Posted in 1980s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1987 – Pink Floyd release A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The comeback album is the band’s first since the departure of Roger Waters and the subsequent lawsuit over the use of the band name.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Pink Floyd’s 1987 album, the band’s first release after the departure of Roger Waters from the band in 1985. The album reached #3 on both the U.S. and UK charts. It was released in the UK and the rest of Europe on EMI and on Columbia Records for the rest of the world.

Background

After Roger Waters had declared Pink Floyd ended in 1985, David Gilmour attempted to continue the band together with Nick Mason. A bitter dispute with Waters ensued, but Gilmour and Mason eventually settled out of court for the legal right to continue using the name Pink Floyd. In exchange, Waters dissolved his former management partnership with Steve O’Rourke and gained exclusive rights to some traditional Pink Floyd imagery, including the original flying pig design, almost all of The Wall concept and everything to do with The Final Cut. Richard Wright re-joined the band during the recording sessions for this album, but only as a salaried session musician.

The recording sessions started in October 1986 as a new David Gilmour project. Gilmour revealed on the Shine On and A Momentary Lapse of Reason episodes of In the Studio with Redbeard that it was almost his third solo album as the material initially sounded too weak to be a Pink Floyd album. He then went on to say that by Christmas of 1986 that he had enough confidence to turn the album into a Pink Floyd project.

The music press responded with mostly negative reviews of the album (though Rolling Stone claimed it portended “a Floyd with a future”), despite its heavy airplay rotation on video and radio music stations. Many fans regard this album a David Gilmour effort, rather than an actual Pink Floyd album. The allmusic review refers to it as a “Gilmour solo album in all but name”. Waters himself described it as “a pretty fair forgery or a good copy” of a Pink Floyd record; his most generous appraisal was that the album contained “a few bright moments when I heard something and thought, ‘Well, maybe I’d have done something with that’.” But Waters also commented that to him, Pink Floyd no longer existed.

Recording

The album was performed largely by David Gilmour and several session musicians. The most famous of these was Tony Levin (of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame), who played bass on most of the tracks. Nick Mason felt he was out of practice on drums, and thus many of the percussion parts were either programmed or delegated to others. For example, Carmine Appice played drums on “The Dogs of War” while Jim Keltner played on “On the Turning Away” and “One Slip”. The drum machine, used on “Sorrow”, was programmed by Gilmour.

Session keyboardist Jon Carin, whom Gilmour met and played with in Bryan Ferry’s band at Live Aid, went on to collaborate with both Pink Floyd and Roger Waters on subsequent albums and tours. Pink Floyd’s original keyboardist Richard Wright arrived during the sessions, but did not officially rejoin the band due to concerns about his severance contract with Waters (the initial album lists Pink Floyd as consisting of only Gilmour and Mason; however, later re-releases add his name). Wright can be heard playing on a few tracks, notably “Sorrow”, which features his background vocals. Most other keyboard parts on the album were played by Carin, Gilmour or Ezrin.

It has been rumoured that some of the songs on A Momentary Lapse of Reason were David Gilmour’s rejected contributions to The Final Cut. Early demos to songs like “The Dogs of War,” “Round and Around,” and the melody to “On the Turning Away” are the only known songs to be rejected.

The recording heard in the middle of “Learning to Fly” is of Mason talking to an air traffic control tower in his private aircraft (both he and Gilmour became enthusiastic pilots after conquering their mutual fear of flying).

A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Pink Floyd’s first fully digital recording; however, the acoustic drums and bass guitar tracks were recorded on analogue equipment.

Cover artwork

The cover shows 700 hospital beds placed on Saunton Sands, Devon. This effect was not achieved with trick photography; a team actually hauled the wrought iron beds over three hours from London to Devon and arranged them as seen on the finished design. When the team realised that the shoot would take more than one day, a single bed was left on the beach to see if the sea would have any effect on it over night. When they returned the following morning, the bed was nowhere to be found. Long-time Pink Floyd collaborator Storm Thorgerson produced the artwork.

The official Storm Thorgerson website actually covers a version of this story:

700, yes 700, wrought iron hospital beds separately made up and positioned on the beach. Madness to do it at all, but we had in fact to do it twice cos it rained suddenly the first time, dank grey dizzle, and we couldn’t see the distant half of the beds.

This was the first Pink Floyd studio album since Animals to feature his work (not counting a design for the compilation album A Collection of Great Dance Songs in 1981).

In the gatefold sleeve was a portrait of David Gilmour and Nick Mason making it the first time that a picture of the members of Pink Floyd appeared in a gatefold sleeve since 1971′s Meddle album (not counting a poster of the band members on stage that came with vinyl copies of The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973)

The vinyl copies had two picture labels. Side one depicted a black and white photo of a man rowing his boat. Side two depicted the beds from the front cover on a beach with the dogs of war running whilst a man is sitting on a bed and a female maid is standing up.

If you look closely, there is a person flying a Hang Glider, probably a reference to Learning to Fly.

Reissues and remastering

A re-mastered CD was released in the early 1990s for Europe, and in 1997 for the rest of the world. Another remastered version was released in the U.S. and Canada in October 2005 due to Columbia Records losing the production masters. James Guthrie and Joel Plante supplied the label with new masters, and thus the mastering credit was changed from Doug Sax to Guthrie and Plante. Also, a number of minor changes have been noted in the credits and legal text for this latest release, mostly reflecting changes in the band’s business situation since 1997 (including the death of their manager Steve O’Rourke).

It is also the only one of the post-Waters Pink Floyd albums to have a remastered EMI version. The Columbia version is now out of print and will be re-released by Capitol/EMI in the not too distant future.

Track listing

All lead vocals performed by David Gilmour except where noted.

1. “Signs of Life” (instrumental, spoken word by Nick Mason) (David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin) – 4:24
2. “Learning to Fly” (Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Ezrin, Jon Carin) – 4:53
3. “The Dogs of War” (Gilmour, Moore) – 6:05
4. “One Slip” (Gilmour, Phil Manzanera) – 5:10
5. “On the Turning Away” (Gilmour, Moore) – 5:42
6. “Yet Another Movie” (Gilmour, Patrick Leonard) / “Round and Around” (Gilmour) – 7:28
7. “A New Machine (Part 1)” (Gilmour) – 1:46
8. “Terminal Frost” (Gilmour) – 6:17
9. “A New Machine (Part 2)” (Gilmour) – 0:38
10. “Sorrow” (Gilmour) – 8:46

Live performances for the 1987–89 tours

1. “Signs of Life” (performed after “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1–5)” or “Echoes”)
2. “Learning to Fly”
3. “Yet Another Movie”
4. “Round and Around”
5. “A New Machine (Part 1)”
6. “Terminal Frost”
7. “A New Machine (Part 2)”
8. “Sorrow”
9. “The Dogs of War”
10. “On the Turning Away” (ended the first half of the show)
11. “One Slip” (was the first encore on the 1987/88/89 tour)

The Momentary Lapse Tour, according to Tim Renwick, was only supposed to last 11 weeks. Originally the band would play a show at Wembley Stadium, tour the United States Of America, and finish back again at Wembley, much like what Roger Waters was doing on his Radio K.A.O.S tour. The tour began on 9 September 1987 at Lansdowne Park Ottawa, Canada, and finished at BC Place in Vancouver, Canada, on 10 December 1987. The World Tour began with the band’s first and only New Zealand performance at Western Springs in Auckland, New Zealand on 23 January 1988 and finished at the Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, on 23 August 1988. In the spring and summer of 1989, the band did another European leg of the tour, dubbing it Another Lapse. During the tour, the band played two consecutive nights in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the Dean Smith Center, where one of the men who the band was named for, Floyd Council was born.

