SOXTALK'S 50 FAVORITE ROCK ACTS

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25. Elvis Presley

 

 

4 lists of 24 - 49 points - highest ranking #3 Soxy

 

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as Elvis and is also sometimes referred to as The King of Rock 'n' Roll or The King.

 

Presley began his career in 1954 as one of the first performers of rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a strong back beat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing "black" and "white" sounds, made him popular—and controversial—as did his uninhibited performances. Presley had a versatile voice and he had unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including rock and roll, gospel, blues, country, ballads and pop. To date, he has been inducted into four music halls of fame.

 

In 1968, after making movies in Hollywood and having been away from the stage for seven years, he returned to live performances in a television special, which led to a string of successful tours across the U.S., notably in Las Vegas, for the remainder of his career. In 1973, Presley staged the first global live concert via satellite (Aloha from Hawaii), reaching at least one billion viewers live and an additional 500 million on delay. It remains the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.

 

Throughout his career, he set records for concert attendance, television ratings and recordings sales. He is one of the best-selling solo artists in the history of popular music, with sales between 600 million and one billion worldwide, and he is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture. Among his many awards and accolades are 14 Grammy nominations (3 wins) from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received at age 36, and being named One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation for 1970 by the United States Jaycees.

 

Health problems, prescription drug dependence, and other factors led to his death at the age of 42.

 

In the summer of 1953, Presley went to Sun Records' Memphis Recording Service to record "My Happiness" with "That's When Your Heartaches Begin," supposedly as a present for his mother although it was months after her birthday. When asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley told her that he sang all kinds. Determined to pin him down to a particular style, she then asked him who he sounded like, a question Presley responded to by insisting that he didn't sound like anyone. After his demo, she made herself a note: "Good ballad singer, Hold."

 

On January 4, 1954, he cut a second acetate demo recording of "I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be The Same Without You", but again nothing came of the recording session. In April Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver, and around this time he auditioned for the Songfelows, but was disappointed when they turned him down and said he couldn't sing. Years later the group insisted that they meant he couldn't sing harmony, but Presley took the criticism to heart.

 

A few months later, Sun Records boss Sam Phillips was on the lookout for someone who could deliver a blend of black blues and boogie-woogie music; he thought it would be very popular among white people. When Phillips acquired a demo recording of "Without You" and was unable to identify the vocalist, Marion Keisker reminded him about the young truck driver. She called him on June 26, 1954. However, Presley was not able to do justice to the song. Phillips would later recall that Elvis was as nervous as anybody that he had seen in front of a microphone. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many songs as he knew and, impressed enough by what he heard, he invited local musicians Winfield "Scotty" Moore and Bill Black to audition Presley. Though they were not overly impressed, a studio session was planned.

 

On July 5, during a recording break, Presley began "acting the fool" with Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)". Phillips quickly got them all to restart, and began taping. This was the sound he had been looking for. The following day the group recorded Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", and it was released as the B-side to That's All Right.

 

"That's All Right" was aired on July 8, 1954, by DJ Dewey Phillips on his Red, Hot and Blue show.[68]b Listeners to the show began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the demo fourteen times. During an interview on the show, Phillips asked Presley what high school he attended—to clarify Presley's color for listeners who assumed he must be black.

 

On July 12 Moore officially became Presley's manager and, along with Black, began playing regularly with him. They gave performances on July 17 and July 24, 1954 to promote the Sun single at the Bon Air, a rowdy music club in Memphis, where the band was not well-received. On July 30 the trio, billed as The Blue Moon Boys, made their first paid appearance at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. With a natural feel for rhythm, Presley shook his legs when performing: his wide-legged pants emphasizing his leg movements, apparently causing females in the audience to go "crazy." Presley was aware of the cause of the audience's reaction and consciously incorporated similar movements into future shows.

 

Soon after, Deejay and promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager (replacing Scotty Moore). Moore and Black left their band, the Starlight Wranglers and, from August through October 1954, appeared with Presley at The Eagle's Nest. Presley debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on October 2; Hank Snow introduced Presley on stage. He performed "Blue Moon of Kentucky" but received only a polite response. Afterward, the singer was supposedly told by the Opry's Jim Denny to not give up his day job. though others deny it was Denny who made that statement.

 

Country music promoter and manager Tillman Franks booked Presley for October 16 on KWKH-AM's Louisiana Hayride. Before Franks saw Presley, he referred to him as "that new black singer with the funny name." During Presley's first set, the reaction was muted; Franks then advised Presley to "Let it all go!" for the second set. House drummer D.J. Fontana complemented Presley's movements with accented beats which he had mastered during his time working as a drummer in strip clubs. Bill Black also took an active part in encouraging the audience, and the crowd became more responsive. According to one source, regarding Presley's engagements from that time, "Audiences had never before heard [such] music... [or] seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance". Sam Phillips said Presley put all his emotion into each song, as if he was unable to sing any other way.

 

By August 1955, Sun Studios had released ten sides, credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill," all typical of the developing Presley style which seemed hard to categorize; he was billed or labeled in the media as "The King of Western Bop," "The Hillbilly Cat" and "The Memphis Flash."

 

On August 15, 1955, "Colonel" Tom Parker became Presley's manager, signing him to a one year contract, plus renewals. Several record labels had shown interest in signing Presley and, by the end of October 1955, three major labels had made offers up to $25,000. On November 21, 1955, Parker and Phillips negotiated a deal with RCA Victor Records to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000 ($318,304 in current dollar terms), $5,000 of which was a bonus for the singer for back royalties owed to him by Sun Records (Presley, at 20, was officially still a minor, so his father had to sign the contract).

 

To boost earnings for himself and Presley, Parker also cut a deal with Hill and Range Publishing Company to create two separate entities—"Elvis Presley Music, Inc" and "Gladys Music"—to handle all of Presley's songs and accrued royalties. The owners of Hill & Range, Julian and Jean Aberbach, agreed to split the publishing and royalties rights of each song equally with Presley. Hill & Range, Presley or Colonel Parker's partners then had to convince unsecured songwriters that it was worthwhile for them to give up one third of their due royalties in exchange for Presley recording their compositions. One result of these dealings was the appearance of Presley's name as co-writer of some songs he recorded, even though Presley never had any hand in the songwriting process. The only known exception to this rule is Heartbreak Hotel, where Presley received writing credits because Mae Boren Axton knew of his wish to buy his parents a Cadillac. Because she liked Presley so much, she offered him writing credits to help him raise the funds quicker.

 

By December 1955, RCA had begun to heavily promote its newest star, and by the month's end had re-released many of his Sun recordings.

 

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville, Tennessee. Despite Scotty, Bill and D.J. being in the studio with him, RCA enlisted the talents of already established stars Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins also to "...fatten the sound." The session produced "Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One" which was released on January 27. The public reaction to "Heartbreak Hotel" prompted RCA to release it as a single in its own right (February 11). By April it had hit number one in the U.S. charts, selling in excess of one million copies.

 

To increase the singer's exposure, Parker finally brought Presley to national television after booking six appearances on CBS's Stage Show in New York, beginning January 28, 1956. Presley was introduced on the first program by Cleveland DJ Bill Randle. He stayed in town and on January 30, he and the band headed for the RCA's New York Studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including "My Baby Left Me" and "Blue Suede Shoes". The latter was the only hit single from the collection, but the recordings marked the point at which Presley started moving away from the raw, pure Sun sound to the more commercial and mainstream sound RCA had envisioned for him.

 

On March 23, RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album. Like the Sun recordings, the majority of the tracks were country songs. The album went on to top the pop album chart for 10 weeks and became RCA's first million-dollar seller.

 

On April 1, Presley launched his acting career with a screen test for Paramount Pictures, and signed a seven year contract with them on April 25. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21.

 

After more hectic touring, Presley made his second appearance on The Milton Berle Show (June 5). Whilst delivering an uptempo version of "Hound Dog" (without his guitar), he then stopped, and immediately after began performing a slower version. Presley's "gyrations" during this televised version of "Hound Dog" created a storm of controversy—even eclipsing the "communist threat" headlines prevalent at the time. The press described his performance as "vulgar" and "obscene". The furor was such that Presley was pressured to explain himself on the local New York City TV show Hy Gardner Calling. After this performance he was dubbed "Elvis the Pelvis". Presley disliked the name, calling it "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard.

 

The Berle shows drew such huge ratings that Steve Allen (NBC), not a fan of rock and roll, booked him for one appearance in New York on July 1. Allen believed that his show should be one "the whole family can watch" and introduced a "new Elvis" in white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a Basset Hound in a top hat. According to one author, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition..." In his book "Hi-Ho Steverino!" Allen defended his decision to present Presley this way, stating that by simply changing Presley's attire it changed the way he performed. The day after (July 2), the single "Hound Dog" was recorded. Scotty Moore said they were "all angry about their treatment the previous night", and Presley would later refer to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. A few days later, Presley made a "triumphant" outdoor appearance in Memphis at which he announced: "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight."

 

Country vocalists The Jordanaires accompanied Presley on The Steve Allen Show and their first recording session together produced "Any Way You Want Me", "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog". The Jordanaires would work with the singer through the 1960s.

 

When "That's All Right" was played, many listeners were sure Presley must be black, prompting white disc-jockeys to ignore his Sun singles. However, black disc-jockeys did not want anything to do with any record they knew was made by a white man. To many black adults, Presley had undoubtedly "stolen" or at least "derived his style from the Negro rhythm-and-blues performers of the late 1940s", though such criticism ignored Presley's use of "white" musical styles. Some black entertainers, notably Jackie Wilson, argued: "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis."

 

To many white adults, the singer was "the first rock symbol of teenage rebellion. ... they did not like him, and condemned him as depraved. Anti-negro prejudice doubtless figured in adult antagonism. Regardless of whether parents were aware of the Negro sexual origins of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll', Presley impressed them as the visual and aural embodiment of sex." In 1956, a critic for the New York Daily News wrote that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley" and the Jesuits denounced him in their weekly magazine, America. Even Frank Sinatra opined: "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." Presley responded to this (and other derogatory comments Sinatra made) by saying: "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it... This ... [rock and roll] ... is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."

 

In 1957, despite Presley's demonstrable respect for "black" music and performers, he faced accusations of racism. He was alleged to have said in an interview: "The only thing Negro people can do for me is to buy my records and shine my shoes." An African American journalist at Jet magazine subsequently pursued the story. On the set of Jailhouse Rock, Presley denied saying, or ever wanting to make, such a racist remark. The Jet journalist found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, but did find testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Despite the remark being wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later.

 

On January 8, 1957, the Memphis Draft Board held a press conference and announced Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year. On December 20, 1957, Presley received his draft notice. Hal Wallis and Paramount Pictures had already spent $350,000 on the film King Creole, and did not want to suspend or cancel the project. The Memphis Draft Board granted Presley a deferment to finish it. On March 24, 1958 he was inducted as US Army private, under the service number US 53 310 761, at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Two Army officers Arlie Metheny and John J. Mawn, coordinated the entry and shielded Presley from bombardment by national media and free-lance photographers. Presley completed basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, on September 17, 1958, before being posted to Friedberg, Germany, with the 3rd Armored Division, where his service took place from October 1, 1958 until March 2, 1960.

 

Presley returned to the U.S. on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5.[137] Back on U.S. soil, the train which carried him from New Jersey to Memphis was mobbed all the way, with Presley being called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans.[138]

 

The first recording session, on March 20, 1960, was attended by all of the significant businessmen involved with Presley; none had heard him sing for two years, and there were inevitable concerns about him being able to recapture his previous success. The session was the first at which Presley was recorded using a three-track machine, allowing better quality, postsession remixing and stereophonic recording. This, and a further session in April, yielded some of Presley's best-selling songs. "It's Now or Never" ended with Presley "soaring up to an incredible top G sharp ... pure magic." His voice on "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" has been described as "natural, unforced, dead in tune, and totally distinctive." Although some tracks were uptempo, none could be described as "rock and roll", and many of them marked a significant change in musical direction. Most tracks found their way on to an album—Elvis is Back!—described by one critic as "a triumph on every level... It was as if Elvis had... broken down the barriers of genre and prejudice to express everything he heard in all the kinds of music he loved". The album was also notable because of Homer Boots Randolph's acclaimed saxophone playing on the blues songs "Like A Baby" and "Reconsider Baby", the latter being described as "a refutation of those who do not recognize what a phenomenal artist Presley was."

 

In 1968, even Presley's version of Jerry Reed's hook-laden "Guitar Man" had failed to enter the U.S. Top 40. He continued to issue movie soundtrack albums that sold poorly compared to those of films like Blue Hawaii from 1961. It had also been nearly six years since the single "Good Luck Charm" had topped the Billboard Hot 100.

 

Presley was, by now, "profoundly" unhappy with his career. Colonel Parker's plans once again included television, and he arranged for Presley to appear in his own special. The singer had not been on television since Frank Sinatra's Timex special in May 1960. Parker shrewdly maneuvered a deal with NBC's Tom Sarnoff which included the network's commitment to financing a future Presley feature film—something that Parker had found increasingly difficult to secure.

 

The special was made in June, but was first aired on December 3, 1968 as a Christmas telecast called simply Elvis. Later dubbed the '68 Comeback Special by fans and critics, the show featured some lavishly staged studio productions. Other songs however, were performed live with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live appearance as a performer since 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style—reminiscent of his rock and roll days. Rolling Stone called it "a performance of emotional grandeur and historical resonance." Jon Landau in Eye magazine remarked: "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Its success was helped by director and co-producer, Steve Binder, who worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was not just an hour of Christmas songs, as Colonel Parker had originally planned.

 

By January, 1969, one of the key songs written specifically for the special, "If I Can Dream", reached number 12. The soundtrack of the special also broke into the Top 10. On December 4, when the TV ratings were released, NBC reported that Presley had captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. It was the network's number one rated show that season.

 

Jerry Schilling recalls that the special reminded Presley about what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Steve Binder said of Presley's reaction: "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, "Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in."

 

Buoyed by the experience, Presley engaged in the prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studios, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis (Chips Moman was its uncredited producer). It was followed by From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis, a double-album. The same sessions lead to the hit singles "In the Ghetto", "Suspicious Minds", "Kentucky Rain" and "Don't Cry Daddy".

 

In 1969, Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of Elvis, many new offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one week engagement. He responded: "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" By May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas announced that it had booked Presley; he was scheduled to perform from July 31, after Barbra Streisand opened the new venue.

 

Presley duly delivered 57 shows over four weeks at the hotel, which had the largest showroom in the city. He had assembled some of the finest musicians—including an orchestra—and some of the best soul/gospel back-up singers available.

 

Despite such a prestigious backing, Presley was nervous; his only other engagement in Las Vegas (1956) had been a disaster, critically. Parker therefore promoted the singer's appearances heavily; he rented billboards and took out full-page advertisements in local and trade papers. The lobby of the International displayed Presley souvenirs; records, T-shirts, straw boaters and stuffed animals. Parker intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, and hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian planned to send his own plane to New York to fly in the rock press for the debut performance.

 

Presley took to the stage with no introduction. The audience of 2,200—which included Pat Boone, Fats Domino, Wayne Newton, Dick Clark, Ann-Margret, George Hamilton, Angie Dickinson, and Henry Mancini—gave him a standing ovation before he sang one note. After a well-received performance, he returned to give an encore, of "Can't Help Falling in Love", and was given his third standing ovation Backstage, many well-wishers, including Cary Grant, congratulated Presley on his triumphant return which, in the showroom alone, had generated over $1,500,000.

