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On This Day in Rock History: February 9

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]

2004 – Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, whose avant…

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2004 – Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, whose avant-garde approach to his instrument influenced John Coltrane and others, dies of cancer in Boston. He is 69.

Tags: avant-garde, Boston, cancer, dies, influence, Instrumental, John

Mar 17

2002 – More than a quarter-century after its relea…

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2002 – More than a quarter-century after its release as a double album of amplified noise and feedback, former Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” gets its first live performance from Berlin avant-garde classical ensemble Zeitkratzer.

Tags: avant-garde, Berlin, live, Metal Machine Music our Reed, Velvet Underground

Oct 20

1997 – Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, original gui…

Posted in 1990s, Bands/Artists that Rock, Billboard charts, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, Deaths, General, Gold, Guitarists, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

$Canned Heat’s Henry \"The Sunflower\" Vestine$

1997 – Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, original guitarist for Canned Heat, is found dead in his hotel room in France. The cause of Deaths is undetermined.

Henry Charles Vestine (December 25, 1944 – October 20, 1997) a.k.a. “The Sunflower”, was an American guitar player known mainly as a member of the band Canned Heat. He was with the group from its start in 1966 to July 1969. In later years he played in local bands but occasionally returned to Canned Heat for a few tours and recordings.

Biography

Born in Takoma Park, Maryland, Vestine was the only son of Harry and Lois Vestine. His father was a noted physicist specializing in gravity studies. The Vestine Crater on the Moon had been named posthumously after him. Henry Vestine married twice, first in 1965 and in the mid 1970s to Lisa Lack and with whom he moved to Anderson, South Carolina. In 1980 they had a son, Jesse. In 1983, after they separated, Vestine moved to Oregon.

Vestine’s love of music and the blues in particular was fostered at an early age when he accompanied his father on canvasses of black neighborhoods for old recordings . Like his father, Henry became an avid collector, eventually coming to own tens of thousands of recordings of blues, hillbilly, country, and Cajun music. At Henry’s urging, his father also used to take him to blues shows at which he and Henry were often the only white people present. Later Henry was instrumental in the “rediscovery” of Skip James and other Delta musicians.

In the mid-1950s, Henry and his childhood friend from Takoma Park, John Fahey began to learn how to play guitar and sang a mixed bag of pop, hillbilly, and country music, particularly Hank Williams. Soon after the family moved to California, Henry Vestine joined his first junior high band Hial King and the Newports. On his first acid trip with a close musician friend, he went to an East LA tattoo parlor and got the first of what was to be numerous tattoos: the words “Living The Blues”. Later, in 1969, that became the title of a double album by Canned Heat. By the time he was seventeen he was a regular on the Los Angeles club circuit. He became a familiar sight at many black clubs, where he often brought musician friends to turn them on to the blues. Henry became friends with Cajun guitarist Jerry McGhee. It was from him that Henry learned the flat pick and 3-fingerstyle that was to become so much a part of Henry’s own style. He was an early fan of Roy Buchanan and his favorite guitar players included T-Bone Walker, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Sonny Sharrock ,Freddie King , and Albert Collins. In Canned Heat he was able to play and record with John Lee Hooker whom he had admired since the late 1950s.

The Sixties

Throughout the early to mid 1960s Henry played in various musical configurations and eventually was hired by Frank Zappa for the original Mothers of Invention.

His friend Fahey was to be instrumental in the formation of Canned Heat. He had introduced Al Wilson, whom he knew from Boston, to Henry and Bob and Richard Hite. Wilson, Vestine and the Hite brothers formed a jug band that rehearsed at Don Brown’s Jazz Man record Shop. Bob Hite and Alan Wilson started Canned Heat with Kenny Edwards as a second guitarist, but Henry was asked to join. The first notable appearance of the band was the following year when they played at the Monterey Pop Festival. Shortly after Canned Heat’s first album was released, Henry burst into musical prominence as a guitarist who stretched the idiom of the blues with long solos that moved beyond the conventional genres. He had his own style and a trademark piercing treble guitar sound. Vestine missed playing at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, having quit the band the previous week. In 1995, he explained to an Australian reporter that “t the time, it was just another gig. It was too bad I wasn’t there, but I just couldn’t continue with the band at the time.” There had some tension between him and bassist Larry Taylor. When Taylor quit Canned Heat, Vestine returned; their alternating membership in the band was to be repeated a few more times over the years.

While Canned Heat played at Woodstock in August 1969, Henry was invited to New York City for session work with avant-garde jazz great Albert Ayler . That session work resulted in two releases on the Impulse label.

At the same time he developed an intense interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles. He eventually owned eleven of them. Prior to his death he was looking forward to playing at their 75th Anniversary Celebration. Over the years he had also a close relationship with the Hells Angels.

The Seventies

Through the 1970s gradually Canned Heat had become a part time occupation with occasional gigs and recordings sessions. When Vestine’s marriage broke up in 1983, he moved to Oregon. There he lived on a farm in rural Blodgett for a year and then in Corvallis, making a living doing odd jobs and playing music at rodeos and taverns in a country band with Mike Rosso, an old friend from southern California who had also moved to Oregon. He also played with Ramblin’ Rex.

Terry Robb brought Vestine to Portland and they did some recording together. Henry began playing with the Pete Carnes Blues Band and made his way to Eugene when the band folded in the mid 1980s. He played the regional club scene with a number of blues and blues-rock groups including James T. and The Tough. From that band he was to bring James Thornbury to a reconstituted Canned Heat.

Vestine toured with Canned Heat in Australia

Death

Vestine had finished a European tour with Canned Heat when he died from heart and respiratory failure, in a Paris hotel on the morning of October 20, 1997, just as the band was to return to the United States.

Henry Vestines’s ashes are interred at the Oak Hill Cemetery outside of Eugene, Oregon. A memorial fund has been set up in his name. The fund will be used for maintenance of his resting place at Oak Hill Cemetery and, when it is possible, for conveyance of some of his ashes to the Vestine Crater on the moon, as has been his wish.

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Oct 01

1973 – Riding high on the success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

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

1973 – Riding high on the success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd begin sessions for their new album, declaring they intend to use only household objects to make the music. Very avant-garde. They later ditched the idea to record Wish You Were Here.

http://www.thisdayinrock.com/?p=7441

Tags: album, avant-garde, mic, Record, recording, Records, session, Success, US

Jan 03

1954 – Avant-garde guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, who has made

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1954 – Avant-garde guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, who has made an underground name for himself playing the electric rake and electric toilet plunger, is born in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Tags: avant-garde, born, guitarist, play, undefined, Who

Jan 08

1947 – David Bowie (David Robert Jones) is born in…

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1947 – David Bowie (David Robert Jones) is born in London. He first records with the King Bees, Lower Third and the Mannish Boys in 1963 before going solo. His two No. 1 songs are “Fame” and “Let’s Dance.”