Personnel

* David Gilmour – vocals, guitars, keyboards, sequencers
* Nick Mason – drums, percussion, drum machine, sound effects

Additional personnel

* Richard Wright – keyboards, backing vocals
* Tony Levin – bass guitar, Chapman Stick
* Bob Ezrin – percussion
* Carmine Appice – drums
* Jim Keltner – drums
* Jon Carin – keyboards
* Tom Scott – alto and soprano saxophones
* Scott Page – tenor saxophone
* Patrick Leonard – synthesizers
* Bill Payne – Hammond organ
* Michael Landau – backing guitar
* John Helliwell – saxophone (mistakenly credited as John Halliwell)
* Darlene Koldenhaven, Carmen Twillie, Phyllis St. James, Donnie Gerrard – backing vocals
* Spherical sound by: Ken Caillat, Tom Jones, Sarah Nean Bruce
* Recorded by: Guy Charbonneau, Le Mobile, Los Angeles
* Additional sound effects by: Andrew Jackson
* General technical and musical instrument supervision: Phil Taylor
* Mastered at: Mastering Lab & Precision Lacquer
* Pink Floyd management: Steve O’Rourke, EMKA Productions, London

Sales certifications (U.S.)

The R.I.A.A. have certified the album:

* Gold and Platinum (in November 1987)
* Double Platinum (in January 1988)
* Triple Platinum (in February 1992)
* Quadruple Platinum (in August 2001)

Single releases

* “Learning to Fly (edit)”/”Terminal Frost” – Columbia 38-07363; released 15 September 1987
* “On the Turning Away”/”Run Like Hell (Live)” – Columbia 38-07660; released 24 November 1987
* “The Dogs of War”; April, 1988 (US radio only)
* “One Slip”/”Terminal Frost”; June 1988

Chart positions

Album
Year     Chart     Position
1987     UK album chart     3
1987     The Billboard 200     3
1987     Billboard CD Charts     1
1987     Norway’s album chart     2

Singles
Year     Single     Chart     Position
1987     “Learning to Fly”     Mainstream Rock Tracks     1
1987     “Learning to Fly”     The Billboard Hot 100     70
1987     “Learning to Fly”     UK Singles Charts     55
1987     “On the Turning Away”     Mainstream Rock Tracks     1
1988     “The Dogs of War”     Mainstream Rock Tracks     10
1988     “One Slip”     Mainstream Rock Tracks     5
1988     “Sorrow”     Mainstream Rock Tracks     36

Quotations

On the Momentary Lapse of Reason album, Nick’s belief in himself was pretty well gone, and Rick’s belief in himself was totally gone. And they weren’t up to making a record, to be quite honest about it Roger’s very good at belittling people, and I think over the years he managed to convince Rick completely that he was useless and more or less convinced Nick of the same thing.

– David Gilmour, Rock Compact Disc magazine, September 1992

I must say, that under the circumstances, it’s a superb title for a so-called Pink Floyd record.

– Roger Waters, Penthouse magazine, September 1988

Release of the LP

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was released on the same day in the UK as the LPs Bad by Michael Jackson and Actually by The Pet Shop Boys, both of which topped it at the first and second positions in the following week’s album charts. It debuted at No. 3 and never rose any higher although sales remained brisk helped by heavy airplay, the overall welcome reunion of Pink Floyd, and the world tour which lasted over a year.

The album debuted at #43 on the Billboard 200 and, like in the UK, rose to No. 3 in the United States as Michael Jackson’s Bad and Whitesnake’s Whitesnake ’87 occupied the top two spots respectively at numbers 1 and 2. The album remained on the US charts for over a year.

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Jan 19

1980 – Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, started a 15-week run at No.1 on the

Posted in 1980s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Grammy, Guitarists, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

1980 – Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, started a 15-week run at No.1 on the US album chart. The groups third US No.1, it went on to sell over 8 million copies.

The Wall is a rock opera presented as a double album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in late 1979. It was subsequently performed live, with elaborate theatrical effects, and made into a film.

Following in the footsteps of their previous albums, The Wall is a concept album — specifically, it deals largely with the theme of isolation from one’s peers. The concept was largely inspired by the band’s 1977 tour promoting the album Animals, with regards to an incident where Roger Waters’ frustration with the audience reached a point where Waters spat in the face of a fan who was attempting to climb on stage; this, in turn, led him to lament that such a wall exists. With its significantly darker theme, The Wall featured a notably harsher and more theatrical sound than their previous releases.

The Wall is a rock opera that centres on the character “Pink”. Largely based on Waters’ personal life, Pink struggles in life from an early age, having lost his father in war (“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)”), abused by teachers (“The Happiest Days of Our Lives”), nurtured by an overprotective mother (“Mother”), and deserted by his wife later on (“Don’t Leave Me Now”) — all of which factored into Pink’s mental isolation from society, figuratively referred to as “The Wall”.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed The Wall as #87 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Recording history

In 1977, Pink Floyd were promoting Animals with their In The Flesh tour. On the final night of the tour in Montreal, Canada, Waters spat in the face of a fan who was trying to climb over the netting between the audience and the stage, and get up with the band. The incident later helped inspire Waters to develop the idea of The Wall. However, he returned for their live performances as a paid musician.

For “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)”, Pink Floyd needed to record a school choir, so they approached music teacher Alun Renshaw of Islington Green School, around the corner from their Britannia Row Studios. The chorus was overdubbed twelve times to give the impression that the choir was larger. The choir were not allowed to hear the rest of the song after singing the chorus. Though the school received a lump sum payment of £1000, there was no contractual arrangement for royalties. Under 1996 UK copyright law, they became eligible, and after choir members were tracked down by royalties agent Peter Rowan of RBL Music, through the website Friends Reunited, they claimed the money.

Originally released on Columbia Records in the U.S. and Harvest Records in the UK, The Wall was then re-released as a digitally remastered CD in 1994 in the UK on EMI. In 1997, Columbia Records issued an updated remaster in the United States, Canada, Australia, South America and Japan. For The Wall’s 20th Anniversary in April 2000, Capitol Records in the U.S. and EMI in Canada, Australia, South America and Japan re-released the 1997 remaster with the artwork from the EMI Europe remaster. The Wall was the first Pink Floyd album since 1967′s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn whose cover was not done by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis. Instead, Gerald Scarfe designed the cover and gatefold sleeve. David Gilmour recalls Storm Thorgerson falling out with Roger Waters over issues such as the credit for the Animals sleeve design.

Concept and storyline

“Isn’t this where…we came in?”
Play sound
The last second of Outside the Wall and the first second of In the Flesh?
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The album’s overriding themes are the causes and implications of self-imposed isolation, symbolized by the metaphorical wall of the title. The album’s songs create a very loose storyline sketching events in the life of the protagonist, Pink. Pink loses his father as a child (Waters’s own father was killed in Anzio during World War II), is smothered by his overprotective mother, and is oppressed at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers, each of these traumas becoming “another brick in the wall”. As an adult Pink becomes a rock star, but his relationships are marred by infidelity and outbursts of violence. As his marriage crumbles, Pink finishes building the wall and completes his isolation from human contact.

Pink’s mindset deteriorates behind his freshly completed wall, with his personal crisis culminating during an onstage performance. Hallucinating, Pink believes that he is a fascist dictator, and his concerts are like Neo-Nazi rallies where he sets his men on fans he considers unworthy, only to have his conscience rebel at this and put himself on trial, his inner judge ordering him to “tear down the wall” in order to open himself to the outside world, and apologizing to his closest friends who are hurt most by his self-isolation. At this point the album’s end runs into its beginning with the closing words “Isn’t this where…”; the first song on the album, “In the Flesh?”, begins with the words “…we came in?” – with a continuation of the melody of the last song, “Outside the Wall” – hinting at the cyclical nature of Waters’s theme.