 

Newsweek commented: "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." Rolling Stone magazine declared Presley to be "supernatural, his own resurrection", while Variety proclaimed him a "superstar". At a press conference after his opening show, when a reporter referred to him as "The King", Presley pointed to Fats Domino, standing at the back of the room. "No," he said, "that’s the real king of rock and roll."

 

The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at a salary of $1 million per year.

 

In January 1970, Presley returned to the International Hotel for a month-long engagement, performing two shows a night. RCA recorded some shows and the best material appeared on the album On Stage - February 1970. In late February, Presley performed six more attendance-breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome in Texas. In August at the International Hotel, MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage for a documentary: Elvis - That's The Way It Is. He wore a jumpsuit—a garment that would become a trademark of Presley's live performances in the 1970s. Although he had new hit singles in many countries, some were critical of his song choices and accused him of being distant from trends within contemporary music.

 

Around this time Presley was threatened with kidnapping at the International Hotel. Phone calls were received, one demanding $50,000; if unpaid, Presley would be killed by a "crazy man". The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went on stage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 in his waistband, but nothing untoward transpired. (The singer had had many threats of varying degrees since the fifties, many of them made without the singer's knowledge).

 

After closing his Las Vegas engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on his first concert tour since 1958. Feeling exhausted, Presley spent a month relaxing and recording before touring again in October and November.[236] He would tour extensively in the U.S. up to his death; many of the 1,145 concerts setting attendance records.

 

On December 21, 1970, Presley met with President Richard Nixon at the White House (Presley arrived with a gift—a handgun. It was accepted but not presented for security reasons). Presley had engineered the encounter to express his patriotism, his contempt for the hippie drug culture and his wish to be appointed a "Federal Agent at Large". He also wished to obtain a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge to add to similar items he had begun collecting. He offered to "infiltrate hippie groups" and claimed that The Beatles had "made their money, then gone back to England where they fomented anti-American feeling." Nixon was uncertain and bemused by their encounter, and twice expressed his concern to Presley that the singer needed to "retain his credibility". Ringo Starr later said he found it very sad to think Presley held such views. "This is Mr. Hips, the man, and he felt we were a danger. I think that the danger was mainly to him and his career." Paul McCartney said also that he "felt a bit betrayed ... The great joke was that we were taking drugs, and look what happened to [Elvis]. ... It was sad, but I still love him. ..."

 

On January 16, 1971 Presley was named 'One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation' by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce (The Jaycees). That summer, the City of Memphis named part of Highway 51 South "Elvis Presley Boulevard".

 

In April 1972, MGM again filmed Presley, this time for Elvis on Tour, which won a 1972 Golden Globe for Best Documentary. A 14-date tour started with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, New York. RCA taped the shows for a live album. After the tour, Presley released the 1972 single "Burning Love"—his last top ten hit in the U.S. charts.

 

In January 1973, Presley performed two charity concerts in Hawaii for the Kui Lee cancer foundation. The first concert (January 12) was primarily a practice run for the main show which was broadcast live on January 14. The first show also served as a backup if technical problems affected the live broadcast. The "Aloha from Hawaii" concert was the world's first live concert satellite broadcast, reaching at least a billion viewers live and a further 500 million on delay. The show raised $75,000 and the album went to number one, spending a year in the charts. The album also proved to be Presley's last U.S. Number One album during his lifetime.

 

In March 1973, Presley and Parker negotiated a deal with RCA that resulted in Presley receiving a large lump sum payment of $5.4 million in lieu of all his future artist's royalties for any songs recorded up to that time. Presley, however, would retain any future royalties on material recorded after March 1973. Due to the current contract that Presley had with his manager, Parker received 50% of the payment. The deal also had no effect on Presley's publishing deals, and he would continue to receive royalties from Elvis Presley Music Inc. which included songs recorded prior to March 1973. Jack Soden of Elvis Presley Enterprises later described this deal as "..right up there with the Indians selling Manhattan for $24", and in 1980 a lawyer for the Presley estate concluded that Parker and RCA were "... probably guilty of collusion, conspiracy, fraud [and] misrepresentation."

 

After his divorce in 1973, Presley became increasingly unwell, with prescription drugs affecting his health, mood and his stage act. His diet had always been unhealthy, and he now had significant weight problems. He overdosed twice on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first. According to Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley's main physician, the singer was "near death" in November 1973 because of side effects of Demerol addiction. Nichopoulos notes that the subsequent hospital admission "was crazy", because of the enormous attention Presley attracted, and the measures necessary to protect his medical details. Lab technicians were even exploiting Presley's ill-health by selling samples of his blood and urine.

 

Presley continued to play to sell-out crowds in the U.S.; a 1975 tour ended with a concert in Pontiac, Michigan, attended by over 62,000 fans. However, the singer now had "no motivation to lose his extra poundage... he became self-conscious... his self-confidence before the audience declined... Headlines such as 'Elvis Battles Middle Age' and 'Time Makes Listless Machine of Elvis' were not uncommon." According to Marjorie Garber, when Presley made his later appearances in Las Vegas, he appeared "heavier, in pancake make-up... with an elaborate jewelled belt and cape, crooning pop songs to a microphone ... [He] had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers,... Mother's Day became a special holiday for Elvis' fans."

 

Another tour was scheduled to begin August 17, 1977, but at Graceland the day before, Presley was found unresponsive on the floor of his suite by fiancée, Ginger Alden, and attempts to revive the singer failed. Death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.

 

Elvis Presley discography

 

1954 "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine" - Hot 100 #74

1955 "Baby Let's Play House" - Country #5

1955 "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" - Country #1

1955 "Mystery Train" - Country #10

1956 "Heartbreak Hotel" - Hot #1 - Cty #1 - R&B #3

1956 "I Was the One" - Hot #19 - Cty #8

1956 "Blue Suede Shoes" - Hot #20

1956 "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" - #1 - #1 - #3

1956 "My Baby Left Me" - Hot #31 - Cty #13

1956 "Don't Be Cruel" - #1 - #1 - #1

1956 "Hound Dog" - #1 - #1 - #1

1956 "Money Honey" - Hot #76

1956 "Love Me Tender" - #1 - #3 - #3

1956 "Any Way You Want Me (That's How I Will Be)" - Hot #20 - R&B #12

1956 "Love Me" - #2 - #10 - #7

1956 "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again" - Hot #19

1956 "Paralyzed" - Hot #59

1956 "Old Shep" - Hot #47

1956 "Poor Boy" - Hot #24

1957 "Too Much" - #1 - #3 - #3

1957 "Playing for Keeps" - Hot #21 - Cty #8

1957 "All Shook Up" - #1 - #1 - #1

1957 "Peace in the Valley" - Hot #25

1957 "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" - Hot #58

1957 "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" - #1 - #1 - #1

1957 "Mean Woman Blues" - Cty #11 - R&B #11

1957 "Loving You" - #20 - #15 - #1

1957 "Jailhouse Rock" - #1 - #1 - #1

1957 "Treat Me Nice" - Hot #18 = Cty #11

1957 "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" - R&B #14

1958 "Don't" - #1 - #2 - #4

1958 "I Beg of You" 8 4 — —

1958 "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck" - #2 - #3 - #1

1958 "Doncha' Think It's Time" - # Hot #15 - R&B #10

1958 "Hard Headed Woman" - #1 - #2 - #2

1958 "Don't Ask Me Why" - Hot #25 - R&B #9

1958 "One Night" - #4 - #24 - #10

1958 "I Got Stung" - Hot #8

1959 "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" - Hot #2 - R&B #16

1959 "I Need Your Love Tonight" - Hot #4

1959 "A Big Hunk o' Love" - Hot #1 - R&B #10

1959 "My Wish Came True" - Hot #12 - R&B #15

1960 "Stuck on You" - #1 - #27 - #6

1960 "Fame and Fortune" - Hot #17

1960 "It's Now or Never" - Hot #1

1960 "A Mess of Blues" - Hot #32

1960 "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" - #1 - #22 - #3

1960 "I Gotta Know" - Hot #20

1961 "Surrender" - Hot #1

1961 "Lonely Man" - Hot #32

1961 "Flaming Star" - Hot #14

1961 "I Feel So Bad" - Hot #5

1961 "Wild in the Country" - Hot #26

1961 "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame" - Hot #4 - Adult Contemporary #2

1961 "Little Sister" - Hot #5

1961 "Can't Help Falling in Love" - Hot #2 - AC #1

1962 "Rock-A-Hula Baby" - Hot #23

1962 "Good Luck Charm" - Hot #1

1962 "Anything That's Part of You" - Hot #31 - AC #6

1962 "Follow That Dream" - Hot #15 - AC #5

1962 "She's Not You" - Hot #5 - R&B #13 - AC #2

1962 "Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello" - Hot #55

1962 "King of the Whole Wide World" - Hot #30

1962 "Return to Sender" - Hot #2 - R&B #5

1962 "Where Do You Come From" - Hot #99

1963 "One Broken Heart for Sale" - Hot #11 - R&B #21

1963 "They Remind Me Too Much of You" - Hot #53

1963 "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" - Hot #3

1963 "Bossa Nova Baby" - Hot #8 - R&B #20

1963 "Witchcraft" - Hot #32

1964 "Kissin' Cousins" - Hot #12

1964 "It Hurts Me" - Hot #29

1964 "Kiss Me Quick" - Hot #34

1964 "What'd I Say" - Hot #21

1964 "Viva Las Vegas" - Hot #29

1964 "Such a Night" - Hot #16

1964 "Ask Me" - Hot #12

1964 "Ain't That Loving You Baby" - Hot #16

1964 "Blue Christmas" - Hot #1

1965 "Do the Clam" - Hot #21

1965 "You'll Be Gone" - Hot #121

1965 "Crying in the Chapel" - Hot #3 - AC #1

1965 "(Such an) Easy Question" - Hot #11- AC #1

1965 "It Feels So Right" - Hot #55

1965 "I'm Yours" - Hot #11 - AC #1

1965 "Puppet on a String" - Hot #14 - AC #3

1966 "Tell Me Why" - Hot #33

1966 "Blue River" - Hot #95

1966 "Frankie and Johnny" - Hot #25 - AC #3

1966 "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" - H #45

1966 "Love Letters" - H #19

1966 "Spinout" - H #40

1966 "All That I Am" - #41

1966 "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" - H #2

1967 "Indescribably Blue" - H #33

1967 "Long Legged Girl (with the Short Dress On)" - H #63

1967 "That's Someone You Never Forget" - H #92

1967 "There's Always Me" - H #56

1967 "Judy" - H #78

1967 "Big Boss Man" - H #38

1968 "You Don't Know Me" - H #44

1968 "Guitar Man" - H #43

1968 "U.S. Male" - H #28 - Cty #55

1968 "Stay Away" - H #67

1968 "You'll Never Walk Alone" - H #90

1968 "Your Time Hasn't Come Yet Baby" - H #71 - Cty #50

1968 "Let Yourself Go" - H #72

1968 "A Little Less Conversation" - H #69

1968 "Almost in Love" - H #95

1968 "If I Can Dream" - H #12

1969 "Memories" - H #35 - Cty #56 - AC #7

1969 "In the Ghetto" - H #3 - Cty #60

1969 "Clean Up Your Own Backyard" - H #35 - Cty #74

1969 "Suspicious Minds" - H #1 - AC #4

1969 "Don't Cry Daddy" - H #6 - Cty #13 - AC #3

1970 "Kentucky Rain" - H #16 - Cty #31 - AC #3

1970 "The Wonder of You" - #9 - #37 - #1

1970 "I've Lost You" - #32 - #57 - #5

1970 "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" - #11 - #56 - #1

1970 "I Really Don't Want to Know" - #21 - #23 - #2

1970 "There Goes My Everything" - Cty #9 - AC #2

1971 "Where Did They Go, Lord" - H #33 - Cty #55

1971 "Life" - H #53 - C #34

1971 "I'm Leavin'" - H #36 - AC #2

1971 "It's Only Love" - H #51

1972 "Until It's Time for You to Go" - H #40 - C #68

1972 "An American Trilogy" - H #66

1972 "Burning Love" - H #2

1972 "It's a Matter of Time" - C #36

1972 "Separate Ways" - H #20 - AC #3

1972 "Always on My Mind" - C #16

1973 "Steamroller Blues" - H #17

1973 "Fool" - C #31 - AC #12

1973 "Raised on Rock" - H #41

1973 "For Ol' Times Sake" - C #42

1974 "I've Got a Thing About You Baby" - H #39 - C #4

1974 "If You Talk in Your Sleep" - H #17 - AC #6

1974 "Help Me" - C #6

1974 "Promised Land" - H #14

1974 "It's Midnight" - C #9

1975 "My Boy" - #20 - #14 - #1

1975 "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" - H #35- C #11

1975 "Bringing It Back" - H #65

1975 "Pieces of My Life" - C #33

1976 "Hurt" - #28 - #6 - #7

1976 "For the Heart" - C #45

1976 "Moody Blue" - #31 - #1 - #2

1977 "Way Down" - H #18 - C #1

1977 "My Way" - H #22 - C #2 - AC #6

1978 "Unchained Melody" - C #6

1978 "Softly as I Leave You" - H #109

1978 "Puppet on a String" - C #78

1978 "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" (re-release) - H #105

1979 "Are You Sincere" - C #10

1979 "There's a Honky Tonk Angel (Who Will Take Me Back In)"- C #6

1981 "Guitar Man" - H #28 - C #1

1981 "Lovin' Arms" - C #8

1982 "You'll Never Walk Alone" - C #73

1982 "The Elvis Medley" - #71 - #31 #31

1983 "I Was the One" (re-release) - C #92

1998 "Blue Christmas" (re-release) - C #55

2002 "A Little Less Conversation" (JXL remix) - H #50

2003 "Rubberneckin'" (remix) - H #94

2008 "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (with Carrie Underwood) - C #54 - AC #14

2008 "Blue Christmas" (with Martina McBride) - C #36 - AC #22

 

 

Factoid: Presley's final performance was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26, 1977. According to many of his entourage who accompanied him on tour, it was the "best show he had given in a long time" with "some strong singing".

 

"See See Rider"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-cemoyqmi

[knightni]

24. Beastie Boys

 

 

3 lists of 24 - 50 points - highest ranking #1 TheBones

 

Beastie Boys is an American hip hop group from New York City. The group comprises Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. Since around the time of the Hello Nasty album, the DJ for the group has been Michael "Mix Master Mike" Schwartz, who was first featured in the song "Three MCs and One DJ".

 

Beastie Boys began as a hardcore punk group in 1979, and appeared on the compilation cassette New York Thrash with Riot Fight and Beastie. They switched to hip-hop with the release of their 12" single "Cooky Puss", which was followed by a string of successful 12" singles and their debut album Licensed to Ill (1986), which enjoyed international critical acclaim and commercial success. The group is well-known for its eclecticism, jocular and flippant attitude toward interviews and interviewers, obscure cultural references and kitschy lyrics, and for performing in outlandish matching suits.

 

They are one of the longest lived hip-hop acts worldwide and continue to enjoy commercial and critical success in 2009, more than 25 years after the release of their debut album. On September 27, 2007, they were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2009, the group released digitally remastered deluxe editions of their albums Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head', Ill Communication and Hello Nasty.