David Bowie (IPA:

Although he released an album and numerous singles earlier, David Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in the autumn of 1969, when the Apollo program-inspired “Space Oddity” reached the top five of the UK singles chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era as the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single “Starman” and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona epitomised a career often marked by musical innovation, reinvention and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single “Fame” and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer identified as “plastic soul”. The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album Low – the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. Arguably his most experimental works to date, the so-called “Berlin Trilogy” albums all reached the UK Top Five.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single “Ashes to Ashes” and its parent album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topper “Under Pressure”, but consolidated his commercial – and, until then, most profitable – sound in 1983 with the album Let’s Dance, which yielded the hit singles “Let’s Dance”, “China Girl”, and “Modern Love”.

In the BBC’s 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie ranked 29. Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums, and ranks among the ten best-selling acts in UK pop history. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time

Biography

1947 to 1967: Early years

David Bowie (then David Jones) was born in Brixton, London. Bowie’s parents, Margaret Mary “Peggy” (née Burns) and Hayward Stenton “John” Jones, were married shortly after his birth.

When Bowie was fifteen years old, his friend, George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Bowie was forced to stay out of school for eight months so that doctors could conduct operations to repair his potentially blinded eye.

Bowie’s interest in music was sparked at the age of nine when his father brought home a collection of American 45s, including Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and, most particularly, Little Richard. Upon listening to “Tutti Frutti”, Bowie would later say, “I had heard God”. His half-brother Terry introduced him to modern jazz and Bowie’s enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic saxophone for Christmas in 1959. Graduating to a real instrument, he formed his first band in 1962, the Konrads. He then played and sang in various blues/beat groups, such as The King Bees, The Manish Boys, The Lower Third and The Riot Squad in the mid-1960s, releasing his first record, the single “Liza Jane”, with the King Bees in 1964. His early work shifted through the blues and Elvis-inspired music while working with many British pop styles.

During the early 1960s, Bowie was performing either under his own name or the stage name “Davie Jones”, and briefly even as “Davy Jones”, creating confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees. To avoid this, in 1966 he chose “Bowie” for his stage name, after the Alamo hero Jim Bowie and his famous Bowie knife. During this time, he recorded singles for Parlophone under the name of The Manish Boys and Davy Jones and for Pye under the name David Bowie (and The Lower Third), all without success.

Bowie released his first album in 1967 for the Decca Records offshoot Deram, simply called David Bowie. It was an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall. Around the same time he issued a novelty single, “The Laughing Gnome”, which utilised sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals. None of these releases managed to chart, and he would not cut another record for two years. His Deram material from the album and various singles was later recycled in a multitude of compilations.

Influenced by the dramatic arts, he studied with Lindsay Kemp — from avant-garde theatre and mime to Commedia dell’arte — and much of his work would involve the creation of characters or personae to present to the world. During 1967, Bowie sold his first song to another artist, “Oscar” (an early stage name of actor-musician Paul Nicholas). Bowie wrote Oscar’s third single, “Over the Wall We Go”, which satirised life in a British prison. In late 1968, his then-manager, Kenneth Pitt, produced a half-hour promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday featuring Bowie performing a number of songs, but it went unreleased until 1984.

1969 to 1973: Psychedelic folk to glam rock

Bowie’s first flirtation with fame came in 1969 with his single “Space Oddity,” written the previous year but recorded and released to coincide with the first moon landing. It became a Top 5 UK hit. The corresponding album, his second, was originally titled David Bowie, which caused some confusion as both of Bowie’s first and second albums were released with that name in the UK (in the U.S. the second album bore the title Man of Words, Man of Music). In 1972, this album was re-released by RCA Records as Space Oddity.

Bowie put the finishing touches to “Space Oddity” (the track) while living with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. Finnigan and Bowie joined forces with Christina Ostrom and the late Barrie Jackson to run a Folk Club on Sunday nights at The Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street, south London. In 1969 and 1970, “Space Oddity” was used by the BBC during both its Apollo 11 moon landing coverage and its coverage of Apollo 13.

In 1970, Bowie released his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, rejecting the acoustic guitar sound of the previous album and replacing it with the heavy rock backing provided by Mick Ronson, who would be a major collaborator through to 1973. Much of the album resembles British heavy metal music of the period, but the album provided some unusual musical detours, such as the title track’s use of Latin sounds and rhythms. The original UK cover of the album showed Bowie in a dress, an early example of his androgynous appearance. In the U.S., the album was originally released in a cartoonish cover that did not feature Bowie.

His next record, Hunky Dory in 1971, saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of “Space Oddity”, with light fare such as the droll “Kooks”. Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes on tracks such as “Oh! You Pretty Things” (a song taken to UK #12 by Herman’s Hermits’ Peter Noone in 1971), the semi-autobiographical “The Bewlay Brothers”, and the Buddhist-influenced “Quicksand”. Lyrically, the young songwriter also paid unusually direct homage to his influences with “Song for Bob Dylan”, “Andy Warhol”, and “Queen Bitch”, which Bowie’s somewhat cryptic liner notes indicate as a Velvet Underground pastiche. As with the single “Changes”, Hunky Dory was not a big hit but it laid the groundwork for the move that would shortly lift Bowie into the first rank of stars, giving him four top-ten albums and eight top ten singles in the UK in eighteen months between 1972 and 1973.

Bowie further explored his androgynous persona in June 1972 with the seminal concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which presents a world destined to end in five years and tells the story of the ultimate rock star, Ziggy Stardust. The album’s sound combined the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock of Hunky Dory and the fast-paced glam rock pioneered by Marc Bolan’s T.Rex. Many of the album’s songs have become rock classics, including “Ziggy Stardust,” “Moonage Daydream,” “Hang on to Yourself,” and “Suffragette City.”

The Ziggy Stardust character became the basis for Bowie’s first large-scale tour beginning in 1972, where he donned his famous flaming red hair and wild outfits. The tour featured a three-piece band representing the “Spiders from Mars”: Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The album made #5 in the UK on the strength of the #10 placing of the single “Starman”. Their success made Bowie a star, and soon the six-month-old Hunky Dory eclipsed Ziggy Stardust, when it peaked at #3 on the UK chart. At the same time the non-album single “John, I’m Only Dancing” (not released in the U.S. until 1979) peaked at UK #12, and “All the Young Dudes”, a song he had given to, and produced for, Mott the Hoople, made UK #3.

Around the same time Bowie began promoting and producing his rock and roll heroes, two of whom he met at the popular New York hangout Max’s Kansas City Bowie sang back-up vocals on both Reed’s Transformer, and Iggy’s The Idiot.

The Spiders From Mars came together again on Aladdin Sane, released in April 1973 and his first #1 album in the UK. Described by Bowie as “Ziggy goes to America”,

Bowie’s later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, as well as a few earlier tracks like “Changes” and “The Width of a Circle”, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson’s guitar.

Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, was released in October 1973, spawning a UK #3 hit in “Sorrow” and itself peaking at #1, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. By this time, Bowie had broken up the Spiders from Mars and was attempting to move on from his Ziggy persona. Bowie’s own back catalogue was now highly sought: The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with the second David Bowie album (Space Oddity). Hunky Dory’s “Life on Mars?” was released as a single in 1973 and made #3 in the UK, the same year Bowie’s novelty record from 1967, “The Laughing Gnome”, hit #6.