The LP’s sleeve art and custom picture labels by Gerald Scarfe tied in with the album’s concept. Side one had a quarter of the wall erected and a sketch of the teacher. Side two saw half of the wall erected and a sketch of the wife. Side three had three-quarters of the wall erected and a sketch of the character of Pink, while side four had the wall completely erected and a sketch of the prosecutor. Bob Ezrin played a major part in taking Waters’s demo material and clarifying the storyline by writing a script, which even called for additional songs to complete the plot.

Film version

Pink Floyd The Wall (film)

A film version of The Wall was released in 1982 entitled Pink Floyd The Wall, directed by Alan Parker and starring Bob Geldof. The screenplay was written by Roger Waters. The film features music from the original album, much of which was re-recorded by the band with additional orchestration, some with minor lyrical and musical changes.

Originally the film was intended to be intercut with concert footage and a few of the live shows were actually filmed, but subsequently not used in the film at all. Footage from these concerts has appeared on different websites from time to time and on YouTube. However, an official release of this footage by Pink Floyd has not been authorized other than what was used in the documentary Behind the Wall.

Reception

Immensely successful upon release, The Wall quickly jumped to #1 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S in its fourth week (it debuted at #53) and #3 in the U.K.. Its worldwide sales are estimated at 15 million copies (30 million units), and in the U.S. it has achieved 23 times platinum (for sales of 11.5 million double-disc sets; statistics mistakenly identifying The Wall as the best selling multiple-disc album of all-time in the U.S. and third best-selling album by any artist in the U.S. do not take into account that double albums count as two platinum sales), and is their second best-selling album in the U.S. after The Dark Side of the Moon. It was among the most popular albums of the early 1980s, to the extent that film director Alan Parker created a film based on it. The album had a string of hit singles, with “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2″ being their only song to hit #1 on the Billboard.

In addition to its commercial success, critical reception of The Wall was, and remains, mostly positive. Carlo Twist of Blender gave it 5 stars out of a possible 5, stating that, “For all its pomp and lofty ambition, there’s a streak of almost punk-rock venom within, not to mention some of the band’s best humping, thumping heavy rock.” The Wall would also be included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Post-split

After Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, a legal battle ensued over the rights to the name “Pink Floyd” and its material. In the end, Waters retained the right to use The Wall and its material, as his name has been most closely associated with the album. This meant the sole ownership of all The Wall tracks except for the three Gilmour co-wrote the music for (“Young Lust”, “Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell”) and images relating to The Wall on the later 1987–1990 and 1994 tours by the three-man Pink Floyd required payments to Waters.

Waters staged a concert performance of The Wall at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on 21 July 1990 both to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a fundraising effort for the World War Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief. This performance featured guest artists including Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper and Van Morrison. This performance also differed from previous shows in that some songs from the original album and Pink Floyd concert version were omitted, others were slightly modified, and one Waters solo song, “The Tide Is Turning” was substituted for “Outside The Wall” as the concluding song.

Track listing

All songs by Roger Waters except as noted.
Side one
#     Title     Writer(s)     Length
1.     “In the Flesh?”           3:19
2.     “The Thin Ice”           2:27
3.     “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)”           3:21
4.     “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”           1:46
5.     “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”           4:00
6.     “Mother”           5:36
Side two
#     Title     Writer(s)     Length
1.     “Goodbye Blue Sky”           2:45
2.     “Empty Spaces”           2:10
3.     “Young Lust”       Waters / David Gilmour     3:25
4.     “One of My Turns”           3:35
5.     “Don’t Leave Me Now”           4:16
6.     “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)”           1:14
7.     “Goodbye Cruel World”           1:13
Side three
#     Title     Writer(s)     Length
1.     “Hey You”           4:40
2.     “Is There Anybody Out There?”           2:44
3.     “Nobody Home”           3:26
4.     “Vera”           1:35
5.     “Bring the Boys Back Home”           1:21
6.     “Comfortably Numb”       Gilmour / Waters     6:24
Side four
#     Title     Writer(s)     Length
1.     “The Show Must Go On”           1:36
2.     “In the Flesh”           4:13
3.     “Run Like Hell”       Gilmour / Waters     4:19
4.     “Waiting for the Worms”           4:04
5.     “Stop”           0:30
6.     “The Trial”       Waters / Bob Ezrin     5:13
7.     “Outside the Wall”           1:41

Singles

* “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”/”One of My Turns” – Harvest HAR 5194; released 16 November 1979 (UK, U.S., France and Italy )
* “Run Like Hell”/”Don’t Leave Me Now” – Columbia 1-11265; released April, 1980 (Holland, Sweden and US)
* “Comfortably Numb”/”Hey You” – Columbia 1-11311; released June, 1980 (US and Japan)

Personnel

* Roger Waters — vocals, bass guitar, co-producer, synthesiser, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, sleeve design
* David Gilmour — guitars, vocals, co-producer, bass guitar, sequencer, synthesiser, clavinet, percussion
* Richard Wright — piano, organ, synthesiser, clavinet, bass pedals
* Nick Mason — drums, percussion

with

* Jeff Porcaro — drums on “Mother”
* Lee Ritenour — Rhythm Guitar on “One of My Turns” and Acoustic Guitar on “Comfortably Numb”
* Joe Porcaro — Marching Snare drum on “Bring the Boys Back Home”
* Bleu Ocean — Marching Snare drum on “Bring the Boys Back Home”
* Freddie Mandel — Hammond Organ on “In The Flesh?” and “In the Flesh”
* Bobbye Hall — Percussion
* Ron di Blasi — Classical guitar on “Is There Anybody Out There?”
* Larry Williams — Clarinet on “Outside the Wall”
* Trevor Veitch — Mandolin
* Frank Marrocco — Concertina
* Bruce Johnston — Backing Vocals
* Toni Tennille — Backing Vocals
* Joe Chemay — Backing Vocals
* Jon Joyce — Backing Vocals
* Stan Farber — Backing Vocals
* Jim Haas — Backing Vocals
* Fourth Form Music Class, Islington Green School, London — Backing Vocals
* Bob Ezrin — co-producer; Orchestra Arrangement; Keyboards
* Michael Kamen — Orchestra Arrangement
* James Guthrie — Co-Producer; Engineer; Percussion; Synthesiser on “Empty Spaces” (in collaboration with David Gilmour), Sequencer; Drums on “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” (in collaboration with Nick Mason), remastering producer
* Nick Griffiths — Engineer
* Patrice Queff — Engineer
* Justin Dimma — Engineer
* Darren McIntomney — Engineer
* Rick Hart — Engineer
* Robert Hrycyna — Engineer
* Gerald Scarfe — Sleeve Design
* Doug Sax — Mastering and Remastering

CHARTS

Year	Chart	Peak
1979	UK album chart	3
	Norwegian Album Chart	1
	Spanish Album Chart	9
	Swedish Album Chart	1
	Swiss Album Chart	29
	German Album Chart	1
	Danish Album Chart	19
	New Zealand Album Chart	24
	Italian Album Chart	13
	Finnish Album Chart	21
1980	The Billboard 200	1

Singles

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1979	“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”	UK Top 40	1
1980	“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”	US Billboard Pop Singles	1
1980	“Run Like Hell”	US Billboard Pop Singles	53
1980	“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”	Norway’s single chart	1

Awards

Grammy Awards

Year	Winner	Category
1980	The Wall	Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

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Jan 14

1978 – Player started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart

Posted in 1970s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1978 – Player started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Baby Come Back’, a No.32 hit in the UK, the groups only UK hit.