 

Beastie Boys came together in 1979 as a punk band called The Young Aborigines. In 1981 Adam Yauch (MCA) joined the group, and from the suggestion of their guitarist John Berry, they changed the band's name to Beastie Boys. The name "Beastie" is sometimes thought originally to have stood for "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Internal Excellence," and that the initials B.B. intended to mimic Washington DC hardcore punk band Bad Brains, but these were actually afterthoughts once the band's name was already Beastie Boys, according to Mike D and MCA. The band's original line-up consisted of Adam Yauch (MCA) on bass, Kate Schellenbach on drums, John Berry on guitar, and Michael Diamond (Mike D) on vocals. Their first gig was at Berry's house on Yauch's 17th birthday.

 

On Friday, November 13, 1982, The Beastie Boys played Bard College at Philip Pucci's birthday party. This marked the band's first on screen appearance in Philip Pucci's 1982 film, "Beastie". Pucci's wholly original concept for “Beastie” was to hand out a half dozen 16mm cameras to audience members and have them the Beastie Boys performance from their point of view while a master sync sound camera filmed from the balcony of the abandoned theatre where the performance took place. A one minute clip of "Beastie" was subsequently excerpted and licensed by The Beastie Boys for use in the "Egg Raid on Mojo" segment of the "Skills to Pay the Bills" long form video released by Capitol Records.

 

The band quickly earned support slots for Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth at venues such as CBGB and Max's Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night. That same year, the Beastie Boys recorded the 7" EP Pollywog Stew at 171A studios, an early recorded example of New York hardcore.

 

John Berry left the group (later forming Thwig, Big Fat Love, and the San Francisco booze rock band Bourbon Deluxe) and was replaced by Adam Horovitz(Ad-rock)—who had previously played in the punk band, The Young and the Useless in 1983. The band also performed its first rap track, "Cooky Puss," based on a prank call by the group to Carvel Ice Cream. It became a hit in New York underground dance clubs upon its release.

 

It was during this period that Def Jam record producer Rick Rubin signed on and the Beastie Boys changed from a punk rock outfit to a three-man rap crew. The band released the 12" EP, Rock Hard, in 1984—the second record released by Def Jam that credited Rubin as producer. Soon after Rubin's arrival, Schellenbach developed creative differences with the band, citing her friction with Rubin. It was believed that Rubin objected to Schellenbach's place in the band as she did not fit the hip hop image to which the band aspired. Schellenbach went on to join Luscious Jackson in 1991.

 

In 1985, the band opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., as well as supporting Madonna on her North American The Virgin Tour. Later in the year, the group was on the Raising Hell tour with Run DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J, and the Timex Social Club. With their exposure on this tour, the track "Hold It Now, Hit It" made Billboard's national R&B and Dance charts. The track "She's on It" from the Krush Groove soundtrack continued in a rap/metal vein while a double A-side 12," "Paul Revere/The New Style," was released at the end of the year.

 

The band recorded Licensed to Ill in 1986 and released the album at the end of the year. It was a great success, and was favorably reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine with the now-famous headline, "Three Idiots Create a Masterpiece." Licensed to Ill became the best selling rap album of the 1980s and the first rap album to go #1 on the Billboard album chart, where it stayed for five weeks. It also reached #2 on the Urban album charts. It was Def Jam's' fastest selling debut record to date and sold over five million copies. The first single from the album, "Fight for Your Right," reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the video (directed by Ric Menello) became an MTV staple.

 

The band took the Licensed to Ill tour around the world the following year. It was a tour clouded in controversy featuring female members of the crowd dancing in cages and a giant motorized inflatable penis similar to one used by The Rolling Stones in the 1970s. The tour was troubled by lawsuits and arrests, with the band accused of provoking the crowd. This culminated in their notorious gig at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, England on May 30, 1987 that erupted into a riot approximately 10 minutes after the Beasties hit the stage and the arrest of Adam Horovitz by Merseyside Police on assault charges.

 

After the success of Licensed to Ill, the Beasties parted ways with Def Jam and ended their relationship with Rick Rubin to sign with Capitol Records.

 

A bootleg album entitled "Original Ill" features original demos of all the tracks from the final version of Licensed to Ill plus deleted tracks "I'm Down" (A Beatles Song) and "The Scenario" was released in 1998.

 

The group matured with their second album, Paul's Boutique, produced by the Dust Brothers and Matt Dike. Recorded in 1988, this extremely sample-heavy opus is still considered one of the strongest works by the Beasties, and Rolling Stone ranked it #156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It is also considered a landmark in hip hop recordings due to its intricate use of multi-layering and large array of samples. The album was released in 1989 by Capitol Records, after the falling out between the Boys and Def Jam. It failed to match the sales of Licensed to Ill, reaching #14 on the Billboard 200 and #10 on the Billboard R&B charts. The lead single, "Hey Ladies", reached #36 on the Billboard 100 and #10 on the R&B charts. Rolling Stone would describe the album as "the Pet Sounds/The Dark Side of the Moon of hip hop." Paul's Boutique would eventually sell a million albums, despite the initially weak commercial reception. The band digitally remastered and released the album through their own website.

 

In 1988 The Beastie Boys also appeared in the Run-D.M.C film Tougher Than Leather.

 

The follow-up album, Check Your Head, was recorded in the band's own "G-Son" studio in Atwater Village, California and released on its Grand Royal record label. The band was influenced to play instruments on this album by Dutch group Urban Dance Squad; with Mike D on drums, Yauch on bass, Horovitz on guitar and Mark Ramos Nis***a ("Keyboard Money Mark") on keyboards. Mario Caldato Jr. ("Mario C") engineered the record and would become a longtime collaborator. Check Your Head was released in 1992 and went double platinum in the U.S., reaching a peak of #10 on the Billboard 200. The single "So What'cha Want" reached #93 on the Billboard 100 and made both the urban and modern rock charts while the album's first single "Pass the Mic" became a hit in dance clubs. The album also introduced a more experimental direction, with funk and jazz inspired songs including "Lighten Up" and "Something's Got To Give." Hardcore punk even made its reappearance with "Time For Livin'."

 

Beastie Boys signed an eclectic roster of artists to the Grand Royal label including Luscious Jackson, Sean Lennon and promising Australian artist Ben Lee. Beastie Boys owned Grand Royal Records until 2001 when it was then sold for financial reasons. Grand Royal's first independent release was Luscious Jackson's album In Search of Manny in 1993. The Beastie Boys also published Grand Royal Magazine, with the first edition in 1993 featuring a cover story on Bruce Lee, artwork by George Clinton, and interviews with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and A Tribe Called Quest MC Q-Tip. The 1995 issue of the magazine contained a memorable piece on the "mullet." The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first published use of the term, along with the lyrics from the Beasties' 1994 song "Mullet Head." The OED says that the term was "apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys." Grand Royal Magazine is also responsible for giving British band Sneaker Pimps their name.

 

Ill Communication, released in 1994, saw the Beastie Boys' return to the top of the charts when the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 & peaked at #2 on the R&B/ hip hop album chart. The single "Sabotage" (Sabotage by the Beastie Boys.ogg sample (help·info)) became a hit on the modern rock charts and the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, received extensive play on MTV. "Get It Together" reached Top 10 of the Billboard dance charts and also became an urban hit while "Sure Shot" was a dance hit. Some Old Bulls***, featuring the band's early independent material, made #50 on the Billboard independent charts.

 

Beastie Boys headlined at Lollapalooza—an American travelling music festival—in 1994, together with The Smashing Pumpkins. In addition, the band performed three concerts (in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C.) to raise money for the Milarepa Fund and dedicated the royalties from "Shambala" and "Bodhisattva Vow" from the Ill Communication album to the cause. The Milarepa Fund aims to raise awareness of Tibetan human rights issues and the exile of the Dalai Lama. In 1996, Yauch organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a two-day festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco that attracted 100,000 people.

 

In 1995, the popularity of Beastie Boys was underlined when tickets for an arena tour went on sale in the U.S. and sold out within a few minutes. One dollar from each ticket sold went to local charities. The Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released Aglio e Olio, a collection of eight songs lasting for just eleven minutes harking back to their punk roots, in 1995. The In Sound From Way Out!, a collection of previously released jazz/funk instrumentals, was released on Grand Royal in 1996 with the title and artwork a homage to an album by electronic pop music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley.

 

Beastie Boys returned to New York City in 1997 to produce and record the album Hello Nasty. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike, who added to the Beasties' sound with his kinetic DJ style. Released July 14, 1998, Hello Nasty earned first week sales of 698,527 in the U.S. and went straight to #1 in the U.S., the UK, Germany, Australia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved #2 rank in the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached Top Ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel.

 

During 1998, rumors, seemingly generated by comments from the band, pointed to a possibility that they were to release a country album. Both Michael Diamond and Adam Yauch are credited with interview comments that piqued interest in whether or not an album would be released. Since they had long been notorious for pranking the media, it was difficult for anyone to take these comments seriously until tracks became available, most notably on The Sounds of Science anthology album. Adam Yauch published the following in the liner notes: "At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he would be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses. These songs are just a few of many we made during that tragic period of time." How much is fact or fiction is difficult to determine, but when the album surfaced on eBay fans scrambled to get their hands on what had proven to be a rare album.

 

Around this time the Beastie Boys had been mentioned in Insane Clown Posse song "f*** The World" saying, "f*** the Beastie Boys and the Dalai Lama". This started a feud between the two groups.

 

Beastie Boys won two Grammy Awards in 1999, receiving the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for Hello Nasty as well as the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance "Intergalactic" This was the first and, as of 2008, only time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories.

 

Also at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards they won the highly coveted Video Vanguard Award for their contribution to music videos. The following year at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards they also won the award for Best Hip Hop Video for their hit song "Intergalactic." Beastie Boys used both appearances at the Video Music Awards to make politically-charged speeches of considerable length to the sizable MTV audiences. At the 1998 ceremony, Yauch addressed the issue of Muslim people being stereotyped as terrorists and that most people of the Muslim faith are not terrorists.[14] These comments were made in the wake of the U.S. Embassy bombings that had occurred in both Kenya and Tanzania only a month earlier. At the 1999 ceremony in the wake of the horror stories that were coming out of Woodstock 99, Adam Horovitz addressed the need for bands and festivals to pay much more attention to the security detail at their concerts.

 

Beastie Boys started an arena tour in 1998. Through Ian C. Rogers, the band made live downloads of their performances available for their fans but were temporarily thwarted when Capitol Records removed them from its website. The Beastie Boys was one of the first bands who made mp3 downloads available on their website; they got a high level of response and public awareness as a result including a published article in The Wall Street Journal on the band's efforts.

 

The 1999 Tibetan Freedom Concerts featured shows in East Troy, Wisconsin, Sydney, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. On September 28, 1999, Beastie Boys joined Elvis Costello to play "Radio Radio" on the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live.

 

Beastie Boys released The Sounds of Science, a two-CD anthology of their works in 1999. This album reached #19 on the Billboard 200, #18 in Canada, #6 on the Internet sales charts, and #14 on the R&B/Hip Hop charts. The one new song, the single "Alive", reached #11 on the Billboard's Modern Rock chart.

 

In the years following the release of Hello Nasty the group launched their official website which underwent several transformations eventually culminating in one of the most popular recording artist related websites on the internet.

 

In 2000, Beastie Boys had planned to co-headline the "Rhyme and Reason Tour" with Rage Against the Machine and Busta Rhymes, but the tour was canceled when drummer Mike D suffered a serious injury due to a bicycle accident. The official diagnosis was fifth-degree acromioclavicular joint dislocation; he needed surgery and extensive rehabilitation. By the time he recovered, Rage Against the Machine had disbanded.

 

In 2002, it was discovered that Mike D and Rick Rubin were reuniting to produce Mike's other side project, World of Hustle.

 

The band increased its level of political activism after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, organizing and headlining the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert in October 2001. Funds from the concert went towards the New York Women's Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA).

 

In 2002, Beastie Boys started building a new studio facility, Oscilloscope, in downtown Manhattan, New York and started work on a new album. The band released a protest song, "In A World Gone Mad", against the 2003 Iraq war as a free download on several websites, including the Milarepa website, the MTV website, MoveOn.org, and Win Without War. It became the most downloaded track during April 2003. The 19th and 20th Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held in Tokyo and Taipei, Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

 

Their single, "Ch-Check It Out," debuted on The O.C. in "The Vegas" episode from Season 1 which aired April 28, 2004.

 

To the 5 Boroughs was released worldwide on June 15, 2004. It was the first album the Beastie Boys produced themselves and reached #1 on the Billboard album charts, #2 in the UK and Australia, and #3 in Germany. The first single from the album, "Ch-Check It Out", reached #1 in Canada and the US Modern Rock Tracks, #2 on the world internet download charts, and #3 on a composite world modern rock chart.

 

The album was the cause of some controversy with allegations that it installed spyware when inserted into the CD drive of a computer. The band has denied this allegation, defending that there is no copy protection software on the albums sold in the U.S. and UK. While there is Macrovision CDS-200 copy protection software installed on European copies of the album, this is standard practice for all European releases on EMI/Capitol Records released in Europe, and it does not install spyware or any form of permanent software.

 

The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves.

 

Speaking to British music weekly NME (April 26, 2007), Diamond revealed that a new album was to be called The Mix-Up. Despite initial confusion regarding whether the album would have lyrics as opposed to being purely instrumental, the Mic-To-Mic blog reported that Capitol Records had confirmed it would be strictly instrumental and erroneously reported a release date scheduled for July 10, 2007 (The album was eventually released June 26, as originally reported). On May 1, 2007, this was further cemented by an e-mail sent to those on the Beastie Boys' mailing list - explicitly stating that the album would be all instrumental:

 

OK, here's our blurb about our new album -- it spits hot fire! -- hot s***! it's official... it's named The Mix-Up. g'wan. all instrumental record. "see i knew they were gonna do that!" that's a quote from you. check the track listing and cover below. you love us. don't you?

 

The band subsequently confirmed this in public, playing several tracks from the album at the 2007 Virgin Festival at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

They won a Grammy for The Mix-Up in the "Best Pop Instrumental Album" category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008.

 

In February 2009, Yauch revealed their forthcoming new album has taken the band's sound in a "bizarre" new direction, saying "It's a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we're playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records." The tentative title for the record was Tadlock's Glasses, of which Yauch explained the inspiration behind the title:

 

"We had a bus driver years ago who used to drive Elvis' back up singers. His name was Tadlock and Elvis gave him a pair of glasses which he was very proud of. So for some reason that title - Tadlock's Glasses - has just been bouncing around."

 

In June 2009 The Beastie Boys appeared at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and performed the new single off The Hot Sause Committee entited "Too Many Rappers" along side rapper Nas who appears on the track.

 

On May 25, it was announced during an interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that the name of their new album would be "Hot Sauce Committee, Part 1" and was set for release on September 15 (with the tracklisting of the album announced through their mailing list on June 23).