1974 to 1976: Soul, R&B, and The Thin White Duke

1974 saw the release of another ambitious album, Diamond Dogs, with a spoken word introduction and a multi-part song suite (“Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)”). Diamond Dogs was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell’s 1984 to music. Bowie also made plans to develop a Diamond Dogs movie, but didn’t get very far. Bowie had originally planned on writing a musical to 1984, but his interest waned after encountering difficulties in licensing the novel. He used some of the songs he had written for the project on Diamond Dogs. The album—and an NBC television special, The 1980 Floor Show, broadcast at around the same time—demonstrated Bowie headed toward the genre of soul/funk music, the track “1984″ being a prime example. The album spawned the hits “Rebel Rebel” (UK #5) and “Diamond Dogs” (UK #21), and itself went to #1 in the UK, making him the best-selling act of that country for the second year in a row. In the US, Bowie achieved his first major commercial success as the album went to #5.

To follow on the release of the album, Bowie launched a massive Diamond Dogs tour in North America from June to December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production broke with contemporary standard practice for rock concerts by featuring no encores. It was filmed by Alan Yentob for the documentary Cracked Actor. The documentary seemed to confirm the rumours of his cocaine abuse, featuring a pasty and emaciated Bowie nervously sniffing in the backseat of a car and claiming that there was a fly in his milk. Bowie commented that the resulting live album, David Live, ought to have been called “David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory,” presumably in reference to his addled and frenetic psychological state during this period. Nevertheless the album solidified his status as a superstar, going #2 in the UK and #8 in the US. It also spawned a UK #10 hit in a cover of “Knock on Wood”. After the opening leg of the tour, Bowie mostly jettisoned the elaborate sets. Then, when the tour resumed after a summer break in Philadelphia for recording new material, the Diamond Dogs sound no longer seemed apt. Bowie cancelled seven dates and made changes to the band, which returned to the road in October as the Philly Dogs tour.

For Ziggy Stardust fans who had not discerned the soul and funk strains already apparent in Bowie’s recent work, the “new” sound was considered a sudden and jolting step. 1975′s Young Americans was Bowie’s definitive exploration of Philly soul—though he himself referred to the sound ironically as “plastic soul.” It contained his first #1 hit in the US, “Fame”, co-written with Carlos Alomar and John Lennon (who also contributed backing vocals). It was based on a riff Alomar had developed while covering The Flares’ 1961 doo-wop classic “Foot Stompin’”, which Bowie’s band had taken to playing live during the Philly Dogs period. One of the backing vocalists on the album is a young Luther Vandross, who also co-wrote some of the material for Young Americans. The song “Win” featured a hypnotic guitar riff later taken by Beck for the track/live staple “Debra” off his Midnite Vultures album. Despite Bowie’s unashamed recognition of the shallowness of his “plastic soul,” he did earn the bona fide distinction of being one of the few white artists to be invited to appear on the popular “Soul Train.” Another violently paranoid appearance on ABC’s The Dick Cavett Show (1974 5 December) seemed to confirm rumours of Bowie’s heavy cocaine use at this time. Young Americans was the album that cemented Bowie’s stardom in the U.S.; though only peaking there at #9, as opposed to the #5 placing of Diamond Dogs, the album stayed on the charts almost twice as long. At the same time, the album achieved #2 in the UK while a re-issue of his old single “Space Oddity” became his first #1 hit in the UK, only a few months after “Fame” had achieved the same in the US.

Station to Station (1976) featured a darker version of this soul persona, called “The Thin White Duke”. Visually the figure was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the character Bowie portrayed in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Station to Station was a transitional album, prefiguring the Krautrock and synthesizer music of his next releases, while further developing the funk and soul music of Young Americans. By this time, Bowie had become heavily dependent on drugs, particularly cocaine; many critics have attributed the chopped rhythms and emotional detachment of the record to the influence of the drug, to which Bowie claimed to have been introduced in America. His emotional disturbance and megalomania at this time reached such a fever pitch that Bowie refused to relinquish control of a satellite, booked for a worldwide broadcast of a live appearance preceding the release of Station to Station, at the request of the Spanish Government, who wished to put out a live feed regarding the death of Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco. His sanity—by his own later admission—became twisted from cocaine: he overdosed several times during the year. Additionally, Bowie was withering physically after having lost an alarming amount of weight.

Nonetheless, there was another large tour, The 1976 World Tour, which featured a starkly lit set and highlighted new songs such as the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads “Wild Is the Wind” and “Word on a Wing”, and the funkier “TVC 15″ and “Stay”. The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would remain a stable unit through the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but also entrenched in controversy, as the media claimed that Bowie was advocating fascism, an issue later shown to have arisen from the misunderstanding of an anti-fascist message.

1976 to 1979: The Berlin era

Bowie’s interest in the growing German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to dry out and rejuvenate his career. Sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with his friend Iggy Pop, he co-produced three more of his own classic albums with Tony Visconti, while aiding Pop with his career. With Bowie as a co-writer and musician, Pop completed his first two solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. Bowie joined Pop’s touring band in the spring, simply playing keyboard and singing backing vocals. The group performed in the UK, Europe, and the US from March to April 1977.

The brittle sound of Station to Station proved a precursor to Low, the first of three albums that became known as the “Berlin Trilogy”. Low was recorded with Brian Eno as an integral collaborator but, despite widespread belief, not the album’s producer. Journalists often mistakenly give Eno production credits on the trilogy but, in fact, Bowie and Tony Visconti co-produced, with Eno co-writing some of the music, playing keyboards, and developing strategies. Bowie stressed in 2000: “Over the years not enough credit has gone to Tony Visconti on those particular albums. The actual sound and texture, the feel of everything from the drums to the way that my voice is recorded is Tony Visconti.”

Partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu! and the minimalist work of Steve Reich, Bowie journeyed to Neunkirchen near Cologne to meet the famed German producer Conny Plank. Plank was considered a revolutionary producer in German rock in the era, but had no interest in working with Bowie and refused him entry to the studio. The album was produced in 1976 and released in early 1977.

The Low sessions also formalised Bowie’s three-phase approach to making albums. Much of the band were present for the first five days only, after which Eno, Alomar and Gardiner remained to play overdubs. By the time Bowie wrote and recorded the lyrics everybody but Visconti and studio engineers had departed. The next record, “Heroes”, was similar in sound to Low, though slightly more accessible. The mood of these records fit the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city that provided its inspiration. The title track, a story of two lovers who met at the Berlin Wall, is one of Bowie’s most-covered songs.

Also in 1977, Bowie appeared on the Granada music show Marc, hosted by his friend and fellow glam pioneer Marc Bolan of T.Rex, with whom he had regularly socialised and jammed before either achieved fame. He turned out to be the show’s final guest, as Bolan was killed in a car crash shortly afterward.

For Christmas 1977, Bowie joined Bing Crosby, of whom he was an ardent admirer, at the ATV Television Studio in Herts England to do “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy”, a version of “Little Drummer Boy” with a new lyric.

Bowie and his band embarked on an extensive world tour in 1978 (including his first concerts in Australia and New Zealand) which featured music from both Low and Heroes. A live album from the tour was released as Stage the same year. Songs from both Low and Heroes were later converted to symphonies by minimalist composer Phillip Glass. 1978 was also the year that saw Bowie narrating Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

1979′s Lodger was the final album in Bowie’s so-called “Berlin Trilogy”, or “triptych” as Bowie calls it. This was Bowie’s last album with Eno until 1. Outside in 1995.