Peter Beckett grew up in Liverpool, England, where he spent four years playing in a band called Palladin. He quit to come to America and join another group, Friends, which recorded for MGM. After a short time, they evolved into Skyband, which released one album on the RCA label. Skyband lasted long enough to play one concert in L.A. and tour abroad before breaking up.

In 1976, Peter slipped on his jeans and attended a classy Hollywood party. To his surprise, everyone there was wearing white except for one other guest, who had also come in Levi’s. Peter figured the other guy had to be a musician, so they sat down together and began to talk. As it turned out, he was John Charles Crowley, a singer/songwriter from Galveston Bay, Texas. The two hit it off, and made a date to listen to each other’s material.

THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 14, 1978

1. Baby Come Back
Player

2. How Deep is Your Love
Bee Gees

3. Here You Come Again
Dolly Parton

4. You’re in my Heart
Rod Stewart

5. Back in Love Again
LTD

A few days later, Peter and J.C. held a jam session, and afterward decided to form a band. They added Ron Moss, a bass player from L.A., and veteran of two bands: Punk Rock and Count Zeppelin and his Fabled Airship. Ron brought along a high school friend, John Friesden, who, at one time, had toured the world as the assistant producer and drummer with the Ice Follies. Keyboard man Wayne Cook came abroad just a little too late; he missed being included in the photo used on their first album cover.

The boys were spotted by the production team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, and signed to their company, Haven. Lambert and Potter then negotiated a deal with RSO. A debut album was planned, which one critic was to call “a ten-song exercise in straightforward, romantic pop.” One of those tunes was “Baby Come Back.”

We wrote that pretty quickly,” recalled Peter. “It took about three hours one night, and then we spent about an hour the next night polishing it up. J.C. and I had just broken up with our girlfriends, and we were still feeling the sting. When we sat down to write, our moods just blended, and it came out as ‘Baby Come Back.’

“I remember rehearsing the song in J.C.’s garage studio. It was the middle of summer, hotter than hell, and there we sat with our acoustic guitars, working it up amid the spiders and cockroaches. We knew it sounded like a hit, though. There was so much personal feeling in the song that we knew we had something special.”

“Baby Come Back” broke on the radio in October 1977 and reached number one early in January. It spent three weeks at the top — more than seven months on the charts. During that time, over two million copies were sold.

This infuriated some critics, who felt that the boys’ style was a “blatant carbon” of several other groups. However, reviewers couldn’t seem to agree as to the source of their familiar sound. Various writers claimed that “Baby Come Back” was an imitation of Hall and Oates’ “She’s Gone,” while others insisted the band copied Foreigner, the Bee Gees, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Journey, and even Andy Gibb.

“Just call it rock ‘n’ soul,” said Ron Moss. “We pull from the best of both worlds.”

Player didn’t perform live until November 1977, when they appeared as the opening act for Gino Vanelli. Later, they toured with Heart, Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Clapton. Their second single, “This Time I’m in it for Love,” was a Top 10 hit in the spring of 1978. “Prisoner Of Your Love” was a Top 40 hit in November of that year. Their last charting singles were for Casablanca in 1980 and RCA in 1982.

And their name? “We saw the word on television when the players from the show were listed,” Peter explained. “We knocked off the ‘s’ and went with it. I think the word holds a certain ambiguity.”

“And also, people can hold up our album, point to it, and say, ‘That’s a great record, Player’.”

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Jul 08

1970 – Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell, July 8, 1970)…

Posted in 1970s, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Birthdays, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1970 – Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell, July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist known by the stage name Beck. With his pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being amongst the most idiosyncratic artists of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock.

He rose to underground popularity with his early works, which combined social criticism (as in “MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack” and “Deep Fried Love”) with musical and lyrical experimentation. He first earned wider public attention for his breakthrough single “Loser,” a 1994 hit.

Beck has cited The Cars, Mantronix, Gary Wilson, Pussy Galore, Willie Dixon, Bill Broonzy, and Sonic Youth among his influences. Two of Beck’s most popular and acclaimed recordings were Odelay (1996) and Sea Change (2002). Odelay was awarded Album of the Year by American magazine Rolling Stone and by UK publications NME and Mojo. Odelay also received a Grammy nomination for Best Album.

Early life

Beck was born in Los Angeles, California to David Campbell, a Canadian musician, and Bibbe Hansen, a visual artist. His maternal grandfather was Al Hansen, a visual collage artist of the Fluxus school of art. His paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, while his maternal grandmother was half Jewish; Beck himself is a Scientologist, as are his wife and his father. Beck’s mother also has Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. When his parents separated, Beck stayed with his mother and brother in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city’s diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother’s art scene—all of which would later reappear in his recorded and published work.

After dropping out of high school in the mid-1980s, Beck traveled to Europe and developed his musical talent by busking. In Germany, he spent time with his grandfather Al Hansen. The late 1980s found him in New York City, involved in the punk-influenced anti-folk music movement.

Career

Independent releases

In 1988, Beck recorded a cassette entitled Banjo Story, which has since become available in bootleg form. He returned to Los Angeles at the turn of the decade. To support himself, he took a variety of low-paying, dead-end jobs, and lived in a shed, all the while continuing to develop his music. Beck also sought out (or sneaked onto) stages at venues all over Los Angeles, from punk clubs to coffee shops and busking on the streets. During this time, he met Chris Ballew (founder of The Presidents of the United States of America). They performed on the streets as a duo for a while. Some of his earliest recordings were achieved by working with Tom Grimley at Poop Alley Studios, a part of WIN Records.

The founders of Bong Load Custom Records, Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf, and Bradshaw Lambert discovered Beck, signing him to their fledgling label. “Loser”, a collaboration between hip hop nuance producer Carl Stephenson and Beck, created a sensation when radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the flagship music program from Santa Monica College radio station KCRW. That exposure and a subsequent live performance on the show July 23, 1993, led to a bidding war among labels to sign Beck. Eventually, he chose Geffen Records, who offered him terms that included an allowance for the release of independent albums while under contract. Of all the record labels to offer Beck a contract, Geffen offered him the least amount of money, but the greatest amount of creative freedom.

Mellow Gold and Odelay

Geffen’s official debut release in 1994 of Mellow Gold—culled from sessions with Rothrock, Schnapf, and Stephenson—made Beck a mainstream success. At the same time, he released Stereopathetic Soulmanure on Flipside Records and One Foot in the Grave on independent K Records. Beck took his act on the road in 1994 with a worldwide tour, followed by a spot on the main stage of the 1995 Lollapalooza tour. Some critics still panned him as a one-hit wonder, and audiences’ familiarity with “Loser” (especially at Lollapalooza), along with their apparent lack of interest in his other work, only reinforced his image as such.

When the time came to record his follow-up to Mellow Gold, Beck enlisted Rothrock and Schnapf as producers and began recording an album of moody, low-key acoustic numbers to showcase his songwriting. The melancholy musical mood has been attributed to the deaths of several people close to Beck, including his grandfather, one of his acknowledged greatest influences. Eventually, Beck shelved the album and pursued a more upbeat approach. Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys’ album Paul’s Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck’s vision of a more fun, accessible album.

The result, 1996′s Odelay, would put the “one-hit wonder” criticisms to rest. The lead single, “Where It’s At,” received heavy airplay, and its video was in constant rotation on MTV. Within the year Odelay received praise from Rolling Stone magazine, appeared on countless “Best of” lists (it topped the Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for “Album of the Year”), received double-platinum status, and earned a number of industry awards, including two Grammys. Besides “Where It’s At” three other hit singles were released from the album: “Devils Haircut”, “Jack-Ass” and “The New Pollution”.