 

Speaking to Drowned in Sound the Beastie Boys revealed that Part 2 is done. Mike D also hinted it may be released via unusual means:

 

Pt. 2 is pretty much done. Basically we were making ...Pt 1, had too many songs, so we recorded some more songs. Which sounds bizarre but it actually worked out, because it made it clear to us which songs were going to be on ...Pt 1. Then we had this whole other album of songs: ...Pt 2. ...Pt 1's going to be your regular CD in the stores and to download, but ...Pt 2 is going to be released in...we're still figuring it out, but a different way. More of a 2009 style. You could get in the shower one day and, boom, all of a sudden you're showered with MP3s. Or we might send people a seven-inch every few weeks, so you have a whole box set.

 

On July 20, Yauch announced on the Beastie Boys' official YouTube channel and through the fan mailing list the cancellation of several tour dates and the postponement of the new album due to the discovery of a cancerous tumor in his parotid gland and a lymph node. The group also had to cancel their co-headlining gig at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal.

 

Their fusion of hip hop and punk rock genres could be seen as a precursor to the rapcore and nu metal genres of the late 1990s which included bands such as Limp Bizkit, Korn & Kid Rock. However, in their 1999 single Alive (taken from The Sounds of Science) Ad Rock distances the group from this genre through the line; "Created a monster with these rhymes I write, goatee metal rap please say goodnight."

 

The band, along with co-producers The Dust Brothers were leaders in the use of sampling techniques, with Paul's Boutique being notable for its effective use of samples. The Dust Brothers in turn sampled "So What'cha Want" on the song "E-Pro" from Beck's 2005 Guero album.

 

Furthermore, although rarely credited, Beastie Boys were one of the first groups to identify themselves as "gangsters", and one of the first popular rap groups to talk about violence, drug and alcohol use, possibly an influence from their time as a hardcore punk group. According to Rolling Stone magazine, their 1986 album Licensed to Ill is filled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (including the pornographic deployment of a Wiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") to qualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days, the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A rapped over Beastie Boys tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal," and Beastie Boys' influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.

 

Their 1989 album Paul's Boutique included the similarly-themed tracks "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun" and "High Plains Drifter."

 

Beastie Boys have had four albums reach the top of the Billboard album charts (Licensed to Ill, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and To The 5 Boroughs) since 1986. In the November 2004 issue, Rolling Stone Magazine named "Sabotage" the 475th song on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In their April 2005 Rolling Stone Magazine ranked them #77 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On September 27, 2007, it was announced that Beastie Boys were one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions.

 

The Dust Brothers sampled "So What'cha Want" on the song "E-Pro" from Beck's 2005 Guero album. The rap group N.W.A rapped over Beastie Boys tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal". A controversial concert in Columbus, Georgia in 1987 led to the passage of a lewdness ordinance in that city. Sal Governale, a comedian on the staff of the Howard Stern Show, indicated on air on July 25, 2007, that he was the president of the Beastie Boys fan club in the 1980s on the Prodigy computer network.

 

Two of their songs, "It's the New Style" and "Time to Get Ill", were sampled by The Prodigy in the The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One in 1999.

 

Beastie Boys discography

 

1986 "Hold It, Now Hit It" - Dance #41 - R&B #55

1986 "The New Style" - Dance #20 - R&B #22

1986 "Paul Revere" - Dance #20 - R&B #34

1987 "Brass Monkey" - Hot 100 #48 - R&b #83

1987 "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" - Hot 100 #7

1989 "Hey Ladies" - Hot 100 #36 - Alternative #18 - Dance #16 - Rap #10

1989 "Shake Your Rump" - Dance #16

1992 "Pass the Mic" - Dance #38

1992 "So What'cha Want" - H #93 - Alt #22 - D#26 - R&B #121 - Rap #18

1994 "Sabotage" - Hot #115 - Alt #18 - D #18

1994 "Get It Together" - H #101 - D #5 - RB #113 - R #43

1994 "Sure Shot" - D #48

1998 "Intergalactic" - H #28 - A #4 - D #6

1998 "Body Movin'" - A #15 - D #25

1999 "The Negotiation Limerick File" - A #29

1999 "Alive" - A #11

2004 "Ch-Check It Out" - H #68 - A #1 - RB #106

2004 "Triple Trouble" - A #11

2009 "Too Many Rappers" (featuring Nas) - H #93

 

 

Factoid: Mike D recorded a Country-esque music album under the name "Country Mike", Country Mike's Greatest Hits, and gave it to friends and family for Christmas in 2000.

 

"Sabotage"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-jmwpyijs

 

[knightni]

23. The Doors

 

 

3 of 24 lists - 50 points - highest ranking #1 Sox1422

 

The Doors was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California by vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. They are considered a controversial and influential band, due mostly to Morrison's cryptic lyrics and unpredictable stage persona. After Morrison's death on July 3, 1971, the remaining members continued as a threesome until disbanding in 1973.

 

Despite a career that barely totaled eight years, The Doors still enjoy a huge cult following as well as status in the mainstream music industry as being hugely influential and original. According to the RIAA, they have sold over 32.5 million albums in the US alone.

 

The origins of The Doors lie in a chance meeting between acquaintances and fellow UCLA film school alumni Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach California in July 1965. Morrison told Manzarek he had been writing songs (Morrison said "I was taking notes at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert going on in my head") and, with Manzarek's encouragement, sang "Moonlight Drive". Impressed by Morrison's lyrics, Manzarek suggested they form a band.

 

Keyboardist Manzarek was in a band called Rick & the Ravens with his brothers Rick and Jim Manzarek, while drummer John Densmore was playing with The Psychedelic Rangers, and knew Manzarek from meditation classes. In August, Densmore joined the group and, along with members of The Ravens and bass player Pat Sullivan (later credited using her married name Patricia Hansen in the 1997 box CD release), recorded a six-song demo in September 1965. This circulated widely as a bootleg recording and appeared in full on the 1997 Doors box set.

 

That month the group recruited guitarist Robby Krieger, and the final lineup — Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore — was complete. The band took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954). That title was in turn taken from a line in a poem entitled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by the 18th-century artist and poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite".

 

The Doors were unusual among rock groups because they rarely used a bass guitar when playing live. Instead, Manzarek played the bass lines with his left hand on the newly invented Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, an offshoot of the Fender Rhodes electric piano, playing other keyboards with his right hand. On their studio albums (with the notable exception of their eponymous first record), The Doors did sometimes use bass players, such as Douglas Lubahn, Jerry Scheff, Harvey Brooks, Lonnie Mack, Larry Knechtel and Leroy Vinnegar.

 

Many of The Doors' original songs were group compositions, with Morrison or Krieger contributing the lyrics and an initial melody, and the others providing harmonic and rhythmic suggestions, or even entire sections of songs, such as Manzarek's organ introduction to "Light My Fire".

 

By 1966, the group was playing the London Fog club and soon graduated to the prestigious Whisky a Go Go, where they were the house band, supporting acts including Van Morrison's group Them. On their last night together the two bands joined up for "In the Midnight Hour" and a twenty-minute jam session of Them's "Gloria". On August 10, they were spotted by Elektra Records president Jac Holzman who was present at the recommendation of Love singer Arthur Lee, whose group was on Elektra. After Holzman and producer Paul A. Rothchild saw two sets of the band playing at the Whisky a Go Go, they signed them to the Elektra Records label on August 18—the start of a long and successful partnership with Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick.

 

The timing was fortunate, because on August 21 the club fired the band after a profanity-filled performance of "The End". In an incident that foreshadowed the controversy that later followed the group, an acid-tripping Morrison raucously recited his own version of the Greek drama Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and has sex with his mother.

 

'The Doors' self-titled debut LP was released in the first week of January 1967. It featured most of the major songs from their set, including the 11.5-minute musical drama "The End". The band recorded their first album at Sunset Sound Recording Studios - 6650 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, Aug. 24-31 in 1966; almost entirely live in the studio.

 

In November 1966, Mark Abramson directed a promotional film for the lead single "Break On Through (To the Other Side)."

 

To promote the single, the Doors made their television debut on a Los Angeles TV show called Boss City, circa 1966, possibly early 1967 and then on a Los Angeles TV show called Shebang, miming to "Break On Through," on New Years 1967. This clip has never been officially released by the Doors.

 

The second single, "Light My Fire," became a smash hit after its release in June 1967, selling 1 million copies and reaching #1 on the Billboard Charts on July 29, keeping the top spot for three weeks. It helped established the group as one of America's counterculture bands. For AM radio airplay, the long middle organ and guitar solos were cut from the song making it 2:52 instead of the 7:06 original.

 

In September 1967 the Doors gave a memorable performance of "Light My Fire" on the Ed Sullivan Show. According to Ray Manzarek, network executives asked that the word 'higher' be removed in favor of 'better', as you couldn't say 'high' on national TV. The group initially agreed to this, but nonetheless performed the song in its original form, either because they had never intended to comply with the request, or Jim Morrison was nervous and forgot to make the change (Manzarek has given conflicting accounts). Either way, 'higher' was sung out on national TV, and a furious Ed Sullivan canceled another six shows that had been planned, to which Jim Morrison reportedly said: "Hey man, so what? We just did the Ed Sullivan Show".

 

The second Doors LP, Strange Days, continued to explore the genre of acid rock. The closing track, "When the Music's Over," evoked the length and drama of "The End." The album was also commercially successful and featured now-classic Doors songs such as "People Are Strange" and "Love Me Two Times."

 

In April, the recording of the third album was marred by tension as a result of Morrison's increasing dependence on alcohol and drugs, and the rejection of his new epic "The Celebration of the Lizard" by the band producer Paul Rothchild who deemed the work not commercial enough. Approaching the height of their popularity, the Doors played a series of outdoor shows that led to frenzied scenes between fans and police, particularly at Chicago Coliseum on May 10.

 

The band began to branch out from their initial form for their third LP. Because they had exhausted their original repertoire, they began writing new material. Waiting for the Sun became their first #1 LP, and the single "Hello, I Love You" was their second and last US #1 single. In 1968, controversy arose with the release of the "Hello, I Love You" single when the rock press pointed out the song's musical resemblance to The Kinks' 1965 hit, "All Day and All of the Night." Members of the Kinks have concurred with music critics; Kinks guitarist Dave Davies has been known to add snippets of "Hello, I Love You" during live solo performances of "All Day and All of the Night" as a sarcastic commentary on the subject. In concert, Morrison was occasionally dismissive of the song, and left the vocal chores to Manzarek, as can be seen in the documentary The Doors are Open.

 

A month after riotous scenes took place at the Singer Bowl in New York, the group flew to Britain for its first venue outside of North America. They held a press conference at the ICA Gallery in London and played shows at The Roundhouse Theatre. The results of the trip were broadcast on Granada TV's The Doors Are Open, which was later released on video. They played dates in Europe, along with Jefferson Airplane, including a show in Amsterdam where Morrison collapsed on stage from a drug binge.

 

The group flew back to the US and played nine more US dates before returning to work in November on their fourth LP. They ended the year with a successful new single, "Touch Me," (released in December 1968), which hit US #3. In 1969, they started the year with a sold out show at Madison Square Garden on January 24.

 

The Doors' fourth album, The Soft Parade, released in June, further distanced the group from their core fan base, containing pop-oriented arrangements and horn sections. The lead single "Touch Me" featured saxophonist Curtis Amy.

 

While the band was trying to maintain their previous momentum, efforts to expand their sound gave the album an experimental feel, causing critics to attack their musical integrity. According to John Densmore in his biography "Riders On The Storm" individual writing credits were noted for the first time because of Morrisons reluctance to sing the lyrics of Robbie Kriegers song "Tell All The People". Morrison's drinking made him difficult and unreliable, and the recording sessions dragged on for months. Studio costs piled up, and The Doors came close to disintegrating.[citation needed]. Despite all this, the album was immensely successful, becoming the band's fourth hit album.

 

During the recording of their next album, in November 1969, Morrison found himself in trouble with the law after harassing an airline staff during a flight to Phoenix, Arizona to see The Rolling Stones in concert. He was acquitted the following April after a steward mistakenly identified Morrison as his traveling companion, American actor Tom Baker.[citation needed]

 

The group started 1970 in New York with two well-received nights at The Felt Forum, just prior to the release of Morrison Hotel.

 

The Doors staged a return to form with their 1970 LP Morrison Hotel, their fifth album. Featuring a consistent, hard rock sound, the album's opener was "Roadhouse Blues." The record reached US #4 and revived their status among their core fanbase and the rock press. Dave Marsh, the editor of Creem magazine, said of the album: "the most horrifying rock and roll I have ever heard. When they're good, they're simply unbeatable. I know this is the best record I've listened to ... so far". Rock Magazine called it "without any doubt their ballsiest (and best) album to date". Circus Magazine praised it as "possibly the best album yet from the Doors" and "Good hard, evil rock, and one of the best albums released this decade". The album also saw Jim Morrison returning as main songwriter, writing or co-writing all of the album's tracks (as opposed to the poppier The Soft Parade, for which Robbie Krieger contributed a large number of songs).

 

Once The Doors had completed Morrison Hotel, with a tour to support it, Morrison and the band found their career consumed by the Miami trial.

 

July 1970 saw the release of The Doors' first live album, Absolutely Live. The 40th Anniversary CD reissue of Absolutely Live contains outtakes and alternate takes, including different versions of "The Spy" and "Roadhouse Blues" (with Lonnie Mack on bass guitar and The Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian on a bluesy harmonica).

 

The band continued to perform at arenas throughout the summer. Morrison faced trial in Miami in August, but the group made it to the Isle of Wight Festival on August 29. They performed alongside artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis and Sly & The Family Stone. Two songs from the show were featured in the 1995 documentary Message To Love.

 

Back in Miami for his trial, Morrison took the stand on September 16, but the jury returned a guilty verdict for profanity and indecent exposure on September 20. Morrison was sentenced to eight months' custody but was allowed to go free pending an appeal. On October 30, 1970, Morrison was found guilty of two charges: profanity and indecent exposure. He was acquitted of the charge of drunkenness but found guilty of lewd behavior, a felony. The verdict was contested and Morrison died in July 1971 while his case was still on appeal.

 

The Doors set to reclaim their status as a premier act with L.A. Woman in 1971. It contained two top 20 hits and has gone on to be their second best-selling studio album, surpassed in sales only by their debut. The album explored their R&B roots, although during rehearsals they had a falling-out with Rothchild. Denouncing "Riders on the Storm" as 'cocktail music,' he quit and handed the production to Botnick. The singles "L.A. Woman", "Love Her Madly", (the Doors last top ten hit), and "Riders on the Storm" remain mainstays of rock radio programming. During the sessions, a short clip of the band performing "Crawling King Snake" was filmed. So far as known, this is the last clip of the Doors performing with Morrison.

 

Morrison died on July 3, 1971. In the official account of his death, he was found in a Paris apartment bathtub by Courson. Pursuant to French law, no autopsy was performed because the medical examiner claimed to have found no evidence of foul play. The absence of an official autopsy has left many questions regarding Morrison's cause of death. Herve Muller has reported that he believes that Jim died of a heroin overdose at the RnR Circus. This is corroborated by the manager of the club Sam Bernett in a 2007 interview, and subsequent book. Morrison was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery on July 7.

 

The Doors discography

 

1967 "Break on Through (To The Other Side)" - #106

1967 "Light My Fire" - #1

1967 "People Are Strange" - #12

1967 "Love Me Two Times" - #25

1968 "The Unknown Soldier" - #39

1968 "Hello, I Love You" - #1

1969 "Touch Me" - #3

1969 "Wishful Sinful" - #44

1969 "Tell All The People" - #57

1969 "Runnin' Blue" - #64

1970 "Roadhouse Blues" - #50

1971 "Love Her Madly" - #11

1971 "Riders on the Storm" - #14

1971 "Tightrope Ride" - #71

1972 "The Mosquito" - #85

1983 "Gloria" - #71

 

 

Factoid: Morrison died at age 27, the same age as several other famous rock stars, including Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin.