1980 to 1989: Bowie the superstar

In 1980, Bowie did an about-face, integrating the lessons learnt on Low, Heroes, and Lodger while expanding upon them with chart success.

While Scary Monsters utilised principles that Bowie had learned in the Berlin era, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically, reflecting the transformation Bowie had gone through during his time in Germany and Europe. By 1980 Bowie had divorced his wife Angie, curbed the drug abuse of the “Thin White Duke” era, and radically changed his concept of the way music should be written. The album had a hard rock edge that included conspicuous guitar contributions from King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, The Who’s Pete Townshend, and Television’s Tom Verlaine.

In 1981, Queen released “Under Pressure”, co-written and performed with Bowie. The song was a hit and became Bowie’s third UK #1 single. In the same year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with “special cooperation” in the credits and his music features prominently in the movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of “Heroes” sung partially in German that had previously been included on the German pressing of its parent album. The same year Bowie appeared in the BBC’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s play Baal. Coinciding with transmission of the film, a five-track EP of songs from the play was released as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, recorded at Hansa by the Wall the previous September. It would mark Bowie’s final new release on RCA, as 1983 saw him change record labels from RCA to EMI America. In April 1982, Bowie released “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” with Giorgio Moroder, for director Paul Schrader’s film Cat People.

Bowie scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let’s Dance in 1983, a slick dance album co-produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers. The title track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom. The album also featured the singles “Modern Love” and “China Girl”, the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video. “China Girl” was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie revealed that the motivation for recording “China Girl” was to help out his friend Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie’s history of support for musicians he admired. Let’s Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never joined the tour after various disputes with Bowie. Vaughan was replaced by the Bowie tour veteran Earl Slick. Frank and George Simms from The Simms Brothers Band appeared as backing vocalists for the tour. The Serious Moonlight Tour was a huge success, and a single performance at the US Festival actually earned Bowie a million dollars on its own.

Bowie’s next album was originally planned to be a live album recorded on the Serious Moonlight Tour, but EMI demanded another studio album instead. The resulting album, 1984′s Tonight, was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and Iggy Pop, as well as various covers, including one of The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”. Critics Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit “Blue Jean” whose complete video – the 21-minute short film “Jazzin’ for Blue Jean” – reflected Bowie’s long-standing interest in combining music with drama. This video would win Bowie his only Grammy to date, for Best Short Form Music Video. It also featured “Loving the Alien”, a remix of which was a minor hit in 1985. The album also has a pair of dance rewrites of “Neighborhood Threat” and “Tonight”, old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which had originally appeared on Lust for Life.

In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At the end of his set, which comprised “Rebel Rebel”, “TVC 15″, “Modern Love” and ‘Heroes’, he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was raising funds, which was set to the song “Drive” by The Cars. At the event, the video to a fundraising single was premièred – Bowie performing a duet with Mick Jagger on a version of “Dancing in the Street”, which quickly went to #1 on release. In the same year Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group on the song “This Is Not America”, which was featured in the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended to underline the espionage thriller’s central themes of alienation and disaffection.
Bowie performing in 1987

In 1986, Bowie contributed several songs to as well as acted in the film Absolute Beginners. The movie was not well reviewed but Bowie’s theme song rose to #2 in the UK charts. He also took a role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth, as Jareth, the Goblin King who steals the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote five songs for the film, the script of which was partially written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones.

Bowie’s final solo album of the 80s was 1987′s Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of his two earlier albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. The album, which peaked at #6 in the UK, contained hit singles “Day In, Day Out”, “Time Will Crawl”, and “Never Let Me Down”. Although a commercial success, it drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie’s career, condemned by some critics as a “faceless” piece of product.

Bowie decided to tour again in 1987, supporting the Never Let Me Down album. The Glass Spider Tour was preceded by nine promotional press shows before the 86-concert tour actually started on 30 May 1987. In addition to the actual band, that included Peter Frampton on lead guitar, five dancers appeared on stage for almost the entire duration of each concert. Taped pieces of dialogue were also performed by Bowie and the dancers in the middle of songs, creating an overtly theatrical effect. Several visual gimmicks were also recreated from Bowie’s earlier tours. Critics of the tour described it as overproduced and claimed it pandered to then-current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing. However, fans that saw the shows from the Glass Spider Tour were treated to many of Bowie’s classics and rarities, in addition to the newer material.

In August 1988, Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.

1989 to 1991: Tin Machine

In 1989, for the first time since the early 1970s, Bowie formed a regular band, Tin Machine, a hard-rocking quartet, along with Reeves Gabrels, Tony Sales, and Hunt Sales. Tin Machine released two studio albums and a live record. The band received mixed reviews and a somewhat lukewarm reception from the public, but Tin Machine heralded the beginning of a long-lasting collaboration between Bowie and Gabrels.

The original album, Tin Machine (1989), was a success, holding the number three spot on the charts of the UK. Tin Machine launched its first world tour, featuring a now unshaven David Bowie and additional guitarist Eric Schermerhorn, that year. Despite the success of the Tin Machine venture, Bowie was mildly frustrated that many of his ideas were either rejected or changed by the band.
David Bowie performing at Rock In Chile Festival, 27 September 1990

Bowie began the 1990s with a stadium tour, in which he played mostly his biggest hits. The Sound + Vision Tour (named after the Low single) was conceived and directed by choreographer Edouard Lock of the Quebec contemporary dance troupe La La La Human Steps, with whom Bowie collaborated and performed on stage and in his videos. Bowie vowed during the tour that he would never play his early hits again.

Though he surprised no one when he later reneged on that promise and also on the promise that his set in each country would be focused on the favourite hits voted by phone poll in that country – an idea quickly jettisoned when a campaign by the British magazine NME resulted in a landslide in favour of The Laughing Gnome, it is true that his later tours generally featured few of those hits, and when they appeared, they were often radically reworked in their arrangement and delivery.

Bowie’s negative press-image continued when the cover of Tin Machine’s second album became unusually controversial, due to the presence of naked statues as its cover art. The coverage only seemed to invite unrelated negative commentary about Bowie to further permeate the public discourse.

After the less successful second album Tin Machine II and the complete failure of live album Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby, Bowie tired of having to work in a group setting where his creativity was limited, and finally disbanded Tin Machine to work on his own. But the Tin Machine venture did show that Bowie had learned some harsh lessons from the previous decade, and was determined to get serious about concentrating on music more than commercial success.

1992 to 1999: Electronica

In 1992 he performed his hits “Heroes” and “Under Pressure” (with Annie Lennox) at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. 1993 saw the release of the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced Black Tie White Noise, which reunited Bowie with Let’s Dance producer Nile Rodgers. The album hit the number one spot on the UK charts with singles such as “Jump They Say” (a top 10 hit) and “Miracle Goodnight”.

Bowie explored new directions on The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), based on incidental music composed for a TV series. It contained some of the new elements introduced in Black Tie White Noise, and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK charts.