Beginning in 1993, “Loser” co-writer and Mellow Gold co-producer Carl Stephenson embarked on an experimental trip hop project which eventually resulted in Forest for the Trees, releasing a self-titled album in 1997 followed by an EP in 1999. Beck contributed to both records, providing spoken word, harmonica, and various other instruments.

Mutations and Midnite Vultures

Odelay was followed in 1998 by the release of Mutations. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck’s wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Mutations was produced by Beck and Nigel Godrich (frequent producer and collaborator with Radiohead) and is believed to have been intended as a stopgap measure before the proper next album. Recorded over two weeks, during which Beck recorded one song a day, the sessions produced fourteen songs. Mutations was a departure from the electronic density of Odelay and shows heavy folk and blues influences. Songs on the album consisted of older tracks, some dating back as early as 1994.

During 1998, Beck’s art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition entitled “Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches”, which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug In Editions/Smart Art Press.

In 1999, Beck was awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. In November, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song “Debra”, and the touring band was supplemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Beck released a number of B-sides and soundtrack-only songs as well, including “Deadweight” from the A Life Less Ordinary soundtrack, “Midnite Vultures” (curiously, not on the album of the same name), a cover of The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” which appeared in the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” from Moulin Rouge! He is also credited on the French band Air’s 2001 album 10 000 Hz Legend for vocals on the songs “Don’t Be Light” and “The Vagabond” (as well as harmonica on the latter). He duetted with Emmylou Harris on Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, performing “Sin City”.

Sea Change

In 2001, the Beck EP, which consists of B-sides from the Midnite Vultures era, was released. The EP was only available from Beck’s website, and only 10,000 copies were printed.

In 2002, Beck released Sea Change, which, like Mutations, was produced by Nigel Godrich. It became Beck’s first US Top 10 album, reaching #8. The album also received critical acclaim, earning five stars from Rolling Stone (the magazine’s highest rating) and placing second in the Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 2002. Sea Change was conceptualized around one unifying theme: the end of a relationship. The album featured string arrangements by Beck’s father, David Campbell, and a sonically dense mix reminiscent of Mutations. Although some radio singles were released, no commercial singles were made available to the public. In August 2002, prior to the release of Sea Change, Beck embarked on a solo acoustic tour of small theaters and halls, during which he played several songs from the forthcoming album. The post-release Sea Change tour featured The Flaming Lips as Beck’s opening and backing band. A song Beck co-wrote with William Orbit, “Feel Good Time”, was recorded by pop singer Pink for inclusion on the soundtrack of the 2003 film Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

Guero and The Information

In 2004, Beck returned to the studio to work on his sixth major-label studio album. The record, Guero, was produced by the Dust Brothers and Tony Hoffer and features a collaboration with Jack White of The White Stripes; it marked a return to Odelay-era sound. The album was released in March 2005 and enjoyed critical acclaim from most mainstream press, earning four of five stars from Rolling Stone, as well as a “Critic’s Choice” recognition from The New York Times. The album received a less enthusiastic response from Beck’s dedicated fan base; the album received a relatively low 6.6 (out of 10) score by Pitchfork alongside a lukewarm and disappointed review. Nonetheless, the album debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts, pushing 162,000 copies in the first week and giving Beck his best week ever in terms of commercial sales and chart position. Since the release of Guero, the album’s first single, “E-Pro” (which samples the drum track from the Beastie Boys hit “So What’cha Want”), has been well received by the mainstream rock community, receiving significant play time on mainstream radio. The second single, “Girl,” received decent play time on mainstream radio and heavy airplay on college and independent radio. The third and final single of the album was “Hell Yes”.

On February 1, 2005, Beck released an EP featuring four remixes of songs from Guero by independent artists who use sounds from various early 8-bit video game devices like the Nintendo Game Boy. The EP, GameBoy Variations, featured “Ghettochip Malfunction” [Hell Yes] and “GameBoy/Homeboy” [Que' Onda Guero], both remixed by the band 8-Bit, and also had “Bad Cartridge” [E-Pro] and “Bit Rate Variation in B-Flat” [Girl], the last two being remixed by Paza {The X-Dump}. The EP cover art shows a long-haired person headbanging to his Game Boy, which is plugged into an amplifier like an electric guitar. This EP was featured in an issue of Nintendo Power. A music video for “Gameboy/Homeboy” was made by Wyld File.
Beck plays at the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington. The screens show puppets that emulated the band throughout the show.
Beck plays at the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington. The screens show puppets that emulated the band throughout the show.

Beck performed at the music and arts festival Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee on June 17, 2006, with a set that featured many songs from Guero. In addition to his band, Beck was accompanied by a group of puppets, dressed as him and members of his band. Live video feed of the puppets’ performance was broadcast on video screens to the audience. The puppet show was included throughout his 2006 world tour.

Beck’s seventh major-label studio album, The Information, which again reunited him with Nigel Godrich, was released on October 3, 2006. The release marked the first time in seven years that Beck released studio albums in consecutive years. The album reportedly took more than three years to make and has been described as “quasi hip-hop”. It came with a sheet of stickers, which were to be used to “make your own album cover.” Because of this, The Information was disqualified by the Official Chart Company from entering the UK albums chart, but in the US it gave Beck his third straight Top 10 studio album peak on the Billboard 200, reaching #7. The lead US single, “Nausea”, officially went to radio on September 5, 2006. In the UK, the first single was “Cellphone’s Dead”. On September 27, 2006, Beck released a Yahoo! Music Unlimited exclusive track, “Think I’m in Love”, before the album was released. His latest single, “Timebomb”, was released on iTunes on August 21, 2007, and the limited edition vinyl 12″ was released on November 2, 2007, with an instrumental version of the song on the B-side. In December, 2007, it was announced that “Timebomb” had been nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance.

Modern Guilt

In February 2008, Beck stated in an interview with Rolling Stone that he had been working on a new album “with an unnamed producer” and that he expected it to be released by the end of the year. In early March 2008, the unnamed producer was revealed to be Danger Mouse. On May 5, 2008, MTV.com revealed that Beck would release an as-yet untitled 10-song album within the next four to six weeks. It was also reported that singer Cat Power had contributed to the album. The new album will be released on Interscope in North America and on XL Records in the rest of the world, although no official street date has been announced. On May 12, 2008, the Rolling Stone website revealed that the new album is titled Modern Guilt. On May 19, Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show premiered single “Chemtrails”, and it was also made available on Beck’s MySpace and website. In early June, Beck performed several songs from the new album at The Echo in Los Angeles, backed by musicians including Jessica Dobson (also known as Deep Sea Diver). It was revealed on June 12 that Modern Guilt will be released on July 7, 2008, in the UK and Europe on XL Recordings, and on July 8, 2008, in North America on DGC. “Chemtrails” has been uploaded onto Beck’s official iLike profile , along with “Orphans” and “Gamma Ray”.

Musical style

Beck’s musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has been known to play many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including hip-hop, robot funk, and blues. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs.

Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, “Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul’s Boutique, ‘Shake Your Bon Bon’, and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet.” The review continued to comment on Beck, saying that his mix of goofy piety and ambiguous intent helped the album. Sea Change was called “evocative music”, with country rock roots. The songs on the album also had “a warm, enveloping sound” with the help of his acoustic guitar.

Personal life

From 1991 to 2000, Beck was in a relationship with designer Leigh Limon. Their breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi, in April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son, Cosimo Henri Hansen. Ribisi gave birth to another child in 2007.