 

"Roadhouse Blues"

 

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[knightni]

22. System Of A Down

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 50 points - highest ranking #4 SoxAce, whitesox901

 

System of a Down (sometimes simply referred to as SOAD or System) is a Grammy Award-winning Armenian-American rock band from Glendale, California, formed in 1994. System of a Down consists of Serj Tankian (lead vocals, keyboards and rhythm guitar), Daron Malakian (vocals and lead guitar), Shavo Odadjian (bass), John Dolmayan (drums).

 

The band has released five studio albums and have sold over 20 million records worldwide. They have been nominated for four Grammy Awards, of which they have won one in 2006 for Best Hard Rock Performance. The group went on indefinite hiatus August 13, 2006.

 

Daron Malakian met Serj Tankian in 1992, while they both shared the same rehearsal studio in different bands. They formed a jam band called Soil (Serj on vocals/keyboards and Daron on guitar; not to be confused with the Chicago band Soil) with Domingo Laranio (drums) and Dave Hakopyan (bass).[citation needed] Around this time, they also met Shavo Odadjian. After about a year, with one supposed jam session recording and one live show, Dave and Domingo left, thinking the band wasn't going anywhere (Hakopyan would later co-found the band The Apex Theory which, in 2007, changed their name to Mt. Helium).

 

The band later broke up and Tankian and Malakian, along with Shavo Odadjian and Ontronik "Andy" Khachaturian, formed a new band "System of a Down," adapting the name from a poem Daron wrote entitled "Victims of the Down". Shavo Odadjian thought that the word System appealed to a much broader audience than "Victims," and they wanted their albums to be stored near the band Slayer. Odadjian was the band's original manager and promoter, but joined as the bassist, and managerial duties were taken over by the Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group and founder David "Beno" Benveniste.

 

System of a Down quickly made what is known as their early Untitled 1995 Demo Tape, which had very early recordings of "Mr. Jack" (called "PIG"), along with a song called "Flake," and an early recording of "The Metro," a cover of the Berlin song of the same name. It is rumored that there are other tapes made, which contain early recordings of "Friik," "36" (called ".36"), and "Roulette." After this, the band recorded three public demos, which have been numbered as Demo Tape 1 to 3, as the early 1995 demo was not discovered until much later. Many of the songs featured on the demos would eventually make their way onto the band's debut album. In mid 1997, Khachaturian left the band due to a hand injury (he subsequently co-founded The Apex Theory, which included former Soil bassist Dave Hakopyan). Soon after playing at the Whisky-A-Go-Go and Viper Room with new drummer John Dolmayan, the band caught the attention of producer Rick Rubin, who asked them to keep in touch with him. Showing great interest, they recorded yet another demo near the end of that year. This demo, however, was made only to be sent to record companies. The tape was not released to the public until years later when it was leaked onto the Internet. After Rick helped them get signed onto American/Columbia Records, System of a Down began to record in his studio. In 1997, the group won the Best Signed Band award from the Rock City Awards.

 

In the summer of 1998 (June 1998), System of a Down released their debut album, System of a Down. They enjoyed moderate success with their first single "Sugar" becoming a radio favorite, followed by the single "Spiders." After the release of the album, the band toured extensively, opening for Slayer and Metallica before making their way to the second stage of Ozzfest. Following Ozzfest, they toured with Fear Factory and Incubus before headlining the Sno-Core Tour with Puya, Mr. Bungle, The Cat and Incubus providing support. In 2000, the band contributed their cover of the Black Sabbath song "Snowblind" to the Black Sabbath tribute album Nativity in Black 2.

 

Toxicity is the second album by System of a Down. Produced by Rick Rubin, Toxicity was released on September 4, 2001 by American Recordings, debuting at #1 on both the United States and Canadian charts. Toxicity has sold over 12 million copies worldwide and is multi-platinum in the United States. Toxicity received mass critical acclaim, making many end-of-year "best of" lists (such as being named SPIN Magazine's #1 record of the year), and earning a Grammy nomination for lead single "Chop Suey!". It is the only System of a Down album not to feature the Parental Advisory label, with only minor profanities. However, a limited edition of the album containing a bonus CD with behind the scenes footage of the making of the album does feature the Parental Advisory label, while a different limited edition containing a DVD with the "Toxicity" music video and live footage also does not feature the label. The song "Shimmy" was featured in the 2002 video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. The song "Chop Suey!" was featured in the 2008 video game Rock Band 2. The song "Science" was featured in the 2002 video game ATV Offroad Fury 2. The song "X" was originally recorded for the bands' 1998 self-titled debut but it was re-worked for Toxicity. "Toxicity" was made available as a downloadable song for the music video game series Rock Band on August 5, 2008, and it is also featured in the video game Guitar Hero: Metallica. The album is listed in Blender's 500 CDs You Must Own.

 

From 2004 to 2005, the group produced a double album, with the two parts released six months apart. The first album, Mezmerize, was released on May 17, 2005, to favorable reviews by critics. It debuted at #1 in the United States, Canada, Australia and all around the world, making it System of a Down's second #1 album. First week sales rocketed to over 800,000 copies worldwide. The Grammy Award-winning single "B.Y.O.B.," which questions the integrity of military recruiting in America, worked its way up the Billboard Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts. The next single, "Question!" was released with Shavo Odadjian co-directing the music video. Following the release of Mezmerize, the band toured extensively throughout the United States and Canada with The Mars Volta and Bad Acid Trip supporting.

 

The second part of the double album, Hypnotize, was released on November 22, 2005. Like Mezmerize, it debuted at #1 in the US, making System of a Down, along with The Beatles, Guns 'N Roses, and rappers 2Pac and DMX, the only artists to ever have two studio albums debut at #1 in the same year. In February 2006, System of a Down won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance for "B.Y.O.B.," beating out other established artists such as Nine Inch Nails and Robert Plant. Their second single off the Hypnotize album, "Lonely Day" was released in March in the United States. System of a Down released "Kill Rock 'N Roll" and "Vicinity of Obscenity" as their next promo singles. The band headlined Ozzfest 2006 in cities where tour founder Ozzy Osbourne opted not to appear or wasn't playing on the main stage.

 

System of a Down's songs were used in the 2006 film Screamers, directed by Carla Garapedian. They appeared in the movie, in an interview talking about the importance of helping create awareness and recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Screamers debuted in theaters in large city markets such as New York City, Detroit, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Fresno, Providence, and Boston. An earlier engagement started exclusively in Los Angeles on December 8, 2006. Also, "Lonely Day" appeared on the soundtrack for the 2006 movie Disturbia.

 

System of a Down was honored at the USC v. Cal game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in Los Angeles, California in 2006. The Trojan Marching Band, along with Dolmayan and Odadjian, performed three System of a Down songs: "Toxicity", "Sugar", and "Hypnotize". System of a Down's song "Lonely Day" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in the 49th Grammy Awards in 2007, but lost to "Woman" by Wolfmother.

 

In May 2006, the band announced they were going on hiatus. Malakian has confirmed the break will probably last a few years, which Odadjian specified as a minimum of three years in an interview with Guitar magazine. He told MTV, "We're not breaking up. If that was the case, we wouldn't be doing this Ozzfest. We're going to take a very long break after Ozzfest and do our own things. We've done System for over ten years, and I think it's healthy to take a rest."

 

The stylistic variety and level of experimentation in System of a Down's music has made it difficult to describe. Though they have evolved their sound with each album, System of a Down has, for the most part, maintained a single style throughout their body of work. This style has variously been termed alternative metal, alternative rock, art rock, experimental rock, hard rock, heavy metal, nu metal, progressive metal and progressive rock. Malakian has stated that "We don't belong to any one scene" and that "I don't like the nu-metal drop-A 7-string guitar sound; it is not my thing, at least not yet". According to Tankian, "As far as arrangement and everything, [our music] is pretty much pop. To me, System of a Down isn't a progressive band. But it's not a typical pop project, obviously. We definitely pay attention to the music to make sure that it's not something someone's heard before."

 

The band has used a wide range of instruments, including electric mandolins, baritone electric guitars, acoustic guitars, ouds, sitars and twelve string guitars. According to Malakian, he would often write songs in E♭ tuning, which would later be changed to drop C tuning in order to be performed by the band. Malakian states that "For me, the drop-C tuning is right down the center. It has enough of the clarity and the crisp sound—most of our riffy stuff is done on the top two strings, anyway—but it's also thicker and ballsier."

 

The band's influences include Middle Eastern music, The Beatles, Frank Zappa and Slayer. The band's musical style has often been compared to that of Zappa. Malakian has stated that "I'm a fan of music. I'm not necessarily a fan of any one band." Dolmayan stated "I dont think we sound like anybody else. I consider us System of a Down." Odadjian stated "You can compare us to whoever you want. I don't care. Comparisons and labels have no effect on this band. Fact is fact: We are who we are and they are who they are."

 

System of a Down discography

 

1998 "Sugar" - Main #28 - Mod #31

2001 "Chop Suey!" - Hot #76 - Main #12 - Mod #7

2002 "Toxicity" - Hot #6 - Main #2 - Mod #2

2002 "Aerials" - Hot #55 - Main #1 - Mod #1

2005 "B.Y.O.B." - Hot #27 - Main #1 - Mod #1

2005 "Question!" - Hot #58 - Main #3 - Mod #9

2006 "Hypnotize" - Main #57 - Mod #5

2006 "Lonely Day" - Hot #123 - Main #9 - Mod #10

 

Factoid: System of a Down's "Chop Suey" was in a list of songs that was to be temporarily removed from Clear Channel's airplay following 9/11 due to "questionable lyrics."

 

"Chop Suey"

 

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[knightni]

21. Velvet Underground / Lou Reed

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 52 points - highest ranking #4 TheBones

 

The Velvet Underground was an American experimental rock band formed in New York City, New York. First active from 1965 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although never commercially successful while together, the band is often cited by many critics as one of the most important and influential groups of their era and to many future musicians.

 

The Velvet Underground first gained a degree of fame and notoriety in New York City in 1966 when they were selected as the house band for Andy Warhol's Factory and his Exploding Plastic Inevitable events. The band's music and lyrics challenged conventional societal standards of the time, and broke ground for other musicians to do the same. The band favored experimentation, and also introduced a nihilistic outlook through some of their music. Their outsider attitude and experimentation has since been cited as pivotal to the rise of punk rock and, later, alternative rock.

 

Their 1967 debut album, titled The Velvet Underground & Nico (which featured German singer Nico, with whom the band collaborated) was named the 13th Greatest Album of All Time, and the "most prophetic rock album ever made" by Rolling Stone in 2003.

 

The foundations for what would become the Velvet Underground were laid in late 1964. Singer/guitarist Lou Reed had performed with a few short-lived garage bands and had worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records (Reed described his tenure there as being "a poor man's Carole King"). Reed met John Cale, a Welshman who had moved to the United States to study classical music. Cale had worked with experimental composers John Cage and La Monte Young but was also interested in rock music. Young’s use of extended drones would be a profound influence on the early Velvets’ sound. Cale was pleasantly surprised to discover Reed’s experimentalist tendencies were similar to his own: Reed sometimes used alternative guitar tunings to create a droning sound. The pair rehearsed and performed together, and their partnership and shared interests steered the early direction of what would become the Velvet Underground.

 

Reed’s first group with Cale was The Primitives, a short-lived group assembled to support a Reed-penned single, "The Ostrich". Reed and Cale recruited Sterling Morrison—a college classmate of Reed’s who had already played with him a few times—to play guitar, and Angus MacLise joined on percussion. This quartet was first called The Warlocks, then The Falling Spikes.

 

The Velvet Underground was a book about the secret sexual subculture of the early '60s by Michael Leigh that Cale's friend Tony Conrad showed to the group. Reed and Morrison have reported the group liked the name, considering it evocative of "underground cinema", and fitting, as Reed had already written "Venus in Furs", a song inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book of the same name, dealing with masochism. The band immediately and unanimously adopted the book's title for its new name.

 

The newly named Velvet Underground rehearsed and performed in New York City. Their music was generally much more relaxed than it would later become: Cale described this era as reminiscent of beat poetry, with MacLise playing gentle “pitter and patter rhythms behind the drone.”

 

In July 1965, Reed, Cale and Morrison recorded a demo tape at their Ludlow Street loft. When he briefly returned to Britain, Cale gave a copy of the tape to Marianne Faithfull, hoping she’d pass it on to Mick Jagger. Nothing ever came of the demo, but it was eventually released on the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See.

 

Manager and music journalist Al Aronowitz arranged for the group's first paying gig - $75 to play at Summit High School, in Summit, New Jersey. When the group decided to take the gig, MacLise left the group, protesting what he considered a sellout. “Angus was in it for art,” Morrison reported.

 

MacLise was replaced by Maureen “Moe” Tucker, the younger sister of Morrison's friend Jim Tucker. Tucker’s abbreviated drum kit was rather unusual: she generally played on tom toms and an upturned bass drum, using mallets as often as drumsticks, and she rarely used cymbals. (The band having asked her to do something unusual, she turned her bass drum on its side and played standing up. When her drums were stolen from one club, she replaced them with garbage cans, brought in from outside.) Her rhythms, at once simple and exotic (influenced by the likes of Babatunde Olatunji and Bo Diddley records), became a vital part of the group’s music. The group earned a regular paying gig at a club and gained an early reputation as a promising ensemble.

 

Andy Warhol became the band's manager in 1965 and suggested they feature the German-born singer Nico on several songs. Warhol's reputation helped the band gain a higher profile. Warhol helped the band secure a coveted recording contract with MGM's Verve Records, with himself as nominal "producer", and gave the Velvets free rein over the sound they created.

 

During their stay with Andy Warhol, the band became part of his multimedia roadshow, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, for which they provided the music. They played shows for several months in New York City, then traveled throughout the United States and Canada until its last installment in May 1967. The show included 16 mm film projections and colors by Warhol.

 

In 1966 MacLise temporarily rejoined the Velvet Underground for a few EPI shows when Reed was suffering from hepatitis and unable to perform. For these appearances, Cale sang and played organ and Tucker switched to bass guitar. Also at these appearances, the band often played an extended jam they had dubbed "Booker T", after musician Booker T. Jones; the jam later became the music for "The Gift" on White Light/White Heat. Some of these performances have been released as a bootleg; they remain the only record of MacLise with the Velvet Underground. MacLise was said to be eager to rejoin the group now that they'd found some fame, but Reed specifically prohibited this.

 

In December 1966, Warhol and David Dalton designed Issue 3 of the multimedia Aspen. Included in this issue of the "magazine", which retailed at $4 per copy and was packaged in a hinged box designed to look like Fab laundry detergent, were various leaflets and booklets, one of which was a commentary on rock and roll by Lou Reed, another an EPI promotional newspaper. Also enclosed was a 2-sided flexi disk, side one produced by Peter Walker, a musical associate of Timothy Leary, and side two titled "Loop", credited to the Velvet Underground but actually recorded by Cale alone. "Loop", a recording solely of pulsating audio feedback culminating in a locked groove, was "a precursor to [Reed's] Metal Machine Music", say Velvets archivists M.C. Kostek and Phil Milstein in the book The Velvet Underground Companion. Indeed, "Loop" predates Reed's almost identical concept (Metal Machine Music being a double album, obviously with different feedback, also concluding side four with a locked groove) by nearly ten years ("Loop" also predates much industrial music as well). More significantly, from a retail standpoint, "Loop" was the group's first commercially available recording as the Velvet Underground.