The ambitious, quasi-industrial release Outside (1995), conceived as the first volume in a subsequently abandoned non-linear narrative of art and murder, reunited him with Brian Eno. The album introduced the characters of one of Bowie’s short stories, and achieved chart success in both the UK and US.

Receiving some of the strongest critical response since Let’s Dance was Earthling (1997),

1999 to present: Neoclassicist Bowie

In 1998, David Bowie had reunited with Tony Visconti to record a song for The Rugrats Movie called “(Safe in This) Sky Life”. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, and did not feature on the film’s soundtrack album, the reunion led to the pair pursuing a new collaborative effort. “(Safe In This) Sky Life” was later re-recorded and released as a single b-side in 2002 where it was retitled “Safe”. Amongst their earliest work together in this period, was a reworking of Placebo’s track “Without You I’m Nothing”, from the album of the same name – Visconti overseeing the additional production required when Bowie’s harmonised vocal was added to the original version for a strictly limited edition single release.

1999 found Bowie composing the soundtrack for a computer game called “Omikron: The Nomad Soul”. Bowie and his wife, Iman, made appearances as characters in the game. That same year, re-recorded tracks from the game and new music was released in the album ‘hours…’ featured “What’s Really Happening”, the lyrics for which were written by Alex Grant, the winner of Bowie’s “Cyber Song Contest” Internet competition. This album presented Bowie’s exit from heavy electronica, with an emphasis on more live instruments, and, through songs like “Thursday’s Child” and “Survive”, a thematic move into Bowie’s sense of his own aging and sentimentality. After this album, Bowie’s guitarist, Reeves Gabrels, quit working with Bowie, feeling that the music was becoming “too soft”.

Plans surfaced after the release of ‘hours…’ for an album titled Toy, which would feature new versions of some of Bowie’s earliest pieces as well as three new songs. Sessions for the album commenced in 2000, but the album was never released, leaving a number of tracks, some as yet unheard, on the editing floor. Bowie and Visconti continued collaboration with the production of a new album of completely original songs instead. The result of the sessions was the 2002 album Heathen, which had a dark atmospheric sound, and was Bowie’s biggest chart success in recent years. 2002 also saw Bowie curate the annual Meltdown festival in London. Amongst the acts selected by Bowie to perform were Phillip Glass, Television and The Polyphonic Spree. Bowie himself played a show at the Royal Festival Hall which notably included a rare performance of his experimental opus Low in its entirety.

In 2003, a report in the Sunday Express named Bowie as the second-richest entertainer in the UK (behind Sir Paul McCartney), with an estimated fortune of £510 million. However, the 2005 Sunday Times Rich List credited him with a little over £100 million.

In September 2003, Bowie released a new album, Reality, and announced a world tour. ‘A Reality Tour’ was the best-selling tour of the following year. However, it was cut short after Bowie suffered chest pain while performing on stage at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany, on 25 June 2004. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery; an emergency angioplasty was performed at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg by Dr Karl Heinz Kuck.

He was discharged in early July 2004 and continued to spend time recovering. Bowie later admitted he had suffered a minor heart attack, resulting from years of heavy smoking and touring. The tour was cancelled for the time being, with hopes that he would go back on tour by August, though this did not materialise. He recuperated back in New York City.

In October 2004, Bowie released a live DVD of the tour, entitled A Reality Tour of his performances in Dublin on 22 November and 23 November 2003, which included songs spanning the full length of Bowie’s career, although mostly focusing on his more recent albums.

Still recuperating from his operation, Bowie worked off-stage and relaxed from studio work for the first time in several years. In 2004, a duet of his classic song “Changes” with Butterfly Boucher appeared in Shrek 2. The soundtrack for the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou featured David Bowie songs performed in Portuguese by cast member Seu Jorge (who adapted the lyrics to make them relevant to the film’s story). Most of the David Bowie songs featured in the film were originally from David Bowie (debut album), Space Oddity, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs. Bowie commented, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs acoustically in Portuguese I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with”.

Despite hopes for a comeback, in 2005, Bowie announced that he had made no plans for any performances during the year. After a relatively quiet year, Bowie recorded the vocals for the song “(She Can) Do That”, co-written by Brian Transeau, for the movie Stealth. Rumours flew about the possibility of a new album, but no announcements were made.

David Bowie finally returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, alongside Arcade Fire, for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, his first gig since the heart attack. Bowie has shown interest in the Montreal band since he was seen at one of their shows in New York City nearly a year earlier. Bowie had requested the band to perform at the show, and together they performed the Arcade Fire’s song “Wake Up” from their album Funeral, as well as Bowie’s own “Five Years” and “Life on Mars?”. He joined them again on 15 September 2005, singing “Queen Bitch” and “Wake Up” from Central Park’s Summerstage as part of the CMJ Music Marathon.

Bowie contributed back-up vocals for TV on the Radio’s song “Province” from their album Return to Cookie Mountain. He made other occasional appearances, as in his commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio. He appeared on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir’s 2005 release, No Balance Palace, which was produced by Tony Visconti. The album also featured a spoken word performance by Lou Reed, making it the second project involving both Bowie and Reed in two years, since Reed’s 2003 The Raven.

On 8 February 2006, David Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November, Bowie performed at the Black Ball in New York for the Keep a Child Alive Foundation alongside his wife, Iman, and Alicia Keys. He duetted with Keys on “Changes”, and also performed “Wild is the Wind” and “Fantastic Voyage”.

For 2006, Bowie once again announced a break from performance, but he made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour’s 29 May 2006 concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He sang “Arnold Layne” and “Comfortably Numb”, closing the concert. The former performance was released, on 26 December 2006, as a single.

In May 2007, it was announced that Bowie would curate the High Line Festival in the abandoned railway park in New York called the High Line where he would select various musicians and artists to perform.

Bowie contributed backing vocals to two tracks – “Falling Down” and “Fannin’ Street” – on Scarlett Johansson’s 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head.

On 29 June 2008, Bowie released a new compilation entitled iSELECT. This CD was a collection of personal favourites compiled by Bowie himself and was available exclusively as a free gift with the British newspaper The Mail On Sunday. The compilation is notable in that it only contained one major hit single, “Life on Mars?”, and concentrated on lesser-known album tracks.

Acting career

David Bowie filmography

Bowie’s first major film role in The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976, earned acclaim. Bowie’s character Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien from a planet that is dying from a lack of water. In 1979′s Just a Gigolo, an Anglo-German co-production directed by David Hemmings, Bowie played the lead role of a Prussian officer Paul von Pryzgodski returning from World War I who is discovered by a Baroness (Marlene Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable.

In the 1980s, Bowie continued with film roles and also starred in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man (1980-1981). In 1982, he made a cameo appearance as himself in Christiane F., focusing on a young girl’s drug addiction. Bowie also starred in The Hunger (1983), a revisionist vampire movie with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In the film, Bowie and Deneuve are vampire lovers, with her having made him a vampire centuries ago. While she is truly ageless, he discovers to his horror that although immortal, he can still age and rapidly becomes a pathetic, monstrous husk as the film progresses. In Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), based on Laurens van der Post’s novel The Seed and the Sower, Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Another famous musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, played the camp commandant who begins to be undermined by Celliers’ bizarre behavior. Bowie had a cameo as The Shark in Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate comedy made by some of the members of Monty Python, and a small part as Colin the hit man in the 1985 film Into the Night. During this time Bowie was also asked to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985), but turned down the role, stating that “I didn’t want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off mountains.”