Beck has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his wife is also a second-generation Scientologist. Marissa and her twin brother, Giovanni, were delivered by Beck’s mother, Bibbe. Beck publicly acknowledged his affiliation with the Church of Scientology for the first time in an interview published in the New York Times Magazine on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Irish Sunday Tribune’s i Magazine on June 11, 2005, where he was quoted as saying, “Yeah, I’m a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it.” When questioned by the interviewer about Scientology’s core beliefs, he replied,
“ “What it actually is is just sort of, uh, you know, I think it’s about philosophy and sort of, uh, all these kinds of, you know, ideals that are common to a lot of religions….There’s nothing fantastical… just a real deep grassroots concerted effort for humanitarian causes.I don’t know if you know the stuff they have. It’s unbelievable the stuff they are doing. Education… they have free centres all over the place for poor kids. They have the number one drug rehabilitation programme in the entire world (called Narconon). It has a 90-something percent success rate… When you look at the actual facts and not what’s conjured in people’s minds that’s all bullshit to me because I’ve actually seen stuff first hand.” ”

Appearances in media

Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live six times; these shows were hosted by Kevin Spacey, Bill Paxton, Christina Ricci, Jennifer Garner, Tom Brady and Hugh Laurie. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the famous on-stage puppets used during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured “Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang”. He has also performed on The Late Show with David Letterman alongside Borat in a 2006 episode.

Beck performed a guest voice as himself in Matt Groening’s animated show Futurama, in the episode “Bendin’ in the Wind”. He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a “hillbilly from outer space”. He also made a very brief voice appearance in 1998 cartoon feature film, The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” entitled “Edelweiss”.

Discography

Main article: Beck discography

* Mellow Gold (1994)
* Odelay (1996)
* Mutations (1998)
* Midnite Vultures (1999)
* Sea Change (2002)
* Guero (2005)
* The Information (2006)
* Modern Guilt (2008)

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Jan 14

1969 – Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters …

Posted in 1960s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Bio, Birthdays, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Drummers, General, Gold, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1969 – Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters is Born. Dave Grohl, drummer, singer, Nirvana, (1991 UK No.7 & 1992 US No.6 single Smells Like Teen Spirit’ from the 1991 album ‘Nevermind’ spent over 2 years on the UK chart & made US No.1 album chart in 1992). Foo Fighters, (1995 UK No.5 single ‘This Is A Call’, US No.5 single ‘All My Life’).

David Eric Grohl (born January 14, 1969) is an American rock musician, singer and songwriter. Grohl began his music career in the 1980s as the drummer for several Washington, D.C., area bands, including the hardcore punk band Scream. In 1990 he became the drummer for grunge group Nirvana. Following the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in April 1994, Grohl formed Foo Fighters, where he emerged as a frontman and songwriter. In addition to leading Foo Fighters, Grohl has also been involved in other musical projects, including Queens of the Stone Age and his heavy metal side project Probot, and has performed session work for a variety of musicians, including Killing Joke, Tenacious D, Nine Inch Nails and, most recently, The Prodigy.

Biography

Early life

When Grohl was a young child, his family (father James Grohl, mother Virginia Wendt, and older sister Lisa) relocated from Warren, Ohio, to Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Three years later, his parents divorced, and Grohl moved in with best friend Jesse Richard Mueller.

At the age of twelve, Grohl began learning to play guitar. He eventually grew tired of lessons and instead played in bands with friends.

In Virginia, Grohl attended Thomas Jefferson High School as a freshman and sophomore. He was elected vice president of his freshman class and played bits of songs by bands like the Circle Jerks and Bad Brains over the school intercom before his morning announcements. During his junior year, Grohl and his mother decided that he should transfer to Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria because his marijuana usage was affecting his grades. He attended Bishop Ireton as a freshman and a partial year as sophomore from 1984-1986.

While in high school, Grohl played in several local bands, including a stint on guitar in a band called Freak Baby. While playing in Freak Baby, Grohl had been teaching himself to play drums by banging on various items in his bedroom. When Freak Baby kicked out its bass player, Grohl decided to switch to drums, and the new band called themselves Mission Impossible.

Scream (band)

At the age of seventeen, Grohl scored an audition with local DC favorites Scream to fill the vacancy left by the departure of drummer Kent Stax. In order to try out for the audition, Grohl had lied about his age claiming he was 20. Over the next four years, Grohl toured extensively with the band, recording a couple of live albums and two studio albums, No More Censorship and Fumble, on which Grohl penned and sang vocals on the song “Gods Look Down”.

While playing in Scream, Grohl became a fan of The Melvins and eventually befriended the band. During a 1990 tour stop on the west coast, The Melvins’ Buzz Osborne took a couple of his friends, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, to see the band.

Nirvana (band)

A few months later, Scream unexpectedly disbanded following the departure of its bass player, and Grohl placed a phone call to Osborne for advice. Knowing how much Cobain and Novoselic liked Grohl’s drumming, Osborne gave Novoselic’s phone number to Grohl. Novoselic invited Grohl to Seattle, where Grohl attended Nirvana’s infamous show at the Motor Sports Garage, the one Nirvana show that featured Dan Peters on drums. (Grohl admitted to Rolling Stone in 2005 that he spent most of Nirvana’s set outside talking to a friend.) Grohl subsequently auditioned for the band, and soon joined them full-time.

At the time that Grohl joined Nirvana, the band had already recorded several demos for what would be the follow-up to their debut album Bleach, having spent time recording with producer Butch Vig in Wisconsin. Initially, the plans were to release the album on Sub Pop, but the band found itself receiving a great deal of major label interest based on the demos. Grohl spent the initial months with Nirvana travelling to various major labels as the band shopped for a deal, eventually signing with DGC Records. In the spring of 1991, the band entered the studio to record the album.

Upon its release, Nevermind exceeded all expectations and became a massive success, catapulting the band to worldwide stardom. At the same time, Grohl found himself fighting with his status in the band. While his drumming style was a significant element in the band’s success, Grohl saw himself as just another in a long line of drummers. In his mind, Nirvana was the band that recorded Bleach; his arrival had altered that sound dramatically, and, as he saw it, not necessarily in a positive way. Though Grohl had been writing songs for several years, he declined to introduce his songs to the band for fear of damaging the band’s chemistry. Instead, Grohl compiled his songs and recorded them himself, releasing a cassette called Pocketwatch in 1992 on indie label Simple Machines. Rather than using his own name, Grohl released the cassette under the pseudonym “Late!”.

In the later years of Nirvana, Grohl’s songwriting contributions increased. In Grohl’s initial months in Seattle, Cobain overheard him working on a song called “Color Pictures of a Marigold”, and the two ended up jamming on it. Grohl would later record the song for the Pocketwatch cassette. During the sessions for In Utero, he decided to re-record the song, and the band released this version as a b-side on the “Heart-Shaped Box” single, titled simply “Marigold”. Earlier, as the band worked on new material for In Utero, Grohl contributed the main guitar riff for what ended up becoming “Scentless Apprentice”. Cobain conceded in a late 1993 MTV interview that he initially thought the riff was “kind of boneheaded”, but was gratified at how the song developed (a process captured in part in a demo on the Nirvana box set With the Lights Out). Cobain noted that he was excited at the possibility of having Novoselic and Grohl contribute more to the band’s songwriting.

Prior to their 1994 European tour, the band decided to schedule session time at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle to work on demos. For most of the three-day session, Cobain was absent, so Novoselic and Grohl worked on demos of their own songs. The duo completed several of Grohl’s songs, including future Foo Fighters songs “Exhausted”, “Big Me”, “February Stars”, and “Butterflies”. On the third day of the session, Cobain finally arrived, and the band recorded a demo of a song later named “You Know You’re Right”. It was the band’s final studio recording.