 

At Warhol's insistence, Nico sang with the band on three songs of their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. The album was recorded primarily in Scepter Studios in New York City during April 1966. (Some songs were re-recorded, along with the new song "Sunday Morning", later in the year with Tom Wilson producing.) It was released by Verve Records in March 1967.

 

The album cover is famous for its Warhol design: a yellow banana with “Peel slowly and see” printed near a perforated tab. Those who did remove the banana skin found a pink, peeled banana beneath. This gimmick would later be repeated on the cover of one of several Velvet Underground boxed sets, also titled Peel Slowly and See, released in 1995.

 

Eleven songs showcased their dynamic range, veering from the pounding attacks of "I’m Waiting for the Man" and "Run Run Run," the droning "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin", the chiming and celestial "Sunday Morning" to the quiet "Femme Fatale" and the tender "I’ll Be Your Mirror," as well as Warhol's own favorite song of the group, "All Tomorrow's Parties."

 

The overall sound was propelled by Reed’s deadpan vocals, Cale's droning viola, Nico's equally deadpan vocals, Morrison's often rhythm and blues– or country-influenced guitar, and Tucker’s simple but steady beat.

 

The album was released on March 12, 1967, peaking at #171 on Billboard magazine's Top 200 charts. The promising commercial debut of the album was dampened somewhat by legal complications: the album’s back cover featured a photo of the group playing live with another image projected behind them; the projected image was a still from a Warhol motion picture, Chelsea Girls. The film’s cinematographer, Eric Emerson, had been arrested for drug possession and, desperate for money, claimed the still had been included on the album without his permission (in the image his face appears quite big, but upside down). MGM Records pulled all copies of the album until the legal problems were settled (by which time the record had lost its modest commercial momentum), and the still was airbrushed out.

 

Nico moved on after the band severed its relationship with Andy Warhol, however recording began on their second album in September 1967, White Light/White Heat, with Tom Wilson as producer.

 

The Velvet Underground performed live often, and their performances became louder, harsher and often featured extended improvisations. Cale reports that at about this time the Velvet Underground was one of the first groups to receive an endorsement from Vox. The company pioneered a number of special effects, which the Velvet Underground utilized on the album.

 

Sterling Morrison offered the following input regarding the recording:

 

There was fantastic leakage cause everyone was playing so loud and we had so much electronic junk with us in the studio—all these fuzzers and compressors. Gary Kellgren, who is ultra-competent, told us repeatedly: "You can't do it—all the needles are on red." and we reacted as we always reacted: "Look, we don't know what goes on in there and we don't want to hear about it. Just do the best you can." And so the album is fuzzy, there's all that white noise.... we wanted to do something electronic and energetic. We had the energy and the electronics, but we didn't know it couldn't be recorded.... what we were trying to do was really fry the tracks.

 

The recording was raw and oversaturated. Cale has stated that while the debut had some moments of fragility and beauty, White Light/White Heat was "consciously anti-beauty." The title track and first song starts things off with John Cale pounding on the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. The eerie, hallucinatory "Lady Godiva’s Operation" remains Reed’s favorite track on the album[citation needed]. Despite the dominance of noisefests like "Sister Ray" and "I Heard Her Call My Name," there was room for the darkly comic "The Gift," a short story written by Reed and narrated by Cale in his deadpan Welsh accent. The meditative "Here She Comes Now" was later covered by Galaxie 500, R.E.M., Cabaret Voltaire, and Nirvana.

 

The album was released on January 30, 1968, entering the Billboard Top 200 chart for two weeks, at number 199.

 

However, tensions were growing: the group was tired of receiving little recognition for its work, and Reed and Cale were pulling the Velvet Underground in different directions. The differences showed in the last recording session the band had with John Cale in February 1968: two pop-like songs in Reed’s direction ("Temptation Inside Your Heart" and "Stephanie Says") and a viola-driven drone in Cale’s direction ("Hey Mr. Rain"). (None of these songs were released until they were included on the VU and Another View compilation albums.) Further, some songs the band had performed with Cale in concert, or that he had co-written, were not recorded until after he had left the group (such as "Walk It and Talk It," "Guess I’m Falling in Love," "Ride into the Sun," and "Countess from Hong Kong").

 

Before work on their third album started, Cale was eased out of the band and was replaced by Doug Yule of Boston group the Grass Menagerie, who had opened several VU shows. The Velvet Underground was recorded in late 1968 (released in March 1969). The cover photograph was taken by Billy Name. The LP sleeve was designed by Dick Smith, then a staff artist at MGM/Verve. Released on March 12, 1969, the album failed to make Billboard’s Top 200 album chart.

 

It has often been reported that the early edition of the Velvet Underground was a struggle between Reed and Cale's creative impulses: Reed's rather conventional approach contrasted with Cale's experimentalist tendencies. According to Tim Mitchell, however, Morrison reported that there was creative tension between Reed and Cale but that its impact has been exaggerated over the years.

 

In any case, the harsh, abrasive tendencies on the first two records were almost entirely absent on their third platter, The Velvet Underground. This resulted in a gentler sound influenced by folk music, prescient of the songwriting style that would form Reed's solo career. Another factor in the change of sound was the band's Vox amplifiers and assorted fuzzboxes being stolen from an airport while they were on tour; they obtained replacements by signing a new endorsement deal with Sunn. In addition, Reed and Morrison had purchased matching Fender 12-string electric guitars. Doug Yule plays down the influence of the new equipment, however.

 

Morrison's ringing guitar parts and Yule's melodic bass guitar and harmony vocals are featured prominently on the album. Reed's songs and singing are subdued and confessional, and he shared lead vocals with Yule, particularly when his own voice would fail under stress. Doug Yule sang the lead vocal on "Candy Says" (about the Warhol superstar Candy Darling), which opens the LP, and a rare Maureen Tucker vocal is featured on "After Hours," a song that Reed said was so innocent and pure he couldn't possibly sing it himself. The album's influence can be heard in many later indie rock and lo-fi recordings.

 

The Velvet Underground spent much of 1969 on the road, feeling they were not accepted in their hometown of New York City and not making much headway commercially. The live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live was recorded in October 1969 and released in 1974 on Mercury Records at the urging of rock critic Paul Nelson, who worked in A&R for Mercury at the time. Nelson asked singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy to write liner notes for the double album which began, “I wish it was a hundred years from today….”

 

During the same year, the band recorded on and off in the studio, creating a lot of material that was never officially released due to disputes with their record label. What many consider the prime of these sessions was released many years later as VU. This album has a transitional sound between the whisper-soft third album and the pop-rock songs of their final record, Loaded.

 

The rest of the recordings, as well as some alternate takes, were bundled on Another View. After Reed’s departure, he later reworked a number of these songs for his solo records (“Stephanie Says,” “Ocean,” “I Can’t Stand It,” “Lisa Says,” “She’s My Best Friend”). Indeed, most of Reed’s early solo career’s more successful hits were reworked Velvet Underground tracks (albeit, the ones he wrote), released for the first time in their original version on VU, Another View, and later on Peel Slowly and See.

 

By 1969 the MGM and Verve record labels had been losing money for several years. A new president, Mike Curb, was hired. Curb decided to purge the labels of their many controversial and unprofitable acts. The drug or hippie-related bands were released from MGM, and the Velvets were on his list, along with Eric Burdon and the Animals and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. Nonetheless MGM insisted on retaining ownership of all master tapes of their recordings.

 

Atlantic Records signed the Velvet Underground for what would be its final studio album with Lou Reed: Loaded, released on Atlantic’s subsidiary label Cotillion. The album’s title refers to Atlantic’s request that the band produce an album “loaded with hits”. Though the record was not the smash hit the company had anticipated, it contains the most accessible pop the VU had performed, and several of Reed’s best-known songs, including "Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll.”

 

Though Tucker had temporarily retired from the group due to her pregnancy, she received a performance credit on Loaded. Except on a few songs, drums were actually played by several people, including Yule, engineer Adrian Barber, session musician Tommy Castanaro, and Doug Yule’s brother Billy, who was still in high school.

 

Disillusioned with the lack of progress the band was making and pressured by manager Steve Sesnick, Reed decided to quit the band in August 1970. The band essentially dissolved while recording the album, and Reed walked off just before it was finished. Lou Reed has often said he was completely surprised when he saw Loaded in stores. He also said, bitterly, “I left them to their album full of hits that I made.”

 

However, Reed was particularly bitter about a verse being edited from the Loaded version of “Sweet Jane.” “New Age” was changed as well: as originally recorded, its closing line (“It’s the beginning of a new age”) was repeated many more times. A brief interlude in “Rock and Roll” was also removed. (Almost three decades later, the album would be reissued as "Fully Loaded" with the edits restored and all versions included.) On the other hand, Yule has pointed out that the album was to all intents and purposes finished when Reed left the band and that Reed had been aware of most, if not all, of the edits. The few weeks between Reed’s departure in late August and Loaded’s arrival in the shops in September of the same year also would have left little room for the whole process of editing, reviewing, mastering and pressing.

 

Even though Loaded’s spin-off single “Who Loves the Sun” had little success, “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” became U.S. radio favorites, and the band, featuring Walter Powers on bass, with Doug Yule taking over lead vocals and guitar, went on the road once more, playing the U.S. East Coast and Europe. By that time, however, Sterling Morrison had obtained a B.A. degree in English, and left the group to pursue a Ph.D. in medieval literature at the University of Texas at Austin. His replacement was singer/keyboard player Willie Alexander. The band played shows in England, Wales, and the Netherlands, some of which are collected on the 2001 box set Final V.U..

 

In 1972 Atlantic released Live at Max's Kansas City, a live bootleg of the Velvet Underground’s final performance with Reed, recorded by fan Brigid Polk on August 23, 1970. Meanwhile, the Doug Yule-fronted edition of the band was touring the United Kingdom when Sesnick managed to secure a recording contract with Polydor Records in England. He then allegedly sent Tucker, Powers and Alexander back to the US (effectively ending their tenures with the group) while Yule recorded the album Squeeze under the Velvet Underground name virtually by himself, with only the assistance of Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice and a few other session musicians.

 

Prior to the release of Squeeze, a new Velvet Underground lineup was assembled to tour the UK to promote the upcoming album. This version of The Velvet Underground consisted of Yule, Rob Norris (guitar), George Kay (bass guitar) and Mark Nauseef (drums). Sesnick left the band shortly before the tour started, and Yule left when the brief tour ended in December 1972.

 

Squeeze was released a few months later in February 1973, in Europe only. The album is a controversial item among Velvet fans, generally held in low regard by fans and critics: Stephen Thomas Erlewine notes that the album received “uniformly terrible reviews” upon initial release, and was often "deleted" from official V.U. discographies.

 

Although Yule had theoretically put an end to The Velvet Underground in late 1972, in the spring of 1973 a covers band featuring Doug Yule (vocal guitar), Billy Yule (drums), George Kay (bass) and Don Silverman (guitar) played the New England bar circuit, and was billed as The Velvet Underground by the tour's manager. (The Yule brothers and Kay had all previously played in various Velvet Underground incarnations.) The band members objected to the billing, and in late May 1973, the band and the tour manager parted ways.

 

. . .

 

In 1971 Lou Reed signed a recording contract with RCA and recorded his first solo album in London with top session musicians including Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman, members of the progressive rock group Yes. The album, simply titled Lou Reed, contained smoothly produced, re-recorded versions of unreleased Velvet Underground songs, some of which were originally recorded by the Velvets for Loaded but shelved (see the Peel Slowly and See box set). This first solo album was overlooked by most pop music critics (although Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone called it "almost perfect") and it did not sell in significant numbers.

 

In 1972 Reed released the glam rock record Transformer. David Bowie and Mick Ronson co-produced the album and introduced Reed to a wider popular audience (specifically in the UK). The hit single "Walk on the Wild Side" was both a salute and swipe at the misfits, hustlers, and transvestites in Andy Warhol's Factory. The song's cleverly transgressive lyrics evaded radio censorship. Though musically somewhat atypical for Reed, it eventually became his signature song. The song came about as a result of his commission to compose a soundtrack to a theatrical adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel of the same name, though the play failed to materialize. Ronson's arrangements brought out new aspects of Reed's songs; "Perfect Day", for example, features delicate strings and soaring dynamics. It was rediscovered in the 1990s and allowed Reed to drop "Walk on the Wild Side" from his concerts.

 

Though Transformer would prove to be Reed's commercial and critical pinnacle, there was no small amount of resentment in Reed devoted to the shadow the record cast over the rest of his career. A public argument between Bowie and Reed ended their working relationship for several years, though the subject of the argument is not known. The two reconciled some years later, and Reed performed with Bowie at the latter's 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1997. The two would not formally collaborate again until 2003's The Raven. Reed followed Transformer with the darker Berlin, which tells the story of two junkies in love in the titular city. The songs variously concern domestic abuse ("Caroline Says I", "Caroline Says II"), drug addiction ("How Do You Think It Feels"), adultery and prostitution ("The Kids"), and suicide ("The Bed").

 

As he had done with Berlin after Transformer, in 1975 Reed responded to his glam rock success with a commercial failure, a double album of electronically generated audio feedback, Metal Machine Music. Critics interpreted it as a gesture of contempt, an attempt to break his contract with RCA or to alienate his less sophisticated fans. But Reed claimed that the album was a genuine artistic effort, even suggesting that quotations of classical music could be found buried in the feedback. Lester Bangs declared it "genius", though also as psychologically disturbing. The album was reportedly returned to stores by the thousands after a few weeks. Though later admitting that the liner notes' list of instruments is fictitious and intended as parody, Reed maintains that MMM was and is a serious album. He has since stated though that at the time he had taken it seriously, he was also "very stoned". In the 2000s it was adapted for orchestral performance by the German ensemble Zeitkratzer.

 

By contrast, 1975's Coney Island Baby was mainly a warm and mellow album, though for its characters Reed still drew on the underbelly of city life. At this time his lover was a transgender woman, Rachel, mentioned in the dedication of "Coney Island Baby" and appearing in the photos on the cover of Reed's 1977 "best of" album, Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed. While Rock and Roll Heart, his 1976 debut for his new record label Arista, fell short of expectations, Street Hassle (1978) was a return to form in the midst of the punk scene he had helped to inspire. But ironically Reed was dismissive of punk and ...'disclaimed any identity with punk '"Its... [r]idiculous I'm too literate to be into punk rock...The whole CBGB's, new Max's thing that everyone's into and what's going on in London — you don't seriously think I'm responsible for what's mostly rubbish?" ''The Bells (1979) featured jazz great Don Cherry, and was followed the following year by Growing Up in Public with guitarist Chuck Hammer. Around this period he also appeared as a sleazy record producer in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony. Reed also played several unannounced one-off concerts in tiny downtown Manhattan clubs with the likes of Cale, Patti Smith, and David Byrne during the period, but full reconciliation between Cale and Reed was implausible. Cale later wrote the song "Woman" about Reed on his album BlackAcetate.