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence impressed some critics. His next major film project, the rock musical Absolute Beginners (1986), was both a critical and box office disappointment. The same year he appeared in the Jim Henson cult classic, the dark fantasy Labyrinth (1986), playing Jareth, the king of the goblins. Jareth is a powerful, mysterious creature who has an antagonistic yet strangely flirtatious relationship with Sarah (Jennifer Connelly), the film’s teenage heroine. Appearing in heavy make-up and a mane-like wig, Bowie sang a variety of new songs specially composed for the film’s soundtrack. Bowie also played a sympathetic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for 1989′s Batman. Hamm recalls “David Bowie would be kind of neat because he’s very funny when he does sinister roles”. The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson.

Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in the 1991 film The Linguini Incident, and played mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). He took the small but pivotal role of Andy Warhol in Basquiat, artist/director Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1998 Bowie also co-starred in an Italian film called Gunslinger’s Revenge (renamed from the original Il Mio West).

Before appearing in The Hunger, a TV horror serial based on the 1983 movie, Bowie was invited by musician Goldie to play the aging gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth’s Brighton Rock inspired movie, Everybody Loves Sunshine. He played the title role in the 2000 film, Mr. Rice’s Secret, in which he played the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve year old. In 2001, Bowie appeared as himself in the film Zoolander, volunteering himself to be a walkoff judge between Ben Stiller’s character Zoolander, and Owen Wilson’s character, Hansel.

In 2006, Bowie portrayed Nikola Tesla alongside Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows the bitter competition between two magicians around the turn of the century. Bowie has voice-acted in the animated movie Arthur and the Minimoys (known as Arthur and the Invisibles in the U.S.) as the powerful villain Maltazard. He also appeared as himself in an episode of Extras. Bowie (in the context of the show) improvised and sang a song mocking the main character Andy Millman, played by Ricky Gervais. He also lent his voice to the character “Lord Royal Highness” in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode “SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePantis”. His latest project is a supporting role as Ogilvie in the new film, August,

Personal life

Romantic relationships

Bowie met his first wife Angela Bowie in 1969. According to Bowie, they were “fucking the same bloke” (record executive Calvin Mark Lee).

Bowie married his second wife, the Somali-born supermodel Iman Abdulmajid, in 1992. The couple have a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones (known as Lexi), born 15 August 2000, and live in Manhattan and London.

Sexual orientation

Bowie outed himself in an interview with Melody Maker in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.

In 1993, he made the claim that he had always been a “closet heterosexual”, and that his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture was more a product of the times and situation than his own feelings. Bowie stated, “It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all.”

Bowie expressed a different view in a 2002 interview with Blender; where he was posed with this question: “You once said that saying you were bisexual was ‘the biggest mistake I ever made’. Do you still believe that?” His response:

Interesting.

Politics

In September 2007, he made a contribution of U.S.$10,000 to the NAACP

Discography

David Bowie discography

Studio albums

* David Bowie (1967)
* Space Oddity (1969)
* The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
* Hunky Dory (1971)
* The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
* Aladdin Sane (1973)
* Pin Ups (1973)
* Diamond Dogs (1974)
* Young Americans (1975)
* Station to Station (1976)
* Low (1977)
* “Heroes” (1977)
* Lodger (1979)
* Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
* Let’s Dance (1983)
* Tonight (1984)
* Never Let Me Down (1987)
* Black Tie, White Noise (1993)
* The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
* Outside (1995)
* Earthling (1997)
* ‘hours…’ (1999)
* Heathen (2002)
* Reality (2003)

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Oct 09

1940 – John Lennon is born in Liverpool, England. …

Posted in 1940s, Agents & Lawyers, Albums/Singles that Rock, Bands/Artists that Rock, Beatles, Billboard charts, Bio, Birthdays, Chart Toppers, Classic, Composers & Songwriters, General, Gold, Grammy, Guitarists, Industry, Misc., Off the Hook, Other Awards/Honors, Platinum, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (honoured diety), Singers | No Comments »

1940 – John Lennon is born in Liverpool, England. One of the founding members of the Beatles. This great day in rock history!

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English rock musician, singer, writer, songwriter, artist, actor and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles.

In his solo career, Lennon wrote and recorded many songs such as “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine”. Lennon revealed his rebellious nature and wit on television, in films such as A Hard Day’s Night, in books such as In His Own Write, and in press conferences and interviews. He was controversial through his work as a peace activist, artist, and author.

Lennon had two sons: Julian Lennon, with his first wife Cynthia Lennon, and Sean Ono Lennon, with his second wife, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. After a self-imposed retirement from 1976 to 1980, Lennon reemerged with a comeback album, but was murdered one month later in New York City on 8 December 1980. In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon into eighth place. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time” and ranked The Beatles at number one.

Early years: 1940–1957

Further information: Julia Lennon, Alfred Lennon, Mimi Smith, and George Toogood Smith

John Winston Lennon was born in the Liverpool Maternity Hospital, Oxford Street, Liverpool, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred (Alf, or Freddie) Lennon, during the course of a German air raid in World War II.
Mendips; George and Mimi Smith’s home, where Lennon lived for most of his childhood and adolescence.
Mendips; George and Mimi Smith’s home, where Lennon lived for most of his childhood and adolescence.

Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived with his Aunt Mimi and her husband George Smith, who had no children of their own, in Woolton, in a house called “Mendips” (251 Menlove Avenue). Mimi bought volumes of short stories for Lennon, and George, who was a dairyman at his family’s farm, engaged Lennon in solving crossword puzzles, and bought him a harmonica. (Smith died on 5 June 1955).

Lennon was raised as an Anglican, and attended Dovedale County Primary School until he passed his Eleven-Plus exam.

Julia bought Lennon his first guitar in 1957, which was a Gallotone Champion acoustic (a cheap model that was “guaranteed not to split”).

Lennon failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was only accepted into the Liverpool College of Art with help from his school’s headmaster and Mimi. There, Lennon met his future wife, Cynthia Powell, when he was a Teddy Boy.

The Beatles: 1957–1970

Main articles: The Quarrymen, Lennon/McCartney, and The Beatles
Further information: The Beatles discography

Lennon’s guitars.
Lennon’s guitars.

When Lennon decided that he wanted to try making music himself, he and fellow Quarry Bank Grammar School friend, Eric Griffiths, took guitar lessons at Hunts Cross in Liverpool, although Lennon gave up the lessons soon after.

Allan Williams became the Beatles’ first manager in May 1960, after they had played in his Jacaranda club.

After Harrison turned 18 and the immigration problems had been solved, The Beatles went back to Hamburg for another residency in April 1961. While they were there, they recorded “My Bonnie” with Tony Sheridan.

On 9 May 1962, George Martin signed The Beatles to EMI’s comedy label, Parlophone. After their first recording session, Martin voiced his displeasure with Best.
The Beatles arriving in the U.S. in 1964.
The Beatles arriving in the U.S. in 1964.