Foo Fighters

Following Cobain’s death in April 1994, Grohl retreated, unsure of where to go and what to do with himself. In October 1994, Grohl scheduled studio time, again at Robert Lang’s Studio, and quickly recorded a fifteen-track demo. With the exception of a single guitar part on “X-Static” played by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Grohl performed all of the instruments himself.

At the same time, Grohl wondered if his future might be in drumming for other bands. In November, Grohl took a brief turn with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, including a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live. Petty asked him to join permanently, but Grohl realized that his future lay elsewhere, and thus he declined the invitation. Grohl’s name was also rumored as a possible replacement for Pearl Jam drummer Dave Abbruzzese, and Grohl even performed with the band for a song or two at three shows during Pearl Jam’s March 1995 Australian tour. However, by then, Pearl Jam had already settled on Jack Irons, and Grohl had other solo plans in the works.

After passing the demo around, Grohl found himself with considerable major label interest. Nirvana’s A&R rep Gary Gersh had subsequently taken over as president of Capitol Records and lured Grohl to sign with the label. Grohl did not want the effort to be considered the start of a solo career so he recruited other band members: former Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, and two members of the band Sunny Day Real Estate, William Goldsmith (drums) and Nate Mendel (bass). Rather than re-record the album, Grohl’s demo was given a professional mix by Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock and was released in July 1995 as Foo Fighters’ debut album.

At the end of 1995, Foo Fighters was asked to contribute a song to the soundtrack to the television show The X-Files. During a break between tours, the band entered the studio and recorded a cover of Gary Numan’s “Down in the Park”. In February of 1996, Grohl and his then-wife Jennifer Youngblood made a brief cameo appearance on the X-Files third season episode “Pusher”. (The two can be spotted walking in the FBI building, just after the Pusher character has put on his phony pass. Grohl pauses to look at his watch.)

After touring for the self-titled album for more than a year, Grohl returned home and began work on the soundtrack to the 1997 movie Touch. Grohl performed all of the instruments and vocals himself, save for vocals from Veruca Salt singer Louise Post on the title track, and vocals and guitar by X’s John Doe on “This Loving Thing (Lynn’s Song)”. Grohl completed the recording in two weeks, and immediately joined the Foo Fighters to work on their follow-up.

In the midst of the initial sessions for Foo Fighters’ second album, tension emerged between Grohl and Goldsmith. According to Goldsmith, “Dave had me do 96 takes of one song, and I had to do thirteen hours’ worth of takes on another one. … It just seemed that everything I did wasn’t good enough for him, or anyone else.” Goldsmith also believed that Capitol and producer Gil Norton wanted Grohl to drum on the album. to Los Angeles to re-record most of the album with Grohl behind the kit. After the sessions were complete, Goldsmith officially announced his departure from the band.

The effort was released in May 1997 as the band’s second album, The Colour and the Shape, which eventually cemented Foo Fighters as a staple of rock radio. The album spawned several hits, including “Everlong”, “My Hero”, and “Monkey Wrench”. Just prior to the album’s release, former Alanis Morissette drummer Taylor Hawkins joined the band on drums. The following September, Smear left the band, citing a need to settle down following a lifetime of touring. Smear was subsequently replaced by Grohl’s former Scream bandmate Franz Stahl. (Stahl departed the band prior to recording of the Foo’s third album and was replaced by touring guitarist Chris Shiflett, who later became a full-fledged member during the recording of One by One.)

Grohl’s life of non-stop touring and travel continued with Foo Fighters’ popularity. During his infrequent pauses he lived in Seattle and Los Angeles before returning to Alexandria, Virginia. It was there that he turned his basement into a recording studio where the 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose was recorded.

In 2000, the band recruited Queen guitarist Brian May to add some guitar flourish to a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar”, a song which Foo Fighters previously recorded as a b-side. The friendship between the two bands resulted in Grohl and Taylor Hawkins being asked to induct Queen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Grohl and Hawkins joined May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor to perform “Tie Your Mother Down”, with Grohl standing in on vocals for Freddie Mercury. (May later contributed guitar work for the song “Tired of You” on the ensuing Foo Fighters album, as well as on an unreleased Foo Fighters song called “Knucklehead”.)

Near the end of 2001, Foo Fighters returned to the studio to work on their fourth album. After four months in the studio, with the sessions “finished”, Grohl accepted an invitation to join Queens of the Stone Age and helped them to record their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf. (Grohl can be seen drumming for the band in the video for the song “No One Knows”.) After a brief tour through North America, Britain and Japan with the band and feeling rejuvenated by the effort, Grohl recalled the other band members to completely re-record their album at his studio in Virginia. The effort became their fourth album, One by One. While initially pleased with the results, in another 2005 Rolling Stone interview, Dave Grohl admitted to not liking the record: “Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it.”

Grohl and Foo Fighters released their fifth album In Your Honor on June 14, 2005. Prior to starting work on the album, the band spent almost a year relocating Grohl’s home-based Virginia studio to a brand new facility, dubbed Studio 606, located in a warehouse near Los Angeles. Featuring collaborations with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Norah Jones, the album was a departure from previous efforts, and included one rock and one acoustic disc.

Foo Fighters’s sixth studio album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was released on September 25, 2007. It was recorded during a three-month period between March 2007 and June 2007, and its release was preceded by the first single “The Pretender” on September 17. The second single, “Long Road to Ruin”, was released on December 3, 2007, followed by the third single, “Let It Die”, June 24, 2008.

Other projects

Apart from his main bands, Grohl has been involved in other music projects. In 1992, Grohl played drums on Buzz Osborne’s Kiss-styled solo-EP King Buzzo, where he was credited as Dale Nixon, a pseudonym that Greg Ginn adopted to play bass on Black Flag’s My War. Grohl also released the music cassette Pocketwatch under the pseudonym Late! on the now defunct indie label, Simple Machines.

In 1993, Grohl was recruited to help recreate the music of The Beatles’ early years for the movie Backbeat. Grohl played drums in an “all-star” lineup that included Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, indie producer Don Fleming, Mike Mills of R.E.M., Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. A music video was filmed for the song “Money (That’s What I Want)” while Grohl was with Nirvana on their 1994 European tour, but footage of Grohl was filmed later and included.

Later in 1994, Grohl played drums on two tracks for Mike Watt’s Ball-Hog or Tugboat?. In early 1995, Grohl and Foo Fighters played their first US tour opening for Watt, and helped make up Watt’s supporting band. Nicknamed the “Ringspiel” tour, Watt’s band featured Grohl and William Goldsmith on drums, Eddie Vedder and Pat Smear on guitar, and Watt on bass.
Grohl at the Roskilde Festival in 2005

During the early 2000s, Grohl spent time in his basement studio writing and recording a number of songs for a “metal” project. Over the span of several years, Grohl recruited his favorite metal vocalists from the 1980s, including Lemmy of Motörhead, Conrad “Cronos” Lant from Venom, King Diamond, and Max Cavalera of Sepultura, to perform the vocals for the songs. The project was released in 2004 under the moniker Probot.

Also in 2003, Grohl stepped behind the kit to perform on Killing Joke’s second self-titled album. The move surprised some Nirvana fans, given that Nirvana had been accused of stealing the opening riff of “Come as You Are” from Killing Joke’s 1984 song “Eighties”. However, the controversy failed to create a lasting rift between the bands. Foo Fighters covered Killing Joke’s “Requiem” during the late 1990s, and were even joined by Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman for a performance of the song at a show in New Zealand in 2003.