 

In 1980, Reed married British designer Sylvia Morales. They were divorced more than a decade later. While together, Morales inspired some of Reed's best known love songs, particularly "Think it Over" from 1980's Growing Up in Public and "Heavenly Arms" from 1982's The Blue Mask. After Legendary Hearts (1983) and New Sensations (1984) fared adequately on the charts, Reed was sufficiently rehabilitated as a public figure to become spokesman for Honda scooters.

 

On September 22, 1985, Reed performed at the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois, USA. He performed "Doin' The Things That We Want To", "I Love You, Suzanne", and "New Sensations" from "New Sensations", and "Walk on The Wild Side".

 

In 1986, he joined the Amnesty International A Conspiracy of Hope Tour and was outspoken about New York's political issues and personalities on the 1989 album New York, commenting on crime, AIDS, Jesse Jackson, Kurt Waldheim, and Pope John Paul II.

 

Following Warhol's death after routine surgery in 1987, Reed again collaborated with John Cale on 1990's Songs for Drella (Drella - Warhol's nickname - is a blend of the words "Dracula" and "Cinderella"). The album marked an end to a 22-year estrangement. The album took the shape of a Warhol biography; on the album, Reed sings of his love for his late friend, but also criticizes both the doctors who were unable to save Warhol's life and Warhol's would-be assassin, Valerie Solanas.

 

In 1990, following a 20-year hiatus, the Velvet Underground reformed for a Cartier benefit in France. Reed released his sixteenth solo record, Magic and Loss in 1992, an album about mortality, inspired by the death of two close friends from cancer. In 1993, the Velvet Underground again reunited and toured throughout Europe, although plans for a North American tour were cancelled following another falling out between Reed and Cale. In 1994, Reed appeared in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who, also known as Daltrey Sings Townshend. This was a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. In 1994, a CD and a VHS video were issued, and in 1998 a DVD was released. Reed performed a radically rearranged version of "Now And Then" from Psychoderelict.

 

In 1996, the Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, Reed performed a song entitled "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend" alongside former bandmates John Cale and Maureen Tucker, in dedication to Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison, who had died the previous August. Reed has since been nominated for the Rock Hall as a solo artist twice, in 2000 and 2001, but has not been inducted.

 

His 1996 album, Set the Twilight Reeling, met with a lukewarm reception, but 2000's Ecstasy drew praise from most critics, including Robert Christgau. In 1996, Reed contributed songs and music to Time Rocker, an avant-garde theatrical interpretation of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine staged by theater director Robert Wilson. The piece premiered in the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany, and was later also shown at The Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

 

In May 2000, Reed performed before Pope John Paul II at the Great Jubilee Concert in Rome. In 2000, a new collaboration with Robert Wilson called Poe-Try was staged at the Thalia Theater in Germany. As with the previous collaboration Time Rocker, Poe-Try was also inspired by the works of a 19th-century writer: Edgar Allan Poe. Reed became interested in Poe after producer and long-time friend Hal Willner had suggested him to read some of Poe's text at a Halloween benefit he was curating at St. Ann's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. For this new collaboration, Lou Reed reworked and even rewrote some of Poe's text as well as included some new songs based on the theme explored in the texts. In 2001, Reed made a cameo appearance in the movie adaptation of Prozac Nation. On October 6, 2001 the New York Times published a Lou Reed poem called Laurie Sadly Listening in which he reflects upon the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

 

Incorrect reports of Reed's death were broadcast by numerous US radio stations in 2001, caused by a hoax email (purporting to be from Reuters) which said he had died of a drug overdose. In 2003, he released a 2-CD set, The Raven, based on "Poe-Try". Besides Lou Reed and his band, the album featured a wide range of actors and musicians including singers David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Antony Hegarty, saxophonist and long-time idol Ornette Coleman, and actors Elizabeth Ashley, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Amanda Plummer, Fisher Stevens and Kate Valk. The album consisted of songs written by Reed and spoken-word performances of reworked and rewritten texts of Edgar Allan Poe by the actors, set to electronic music composed by Reed. At the same time a CD version of the albums, focusing on the music, was also released.

 

A few months after the release of The Raven, a new 2-CD Best Of-set was released, entitled NYC Man (The Ultimate Collection 1967-2003), which featured an unreleased version of the song "Who am I" and a selection of career spanning tracks that had been selected, remastered and sequenced under Lou's own supervision. In April 2003, Lou Reed embarked on a new world tour supporting both new and released material, with a band including celliste Jane Scarpantoni and singer Antony Hegarty. During some of the concerts for this tour, the band was joined by Master Ren Guangyi, Lou's personal Tai Chi instructor, performing Tai Chi movements to the music on stage. This tour was documented in the 2004 double disc live album Animal Serenade, recorded live at The Wiltern in Los Angeles.

 

In 2003, Reed released his first book of photographs, Emotions in Action. This work actually was made up out of two books, a larger A4-paper sized called "Emotions" and a smaller one called "Actions" which was laid into the hard cover of the former.

 

After Hours: a Tribute to the Music of Lou Reed was released by Wampus Multimedia in 2003. In 2004, a Groovefinder remix of his song, "Satellite of Love" (called "Satellite of Love '04") was released. It reached #10 in the UK singles chart. Also in 2004, Lou Reed contributed vocals and guitar to the track "Fistful of love" on I Am a Bird Now by Antony and the Johnsons. In 2005, Reed did a spoken word text on Danish rock band Kashmir's album No Balance Palace.

 

In 2003, Reed was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.

 

In January 2006, a second book of photographs called "Lou Reed's New York" was released. At the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, Reed performed "White Light/White Heat" with The Raconteurs. Later in the night, while co-presenting the award for Best Rock Video with Pink, he exclaimed, apparently unscripted, that "MTV should be playing more rock n' roll."

 

In October 2006, Lou Reed appeared at Hal Willner's Leonard Cohen tribute show "Came So Far For Beauty" in Dublin, beside the cast of Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, Antony, Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton, and others. According to the reports, he played a heavy metal version of Cohen's "The Stranger Song". He also performed "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong" and two duets — "Joan of Arc", with Cohen's former back-up singer Julie Christensen, and "Memories" — in a duet with Anjani Thomas. The tracks are available on bootleg releases.

 

In December 2006, Lou Reed played a first series of show at St. Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn, based on his 1973 Berlin song cycle. Reed was reunited on stage with guitarist Steve Hunter, who played on the original album as well as on Rock 'n' Roll Animal, as well as joined by singers Antony Hegarty and Sharon Jones, pianist Rupert Christie, a horn and string section and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The show was being produced by Bob Ezrin, who also produced the original album, and Hal Willner. The stage was designed by painter Julian Schnabel and a film about protagonist "Caroline" directed by his daughter, Lola Schnabel, was being projected to the stage. A live recording of these concerts was also published as a film (directed by Schnabel) which was released spring 2008. The show was also played at the Sydney Festival in January 2007 and throughout Europe during June and July 2007. The album version of the concert, entitled Berlin: Live At St. Ann's Warehouse, was released in 2008.

 

In April 2007, he released Hudson River Wind Meditations, his first record of ambient meditation music. The record was released on the Sounds True record label and contains four tracks that were said to have been composed just for himself as a guidance for Tai Chi exercise and meditation. In May 2007 Reed performed the narration for a screening of Guy Maddin's silent film The Brand Upon the Brain. In June 2007, he performed live at the Traffic Festival 2007 in Turin, Italy, a five-day free event organized by the town.

 

In August 2007, Reed went into the studio with The Killers in New York City to record "Tranquilize", a duet with Brandon Flowers for The Killers' b-side/rarities album, called Sawdust. During that month, he also recorded guitar for the Lucibel Crater song "Threadbare Funeral", which appears on their full-length CD The Family Album. In October 2007, Lou Reed gave a special performance in the Recitement song "Passengers". The album combines music with spoken word. The album was composed by Stephen Emmer and produced by Tony Visconti. Hollandcentraal was inspired by this piece of music and literature, which spawned a concept for a music video. On October 1, 2008, Reed joined Richard Barone via projected video on a spoken/sung duet of Reed's "I'll Be Your Mirror," with cellist Jane Scarpantoni, in Barone's "FRONTMAN: A Musical Reading" at Carnegie Hall.

 

On April 12, 2008, Lou Reed married Laurie Anderson in a private ceremony in Boulder, Colorado.

 

On August 9, 2009, Lou Reed performed as a subheadlining act at Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park.

 

On October 30th, 2009, Lou Reed performed the songs Sweet Jane and White Light White Heat with Metallica at Madison Square Garden as part of the 25th-anniversary celebration of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

 

Velvet Underground/Lou Reed discography

 

1966 All Tomorrow's Parties

1966 Sunday Morning

1968 White Light/White Heat

1968 I Heard Her Call My Name

1969 What Goes On

1971 Who Loves the Sun

1972 Walk on the Wild Side b/w Perfect Day - US #16

1973 Satellite of Love b/w Vicious

1984 I Love You, Suzanne - Mainstream Rock Tracks #31

1985 Foggy Notion

1986 No Money Down - Mainstream Rock Tracks #19

1989 Dirty Blvd. - Mainstream Rock Tracks #18 - Modern Rock Tracks #1

1989 Busload of Faith - Modern Rock Tracks #11

1990 Nobody But You - Modern Rock Tracks #13

1992 What's Good - Modern Rock Tracks #1

 

Factoid: After quitting the Velvet Underground in August 1970, Reed took a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist, by his own account earning $40 a week.

 

"Satellite of Love"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-whlghrit

[knightni]

20. The Kinks

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 56 points - highest ranking #6 BigEdWalsh

 

The Kinks are an English rock group formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray Davies and Dave Davies in 1964. Categorized in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks have been cited as one of the most important and influential rock bands of the era. Their music spanned a wide range of genres, from hard rock and R&B to a style of their own influenced by British Music hall, folk and country.

 

The Kinks first gained prominence in 1964 with their third single, "You Really Got Me", written by Ray Davies. It became an international hit upon release, topping the charts in the UK and reaching the Top 10 in the US. In the remainder of the decade Ray Davies' writing skills slowly evolved, and the group became known for songs and concept albums reflecting on English culture and lifestyle. Albums such as Face to Face, Something Else, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, Muswell Hillbillies and their accompanying singles are considered amongst the most influential recordings of the period. During the New Wave era, groups such as The Jam, The Knack, and The Pretenders covered Kinks songs and Britpop acts such as Blur, Oasis and Supergrass have cited them as a major influences. The Kinks' influence has carried on until today; in the VH1 documentary HEAVY: the Story of Metal The Kinks are mentioned as one of the early bands that can be traced with a heavy metal sound. The group have been the recipient of several awards and in 1990, their first year of eligibility, The Kinks were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

 

As self-professed Kinks fan Pete Townshend said for The History of Rock 'n' Roll: "The Kinks were much more quintessentially English. I always think that Ray Davies should one day be Poet Laureate. He invented a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning."

 

The fledgling group began auditioning at several studios for various labels, but these attempts all ended in rejection. Eventually a demo tape landed in the hands of American record producer Shel Talmy, who helped them land a contract with Pye Records in early 1964. It was during this time that The Ravens changed their name to The Kinks. Before signing to the label, drummer Willet left the band. The Kinks invited Mick Avory (b. Michael Charles Avory, February 15, 1944, in East Molesey, Surrey), to replace Willet after seeing his advertisement in the magazine Melody Maker. With a background in Jazz drumming, Avory's previous experience included one gig with the fledgling Rolling Stones.

 

The first single The Kinks released, "Long Tall Sally", was a cover of a Little Richard song. It was almost completely overlooked, however, and failed to chart. Nevertheless, the band received heavy publicity through the efforts of their managers Robert Wace, Grenville Collins, and ex-1950s showbiz star Larry Page. Despite this their second single, "You Still Want Me", also failed to chart.

 

Due to the failure of their past two singles, Pye records threatened to drop the group if another single did not find more success. The Kinks released their third single, "You Really Got Me", in August 1964. Boosted by a performance on the television show Ready Steady Go!, it quickly hit No. 1 in the United Kingdom and, after a quick import to the American label Reprise Records, made the top 10 in the United States. The loud, distorted guitar riff — achieved by Dave Davies' slicing of the speaker cones in his Elpico amplifier (referred to by the band as the "little green amp") — gave the song its signature, gritty guitar sound. "You Really Got Me" was extremely influential on the American Garage rock scene, and went on to work as a blueprint for numerable genres, including hard rock, and heavy metal. After the success of "You Really Got Me" the group recorded their fourth single, "All Day and All of the Night", another hard rock tune, which was released in late 1964. It rose to No. 2 in the United Kingdom, and hit No. 7 in the United States. In 1965, The Kinks recorded "Set Me Free" and "Tired of Waiting for You", which both found great success, the latter topping the UK charts.

 

The group released three albums and several EPs in the next two years. They also performed and toured relentlessly, headlining package tours with the likes of The Yardbirds and Mickey Finn, which caused tension within the band. Some legendary on-stage fights erupted during this time as well. The most notorious incident was at The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, Wales on 19 May 1965, involving drummer Mick Avory and Dave Davies. The fight broke out during the second number of the set, "Beautiful Delilah". It culminated with Davies insulting Avory and kicking over his drum set after finishing the first song, "You Really Got Me". Avory responded by knocking down Davies with his Hi-Hat stand, rendering him unconscious. He then fled from the scene, fearing he had killed his bandmate, and Davies was taken to Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where he received 16 stitches to the head. To placate police, Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at each other.

 

Following the summer 1965 American tour, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts in America for the next four years, cutting the Kinks off from the main market for rock music at the height of the British Invasion. Although neither the Kinks nor the union gave a specific reason for the ban, at the time it was widely attributed to their rowdy on-stage behaviour.

 

The group made its first tour of Australia and New Zealand in January 1965 as part of a "package" bill that included Manfred Mann and The Honeycombs. A stopover in Bombay, India on the way to Australia led Davies to write the song "See My Friends" (released as a single in July 1965). This was a prominent early example of crossover music, and along with The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood", was one of the first pop songs of this period to display a direct influence from the traditional music of the Indian subcontinent. According to Ray Davies' book X-Ray, he was inspired to write "See My Friends" after hearing the songs of local fishermen during an early morning walk.

 

Directly after their return from Asia, recording began immediately - the day after - on their next project, Kinda Kinks. The LP was completed and released within two weeks. Consequently, the production was rushed and, according to Ray Davies, the band was not completely satisfied with the final cuts. Due to record company pressure, however, no time was available to fix certain flaws present in the mix. Ray Davies has expressed his dissatisfaction towards the production not being up to par. Commenting on this, he said:

“ A bit more care should have been taken with it. I think (producer) Shel Talmy went too far in trying to keep in the rough edges. Some of the double tracking on that is appalling. It had better songs on it than the first album, but it wasn't executed in the right way. It was just far too rushed. ”

 

-Ray Davies, Kinda Kinks CD liner notes.

 

The band's stylistic changes were first evident in late 1965, with the appearance of singles like "A Well Respected Man", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", and their third album The Kink Kontroversy. These demonstrated the progression in Davies' songwriting, from hard-driving rock numbers toward songs rich in social commentary, observation, and idiosyncratic character study, all with a uniquely English flavour. The satiric single "Sunny Afternoon" was the biggest U.K. hit of summer 1966, topping the charts and displacing The Beatles' "Paperback Writer".