The album and single hit #1 in Britain, and EMI offered the album to their U.S. subsidiary, Capitol Records, but they turned it down.

Lennon complained that nobody heard them play for all the screaming, and their musicianship was beginning to suffer. Many radio stations banned The Beatles’ music, and some concert venues cancelled performances. At a press conference in Chicago, on 11 August 1966, Lennon addressed the growing controversy:
“ I was not saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still do not know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry. ”

The Vatican accepted Lennon’s apology.

At the end of 1968, Lennon performed as part of the group Dirty Mac, in The Rolling Stones’ film Rock and Roll Circus. The supergroup, made up of Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed Ono’s performance.

Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969 (Starr had previously left and then returned during 1968, and Harrison had left on 10 January 1969, during the filming for Let It Be, but returned after a Beatles’ meeting at Starr’s house two days later).

In 1970, Jann Wenner recorded an interview with Lennon that was played on BBC radio in 2005. The interview reveals Lennon’s bitterness towards McCartney and the hostility he felt that the other members had for Ono. Lennon said: “One of the main reasons The Beatles ended is because we got fed up with being sidemen for Paul. After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?”

Solo career: 1970–1980

Further information: John Lennon discography

While still a Beatle, Lennon and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music, Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions, and Wedding Album. His first “solo” album was Live Peace in Toronto 1969—recorded prior to the breakup of The Beatles—recorded at a Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival in Toronto with The Plastic Ono Band. He also recorded three solo singles: the anti-war anthem, “Give Peace a Chance”, “Cold Turkey”, and “Instant Karma!”. Following The Beatles’ split in 1970, Lennon released the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album. It included “Working Class Hero”, which was banned by BBC Radio for its use of the word “fucking”.

His album Imagine followed in 1971, and the title song would later become an anthem for anti-war movements. The song “How Do You Sleep?” was widely perceived as as a personal attack against McCartney, although Lennon later claimed that he wrote the song about himself.

In 1972, Lennon released “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song, although Lennon was allowed to perform it on The Dick Cavett Show.

In November 1973, Lennon released Mind Games, which was credited to “the Plastic U.F.Ono Band”. He also wrote “I’m the Greatest” for Starr’s album Ringo (his own demo version of the song appears on the John Lennon Anthology) and produced “Too Many Cooks (Spoil The Soup)” for Mick Jagger. In September 1974, Lennon released Walls and Bridges and the single “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” (a #1 duet with Elton John). A second single from the album, “#9 Dream”, was released in December. He wrote “Goodnight Vienna” for Starr, and played piano on the recording.

Lennon made his last stage appearance on ATV’s 18 April 1975 special called A Salute to Lew Grade performing “Imagine”, “Stand By Me” (cut from the televised edition), and “Slippin’ and Slidin’” from his Rock ‘n’ Roll LP.

Lennon emerged from retirement in November 1980, releasing Double Fantasy, which also featured Ono. In June 1980, Lennon had traveled with Sean to Bermuda for a sailing trip on a 43-foot schooner, where he wrote songs for the album.

Marriages and relationships

In one of his last major interviews, in September 1980, Lennon said that he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitudes towards women until he met Ono. Lennon was always distant with his first son, Julian, but was close to his second son, Sean, calling him, “My pride”. Near the end of Lennon’s life, he said that he accepted the role of househusband, after taking on the role of a wife and mother in his relationship with Ono.

Cynthia Lennon

Further information: Cynthia Lennon

Lennon and Cynthia Powell in 1959.
Lennon and Cynthia Powell in 1959.

Cynthia Powell met Lennon at the Liverpool Art College in 1957.

Lennon was on tour and would not see Julian for three days, and shortly after went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, which would lead to speculation of an affair between the two (Epstein was widely known to be homosexual). Shortly afterwards, at Paul McCartney’s twenty-first birthday party, a drunken Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club MC Bob Wooler for saying “How was your honeymoon, John?” (Wooler was referring to Lennon’s marriage, and not Lennon’s holiday in Spain with Epstein).

Cynthia Lennon had become aware of Lennon’s infidelities, but cites his increasing drug use for their growing apart. She was also aware of Lennon’s friendship with Ono. Eventually, according to Powell, she actually suggested to Lennon that perhaps Ono was the woman for him.

When Lennon and Ono moved to New York, Julian would not see his father again until 1973.

Yoko Ono

Further information: Yoko Ono

Ono at the opening ceremony of her art exhibition in São Paulo, Brazil. November 2007.
Ono at the opening ceremony of her art exhibition in São Paulo, Brazil. November 2007.

There are two versions of how Lennon and Ono met: On 9 November 1966, Lennon went to the Indica gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar.

Lennon began his physical relationship with Ono—seven years his senior—in May 1968, after Lennon returned from India, where he had received numerous postcards from Ono, who was in London.

During Lennon’s last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. Lennon sent back his MBE insignia in 1969, which Queen Elizabeth had bestowed upon him in 1965.

May Pang and the “Lost Weekend”
May Pang.
May Pang.

Further information: May Pang

In June 1973, Ono decided that she and Lennon should separate. Ono suggested that he take their personal assistant, May Pang, as a companion.

While Lennon and Pang were living in L.A., Lennon’s drunken behavior was widely reported by the media. Lennon also took the opportunity to get reacquainted with his son, Julian, whom he had not seen in four years.

In May 1974, Lennon and Pang returned to New York where he began work on Walls and Bridges. On the evening of 23 August 1974, both Lennon and Pang claimed to have seen a U.F.O. in the sky from their balcony. Lennon mentioned the sighting in the booklet accompanying the Walls and Bridges album.

In December 1974, Harrison was in New York on the Dark Horse tour, and Lennon agreed to join him on stage, but they had an argument over Lennon’s refusal to sign the agreement that would legally dissolve The Beatles partnership, which was meant to be at New York’s Plaza Hotel on 19 December 1974. Lennon finally signed the papers in Walt Disney World in Florida, while on holiday there with Pang and Julian.

On 31 January 1975, the Lennons reunited and, on 9 October 1975 – Lennon’s 35th birthday – Ono gave birth to a son, Sean Ono Lennon. Lennon issued a statement: “I feel higher than the Empire State Building”, and soon retired from the music business.

Political activism
Recording “Give Peace a Chance”.
Recording “Give Peace a Chance”.

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton, in March 1969, as a “Bed-in for Peace” that attracted world-wide media coverage.

In 1972, the Nixon Administration tried to have Lennon deported from the U.S., as Richard Nixon believed that Lennon’s support for George McGovern could lose him the next election.

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the U.S. within 60 days, while Ono was granted permanent residence.

Lennon’s order of deportation was overturned in 1975. After Lennon’s death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information request for FBI files on Lennon.

In 1976, Lennon’s U.S. immigration status was finally resolved favorably, and he received his green card. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle. When Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president on 19 January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.

Drugs, meditation and primal therapy

Lennon was first given drugs in Hamburg, Germany, as The Beatles had to play long sets and were often given Preludin by customers or by Astrid Kirchherr, whose mother bought them for her.