Grohl lent his drumming skills to other artists during the early 2000s. In 2000, Dave played drums and sang on a track, “Goodbye Lament”, from Tony Iommi’s album Iommi. In 2001, Grohl performed on Tenacious D’s debut album, and appeared in the video for lead single “Tribute” as a demon. He later appeared in the duo’s 2006 movie Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny as Beelzeboss and performed on its soundtrack. In 2002, Grohl helped Chan Marshall of Cat Power on the album You Are Free and also played with Queens of the Stone Age on their album Songs for the Deaf. In 2004, Grohl drummed on several tracks for Nine Inch Nails’ 2005 album With Teeth. He also drummed on the song “Bad Boyfriend” on Garbage’s 2005 album Bleed Like Me. Most recently, he recorded all the drums on Juliette and the Licks’s 2006 album Four on the Floor and the song “For Us” from Pete Yorn’s 2006 album Nightcrawler. Beyond drumming, Grohl contributed guitar to a cover of Neil Young’s “I’ve Been Waiting For You” on David Bowie’s 2002 album Heathen.

In June 2008, Grohl was Paul McCartney’s special guest for a concert at the Anfield football stadium in Liverpool, in one of the central events of the English city’s year as European Capital of Culture.

Personal life

Grohl has been married twice. He was first married to photographer Jennifer Youngblood from 1993 to 1997. After their divorce, Grohl had relationships with Louise Post from Veruca Salt, solo artist and Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, and pro-snowboarder Tina Basich.

He then went on to marry his second wife, Jordyn Blum on August 2, 2003, at their home in Los Angeles. Guests included Clive Davis, Jack Black, and former Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic. On April 15, 2006, Grohl and his wife welcomed their first child, daughter Violet Maye, in Los Angeles. She was named after Grohl’s maternal grandmother. Earlier that year, Foo Fighters bandmate Taylor Hawkins told MTV, “We’re going to be touring Europe in January and February, but we’ve got to be home by March, because Dave and his wife are having a baby,” he said, adding, “but I probably wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” Grohl said that he had been playing music to his unborn child, saying she “likes The Beatles. Doesn’t really get down to The Beach Boys. Digs Mozart.” On October 26, 2008, Grohl’s publicist confirmed to People Magazine that wife Jordyn was pregnant with the couple’s second child.

In May 2006, Grohl sent a note of support to the two trapped miners in the Beaconsfield mine collapse in Tasmania, Australia. In the initial days following the collapse, one of the men requested an iPod with Foo Fighters album In Your Honor, to be sent down to them through a small hole. Grohl’s note read, in part, “Though I’m halfway around the world right now, my heart is with you both, and I want you to know that when you come home, there’s two tickets to any Foos show, anywhere, and two cold beers waiting for yous. Deal?” The song, titled “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” appears on the Foo Fighters’ latest release Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and features Kaki King.

Discography

With Freak Baby

* Demos

With Mission Impossible

* Demos
* 7″ split with Lunchmeat

With Dain Bramage

* Demos
* I Scream Not Coming Down

With Scream

    * No More Censorship (1988)
    * Live At Van Hall In Amsterdam (1989)
    * Fumble (1993)

With Nirvana

    * Nevermind (1991)
    * Incesticide (1992)
    * In Utero (1993)
    * MTV Unplugged in New York (1994)
    * From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (1996)
    * Nirvana (2002)
    * With the Lights Out (2004)
    * Sliver: The Best of the Box (2005)

With Melvana

* live recording at the Crocodile Cafe 1-15-92 (1992)

As Late!

* Pocketwatch (1992)

With Buzz Osborne

* King Buzzo (1992)

With The Backbeat Band

* Backbeat (soundtrack) (1993)

With Mike Watt

* Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (1995)

With The Stinky Puffs

* Little Tiny Smelly Bit (1995)

With Foo Fighters

    * Foo Fighters (1995)
    * The Colour and the Shape (1997)
    * There is Nothing Left to Lose (1999)
    * One by One (2002)
    * In Your Honor (2005)
    * Skin And Bones (2006)
    * Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007)

As David Grohl

* Touch (soundtrack) (1997)

With Tony Iommi

* Iommi (2000)

With Tenacious D

* Tenacious D (2001)
* The Pick of Destiny (2006)

With Queens of the Stone Age

* Songs for the Deaf (2002)

With David Bowie

* Heathen (2002)

With Cat Power

* You Are Free (2003)

With Killing Joke

* Killing Joke (2003)

As Probot

* Probot (2004)

With Garbage

* Bleed Like Me (2005)

With Nine Inch Nails

* With Teeth (2005)

With Pete Yorn

* Nightcrawler (2006)

With Juliette and the Licks

* Four on the Floor (2006)

With The Prodigy

* Invaders Must Die (2009)

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Jan 11

1969 – The Rolling Stones go to No. 5…

Posted in 1960s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Off the Hook, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1969 – The Rolling Stones go to No. 5 in the American album charts with their new release Beggars Banquet.

In 1968 the Rolling Stones hired Jimmy Miller from Spoencer Davis Group and Traffic fame. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were look for a new boost of new blood into the production of their music. This relationship was such a success that it continued thru 1973.

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, was released as a single-only that May, becoming a major hit.

Beggars Banquet was Brian Jones’ last full effort with The Rolling Stones. In addition to his slide work on “No Expectations”, he played harmonica on “Dear Doctor”, Parachute Woman and “Prodigal Son”, sitar and tambura on “Street Fighting Man”, mellotron on “Jigsaw Puzzle” and “Stray Cat Blues”, and provided backing vocals on “Sympathy for the Devil”.

Recorded in England and mixed in Los Angeles California, both Decca Records in England and London Records rejected the planned cover design – a graffiti-covered lavatory, and the band held back the album for a may 1968 release. By November, however, The Rolling Stones gave in, allowing the album to be released in December with a simple imitation invitation card cover.

The idea for a plain album cover was also implemented by the Beatles for the White Album, which was released one month prior to Beggars Banquet. This similarity, coupled with Beggars Banquet’s later release, garnered the Rolling Stones accusations of imitating the Beatles. In 1984, the original cover art was released with the initial CD remastering of Beggars Banquet.

Track listing
All songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, except where noted.

“Sympathy for the Devil” – 6:27
Keith Richards on bass; Nicky Hopkins on piano; Rocky Dijon on percussion
“No Expectations” – 4:02
Brian Jones on slide guitar, Nicky Hopkins on piano
“Dear Doctor” – 3:26
Brian Jones on harmonica
“Parachute Woman” – 2:23
Mick Jagger on harmonica
“Jigsaw Puzzle” – 6:17
Keith Richards on acoustic guitar and electric slide guitar, Brian Jones on Mellotron, Nicky Hopkins on piano
“Street Fighting Man” – 3:18
Keith Richards on bass, Brian Jones on sitar and tambura, Dave Mason on shehani
“Prodigal Son” (Rev. Robert Wilkins) – 2:55
Brian Jones on harmonica
“Stray Cat Blues” – 4:40
Brian Jones on Mellotron
“Factory Girl” – 2:12
Ric Grech on fiddle, Dave Mason on Mellotron using the mandolin sound
“Salt of the Earth” – 4:51
First verse sung by Keith Richards.

Personnel
Mick Jagger – vocals, backing vocals, harmonica
Keith Richards – acoustic and electric guitar, bass, vocals
Brian Jones – acoustic slide guitar, backing vocals, sitar, tamboura, mellotron, harmonica
Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
Bill Wyman – bass, backing vocals, percussion
Rocky Dijon – congas
Ric Grech – fiddle
Nicky Hopkins – piano
Dave Mason – mellotron, shehnai
Jimmy Miller – backing vocals
Marianne Faithfull – backing vocals
Anita Pallenberg – backing vocals
Watts Street Gospel Choir – backing vocals

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