In a 1995 interview, Cynthia said there were problems throughout their marriage because of the pressures of The Beatles’ fame and rigorous touring, and because of Lennon’s increasing use of drugs. Later that day, he phoned Ono, whose own husband Tony (Anthony Cox) was in Paris on business, and invited her to Kenwood.

In 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. The therapy consisted of releasing emotional pain from early childhood. Lennon and Ono ended the sessions before completing a full course of therapy, as Ono constantly argued with Janov.

Humour

Each of The Beatles was known, especially during Beatlemania, for their sense of humour. During live performances of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, Lennon often changed the words to “I want to hold your gland”, because of the difficulty hearing the vocals above the noise of screaming audiences. At the Royal Variety Show in 1963 — in the presence of members of the British royalty — Lennon told the audience, “For our next song, I’d like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands… and the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelery.”

During the “Get Back” sessions, Lennon introduced “Dig a Pony” by shouting, “I dig a pygmy by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids; phase one in which Doris gets her oats!” The phrase was later edited to precede “Two of Us” on Let It Be. Lennon often counter-pointed McCartney’s upbeat lyrics, as in “Getting Better”:

McCartney: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better, a little better, all the time.”

Lennon: “Can’t get no worse.”

Lennon appeared in various television comedy shows, such as the Morecambe and Wise show with the rest of The Beatles, and played a doorman in a gents’ toilet in Not Only But Also.

Writing and art
Lennon’s comic, “The Daily Howl”.
Lennon’s comic, “The Daily Howl”.

Lennon started writing and drawing early in life, with encouragement from his Uncle George, and created his own comic strip in his school book, which he called “The Daily Howl”. It contained drawings—frequently of crippled people—and satirical writings, often with a play on words. Lennon wrote a weather report saying, “Tomorrow will be Muggy, followed by Tuggy, Wuggy and Thuggy.”

When Liverpool’s Mersey Beat magazine was founded, Lennon was asked to contribute. His first piece was about the origins of The Beatles: “A man appeared on a flaming pie, and said you are Beatles with an ‘A’.”

Pseudonyms

Throughout his solo career, Lennon appeared on his own albums (as well as those of other artists, like Elton John) under such pseudonyms as Dr Winston O’Boogie, Mel Torment (a play on singer Mel Tormé), and The Reverend Fred Gherkin. He and Ono (as Ada Gherkin “ate a gherkin”, and other sobriquets) also travelled under such names, thus avoiding unwanted public attention.

Lennon also named his session musicians under various different band names during his career, including:

* The Plastic Ono Band (for the Plastic Ono Band album)
* The Plastic Ono Band with the Flux Fiddlers (Imagine)
* The Plastic U.F.Ono Band (Mind Games)
* The Plastic Ono Nuclear Band/Little Big Horns and the Philharmanic Orchestrange (Walls and Bridges)

Murder

Further information: Death of John Lennon

The entrance to the Dakota building where Lennon was shot.
The entrance to the Dakota building where Lennon was shot.

On the night of 8 December 1980, Lennon was shot four times in the back (the fifth shot missed) in the entrance hallway of the Dakota by Mark David Chapman. Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman earlier that same night.

Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival in the Emergency Room at the Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 p.m. On the following day, 9 December 1980, Ono issued a statement: “There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean.”

Two days after his death, Lennon’s body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono kept his ashes.

Memorials and tributes
The Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park, New York City.
The Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park, New York City.

A crowd gathered outside the Dakota the night of Lennon’s death. Ono sent word that their singing kept her awake and asked that they re-convene in Central Park the following Sunday for ten minutes of silent prayer.

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes, principally New York City’s Strawberry Fields, a memorial garden area in Central Park across the street from the Dakota building. Shortly after his death, Ono donated $1 million for its maintenance. It has become a gathering place for tributes on Lennon’s birthday and on the anniversary of his death, as well as at other times of mourning, such as after the 11 September 2001 attacks and following George Harrison’s death on 29 November 2001.

On 9 October 2007 the Imagine Peace Tower was first lit in Viðey island, off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland. This idea, originally conceived by Yoko Ono in 1965 is lit annually from 9 October, Lennon’s birthday to 8 December, Lennon’s date of death. Into the tower the words “Imagine Peace” are carved in 24 different languages.

In late summer 2008 it was confirmed that British director Sam Taylor-Wood is to direct Nowhere Boy, a movie about Lennon’s early years, childhood and adolescence, prior to the rise to the fame and the Beatles. Nowhere Boy will be shot on location in Liverpool, and will be based on the book Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon, written by Lennon’s half sister Julia Baird. The film, scheduled for a 2010 release, will examine the influence of Lennon’s aunt Mimi Smith and his mother Julia upon his early life.

Awards

With The Beatles

BRIT Awards:

* 1977: Outstanding contribution to music during the past 25 years.
* 1977: Best British band of the past 25 years.
* 1977: Best British album of the past 25 years (for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).
* 1983: Outstanding contribution to music.

Solo career

* 1982 BRIT Awards – Outstanding contribution to music.
* 2002 In 2002, a 100 Greatest Britons BBC poll voted Lennon into eighth place.
* In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time”.

Discography

Main article: John Lennon discography
See also: The Beatles discography

Studio albums

* John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
* Imagine (1971)
* Some Time in New York City (with Yoko Ono) (1972)
* Mind Games (1973)
* Walls and Bridges (1974)
* Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975)
* Double Fantasy (with Yoko Ono) (1980)
* Milk and Honey (with Yoko Ono) (1984)

Instrumentation

Further information: John Lennon’s instrumentation

Notes

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3. ^ a b Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p24
4. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p25.
5. ^ ”The Beatles Anthology” DVD 2003 (Episode 6 – 0:37:32) Lennon talking about living at 9 Newcastle Road in Liverpool.
6. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p27.
7. ^ Cynthia Lennon – “John”. p55.
8. ^ a b Cynthia Lennon – “John” p56
9. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p30
10. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p32.
11. ^ Cynthia Lennon – “John” p40.
12. ^ Cynthia Lennon – “John”. p41.
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15. ^ Miles 1997 p107
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20. ^ Miles 1997 p31
21. ^ Keith Badman The Beatles Off The Record p18
22. ^ Miles 1997 p20
23. ^ a b Cynthia Lennon – “John”. p22.
24. ^ Coleman – Lennon: The Definitive Biography p93.
25. ^ Coleman – Lennon: The Definitive Biography p97.
26. ^ http://www.add-adhd-help-center.com/newsletters/newsletter_30june03.htm
27. ^ Cynthia Lennon – “John”. p67.
28. ^ Spitz (2005) p48
29. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p47
30. ^ Spitz – The Beatles: The Biography p93
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34. ^ Miles 1997 pp38-39
35. ^ Miles 1997 p49
36. ^ Miles 1997 p47
37. ^ Miles 1997 p50
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48. ^ Cynthia Lennon “John” p97
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On This Day in Rock History: February 9

1942 – Paul McCartney is born in Liverpool, Englan…

2004 – Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, whose avant…

2002 – More than a quarter-century after its relea…

1997 – Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, original gui…

1973 – Riding high on the success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

1954 – Avant-garde guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, who has made

1947 – David Bowie (David Robert Jones) is born in…

1940 – John Lennon is born in Liverpool, England. …

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