 

Prior to the release of The Kink Kontroversy, Ray Davies suffered a nervous and physical breakdown from the pressures of touring, writing, and ongoing legal squabbles. He spent several months recuperating, during which he wrote several new songs and pondered about the band's direction. Quaife also left the band for much of 1966 after an automobile accident.[22] After he recovered, he decided to step back from the band. Mick Avory's friend John Dalton replaced Quaife until he decided to return to the band at the end of the year. This caused some tension, as Avory was more used to Dalton's style of playing.

 

"Sunny Afternoon" was a dry run for the band's Face to Face, which displayed Davies' growing skill at crafting gentle yet cutting narrative songs about everyday life and people. For the recording the band recruited session musician Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, mellotron, and harpsichord. Hopkins had first played with the band during The Kink Kontroversy sessions the year before. He would play on the band's next two studio albums and would also be featured on numerous live BBC recordings with the band, before joining The Jeff Beck Group in 1968.

 

The Kinks' next single, a social commentary piece, "Dead End Street" was released at the time of Face to Face and became another U.K. Top 10 hit. It failed commercially in the United States, only reaching No. 73 in the Billboard charts. One of the first promotional music videos was produced for the song as well, filmed on Little Green Street, a diminutive eighteenth century lane in North London, located off Highgate Road in Kentish Town.

 

In May 1967, The Kinks returned with "Waterloo Sunset", an emotional single with the melancholic observer spying two lovers meeting and crossing over Waterloo Bridge in London. The song was rumoured to have been inspired by the romance between two British celebrities of the time, actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, although Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography, and claimed in a 2008 interview that "it was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country." The single became on of the group's biggest UK successes, peaking at #2 on Melody Maker. The song went on to become one of their most popular and best-known, with pop music journalist Robert Christgau calling it "the most beautiful song in the English language." Pete Townshend of The Who has called it "divine" and "a masterpiece",[ and Allmusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine concurred, citing it as "possibly the most beautiful song of the rock and roll era."

 

The songs on the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks expanded the musical progressions of Face to Face, adding English music hall influences to the band's sound. Dave Davies scored a major chart success with "Death of a Clown", co-written with Ray and recorded by The Kinks, but also released as a Dave Davies solo single.

 

After a disappointing commercial reception for Something Else, The Kinks rushed out a new single, "Autumn Almanac", which became another U.K. hit. But their next single, "Wonderboy", released in the spring of 1968, stalled at No. 36 and would become the band's first single not to make the U.K. Top Twenty since their early covers.

 

Throughout 1968, Davies continued to pursue his deeply personal songwriting style, while at the same time rebelling against the heavy demands placed on him to keep producing commercial hits. At the end of June, The Kinks released the single "Days", which made #12 in the United Kingdom. It was a Top 20 hit in several other countries in the summer of 1968 — although it did not chart in the United States — and it is also notable as the last recording made by the original lineup of the group.

 

Their next album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, was released in the autumn of 1968 in the UK. It was greeted with almost unanimously positive reviews from both UK and US rock critics, but at the time the album failed to sell strongly, with an estimated 100,000 copies sold worldwide. Despite this, the album has become The Kinks' best selling original record. A collection of thematic vignettes of English town and hamlet life, it was assembled from songs written and recorded over the previous two years. The album's deliberately understated production contrasted with the extravagant style then in vogue, and it did not have a popular single ("Starstruck" was released in North America and continental Europe, but failed to chart anywhere but the Netherlands). Although it was commercially unsuccessful, Village Green, upon its US release in January 1969, was embraced by the new underground rock press, particularly in the United States, where The Kinks' status as a cult band began to grow. In The Village Voice a newly-hired Robert Christgau called it "the best album of the year so far", and Circus magazine ran an article under the heading "Kinks - Unhip But Original", which stated: "The Kinks are backdated, cut off from the mainstream of pop progression. Just the same they're originals and now have a fine new album out". In Boston's underground paper Fusion, a review was released stating "The Kinks continue, despite the odds, the bad press and their demonstrated lot, to come across... Their persistence is dignified, their virtues are stoic. The Kinks are forever, only for now in modern dress". Paul Williams in Rolling Stone wrote a review that heaped praise on Village Green, saying "I've played [Village Green] twice since it arrived here this afternoon, and already the songs are slipping into my mind, each new hearing is a combined joy of renewal and discovery. Such a joy, to make new friends! And each and every song Ray Davies has written is a different friend to me." The record was not without criticism, however. In the student paper California Tech, one writer commented that it was "schmaltz rock", and that it is "without imagination, poorly arranged, and a poor copy of the Beatles".

 

The album remains popular today. It was re-released in a 3 CD "Deluxe" edition in 2004, and an album track, "Picture Book", was featured in a popular Hewlett-Packard television commercial in 2004, helping boost the album's popularity considerably.

 

In early 1969 Quaife had told the band he was quitting. Initially the other members didn't take the remark seriously, however on April 4th an article was featured in New Musical Express magazine featuring his band, named Maple Oak, which he had recently formed without the rest of The Kinks' knowledge. This caused lead vocalist and songwriter Ray Davies to make a personal plea to Quaife, asking him to return for the sessions for their upcoming album. Quaife, however, rejected this offer and continued with his band. Within a day Davies called up bassist John Dalton, who had filled in for Quaife in the past, as a replacement. Dalton would take a more permanent position with The Kinks this time, remaining with the group until 1977, with the release of Sleepwalker.

 

Ray Davies traveled to Los Angeles, California in April 1969, to help negotiate an end to the American Federation of Musician ban on the group, opening up an opportunity for the group to return to touring in America. The group's management quickly made plans for a North American tour, to help restore their standing in the US pop music scene.

 

Before their return to the United States, The Kinks recorded another album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). As with the previous two albums, Arthur was soaked with British lyrical and musical hooks, having been conceived as the score for a proposed but never realised television drama. It was a modest commercial success and was particularly well received by music critics in America.[48][3] Much of the album revolved around themes of the Davies brothers' childhood, their sister Rosie, who had migrated to Australia in the early 1960s with her husband, Arthur Anning (the album's namesake), and life growing up during World War II.

 

The Kinks embarked on their tour of the US in October 1969.[47] The tour fell apart as the group struggled to find a hold in the American concert scene, and many of the scheduled dates were canceled. The band manged to play a few major underground venues at the Fillmore East and performed for a night at New York's Carnegie Hall.

 

The band added keyboardist John Gosling to their line-up in early 1970. Before this, Nicky Hopkins, along with Ray, had done most of the session work on keyboards. Gosling debuted with The Kinks on "Lola" in May 1970, an account of a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite, that became both a U.K. and U.S. hit Top 10 hit, helping return The Kinks to the public eye. The track originally contained the word "Coca-Cola", but the BBC refused to play it as this was considered a violation of their product placement policy. The portion of the song then had to be hastily re-recorded by Ray Davies, with the offending line changed to the generic "cherry cola". The group's accompanying album Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One was released in November of 1970, and was an immense success both critically and commercially, charting in the Top 40 in America, making it their most successful since the mid-1960s. The album also featured the group's final U.K. Top 10 hit, "Apeman".

 

In 1971, the band released Percy, a soundtrack album to a film of the same name about a penis transplant. The album did not receive positive reviews, and it is generally regarded as a lesser effort, containing only seven full songs with the remainder being instrumentals. The band's U.S. label, Reprise, declined to release it in America, precipitating a major dispute that contributed to the band's departure from that label.

 

In 1971, the band's contracts with Pye and Reprise expired. Before the end of the year, The Kinks signed a five-album deal with RCA Records and received a million dollar advance, which helped fund the construction of their own recording studio, Konk.

 

Their debut for RCA, Muswell Hillbillies, was soaked with country, bluegrass and music hall influences and is often hailed as their last great record, though it was not as successful as its predecessors. It was named after the Davies brothers' birthplace in Muswell Hill, and contained songs focusing on working-class life and the Davies' own childhood. Muswell Hillbillies, despite positive reviews and high expectations, peaked at #48 on Record World and #100 on Billboard.

 

1972's double album Everybody's in Show-Biz consisted of half studio tracks and half live tracks recorded during a two-night stand in New York's Carnegie Hall. The record featured the ballad "Celluloid Heroes" and the Caribbean-themed "Supersonic Rocket Ship", their last U.K. Top 20 hit for more than a decade. "Celluloid Heroes" was a bittersweet rumination on dead Hollywood stars in which Ray Davies admits that he wishes his life were like a movie, "because celluloid heroes never feel any pain/And celluloid heroes never really die." The album was moderately successful in the United States, peaking at #47 on Record World, and #70 on Billboard. The record was a transitional piece between the band's early 1970s rock material and the theatrical incarnation in which they would immerse themselves over the next four years.

 

In 1973, Ray Davies dove headlong into the theatrical style, beginning with the rock opera Preservation, a sprawling chronicle of social revolution, and a more ambitious outgrowth of the earlier Village Green Preservation Society ethos. In conjunction with the Preservation project, The Kinks' lineup was expanded to include a horn section and female backup singers, essentially reforming the group as a theatrical troupe. Preservation: Act 2 was the first project recorded at Konk Studio; from this point forward, virtually every Kinks studio recording would be produced by Ray Davies at Konk.

 

Ray's marital problems during this period would prove to adversely affect the band. In late 1973, his wife, Rasa, left Davies and took their children with her. Davies went into a state of depression, culminating when he announced onstage that he was "sick of it all". A review of the concert published in Melody Maker stated: "Davies swore on stage. He stood at The White City and swore that he was 'F......[sic] sick of the whole thing'.... He was 'Sick up to here with it'.... and those that heard shook their heads. Mick just ventured a disbelieving smile, and drummer[sic] on through 'Waterloo Sunset.'" Davies proceeded to announce that the Kinks were breaking up, but this attempt was foiled by the group's publicity management, who pulled the plug on the microphone system. Davies then collapsed due to a drug overdose, and was rushed to a hospital. A 1994 article and interview with Davies on the event stated the following:

 

“ "Hello," he said to the nurses. "My name is Ray Davies. I am the lead singer of the Kinks. I am dying." One of them then asked him for his autograph. "It was funny," insists Davies now, and laughs a lot to prove it. "It was even funny at the time. When you're that down, everything is funny." Against the advice of a doctor, he discharged himself from the hospital. "You're going to die if you leave," the doctor warned him. Davies recalls leaving the hospital in the style of an old music-hall comedian, Jimmy Wheeler: "Ta-ta for now, folks. Aye-aye. That's your lot." That same year, he spent Christmas Day going round and round on the Circle Line on the Underground, drinking cans of Kronenbourg. ”

 

The Independent, August 27, 1994.

 

Davies eventually pulled through his depression, but throughout the remainder of the Kinks' theatrical incarnation the band's output remained uneven and their already failing popularity eroded further.

 

Preservation: Act 1 was released in late 1973 amid generally poor reviews, although its live performances fared better with the critics. Preservation: Act 2, the sequel to Act 1, appeared in the summer of 1974 to a similar reception. Davies soon began another musical, Starmaker, this time for the Britain's Granada Television. After a broadcast with Ray Davies in the starring role and The Kinks as both back-up band and ancillary characters, the project eventually morphed into the concept album The Kinks Present a Soap Opera, released in the spring of 1975, in which Ray Davies fantasized about what would happen if a rock star traded places with a "normal Norman" and took a 9-5 job.

 

In 1975, The Kinks recorded their final theatrical work, Schoolboys in Disgrace, a backstory biography of Preservation's capitalist overlord Mr. Flash. The record was a modest success, peaking at #45 on the Billboard charts.

Ray Davies Toronto, April 29, 1977

 

The Kinks signed with Arista Records in 1976, reborn with the encouragement of Arista's management as an arena rock band, stripped back down to a five-man core group. During this period Heavy-metal band Van Halen achieved a major hit with a remake of "You Really Got Me", which boosted The Kinks' commercial resurgence.

 

John Dalton left the band before finishing the sessions for their debut Arista album. Andy Pyle was brought in to complete the sessions and to play on the following tour. Sleepwalker was released in 1977. The album was a return to success for the group, peaking at #21 on Billboard.

 

Andy Pyle and keyboardist John Gosling soon left the group to work together on a separate project. Dalton returned to complete the tour, and ex-The Pretty Things keyboardist Gordon John Edwards joined the band. The Kinks' second Arista album Misfits, and their only album with Andy Pyle, was released in 1978 and included the minor hit "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy", helping make the record another success for the band.

 

Dalton left the band permanently after the end of their UK tour, with Gordon John Edwards soon to follow. Ex-Argent bassist Jim Rodford joined the band, which recorded Low Budget with Ray Davies handling keyboard duties. Former Life keyboardist Ian Gibbons was drafted for the following tour and soon become a permanent member. Despite the personnel changes, the group's recording and concert success continued to grow.

 

During this time in the late 1970s, new wave bands like The Jam ("David Watts") and The Pretenders ("Stop Your Sobbing") and hard rock acts like Van Halen ("You Really Got Me") recorded successful covers of Kinks songs, boosting each band's fame. At the same time, these cover versions helped fuel the commercial success of each new Kinks release. The hard and punk rock sounds of Low Budget (1979) helped make it the group's most successful album in America, peaking at No. 11. 1979 also saw The Kinks headline at Madison Square Garden for the first time.

 

A live album (the group's third) and video, both called "One for the Road", followed in 1980, bringing the group's concert drawing power to a peak between 1980 and 1983. Dave Davies also took advantage of the group's improved commercial standing to fulfill his decade-long solo ambitions and released albums on his own, including the eponymous "Dave Davies" in 1980 (also known by its catalogue number "PL13603" owing to its cover art, which depicted Dave Davies as a leather-jacketed piece of price scanning barcode) and 1981's less successful "Glamour".

 

The next Kinks album, Give the People What They Want, was released in late 1981 and reached number 15 in the US. The record attained gold status, and featured the optimistic pub-rocker "Better Things" (a rare UK hit single), as well as "Destroyer" and Around the Dial, tracks reminiscent in sound to the band's 1960s heyday.

 

The Kinks spent the better part of 1982 touring. In spring 1983, the nostalgic "Come Dancing" became their biggest American hit (at number 6) since "Tired of Waiting for You". It also became the group's first top 20 hit in the UK since 1972, peaking at number 12 in the charts. The anthemic album State of Confusion followed and was another commercial success, going to number 12 in the US, but once again failing to chart in the UK, as had all previous albums since 1967. Prominent tracks were the ballads "Don't Forget to Dance (a US top 30 hit, and minor UK chart entry)," "Long Distance", the title track and the gentle sing-along "Heart of Gold". During this time, Ray Davies became romantically involved with Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde, resulting in the birth of a daughter, Natalie Ray, in 1983.

 

The Kinks performed Saturday Night Live three times during this period, further adding to their resurgent popularity. They first performed for SNL in 1977, then again in 1981, and one final time in 1984.

 

The Kinks' second wave of popularity effectively peaked with State of Confusion in 1983, but both internal and external factors would soon begin to undermine them. A music video-fueled influx of new, fresh talent and styles into popular music at this time effectively muted the early 80s resurgence of many of the classic acts (including fellow UK bands such as David Bowie, The Who, and The Rolling Stones). The concert market for Kinks shows in the US had largely been played out by a decade of almost non-stop touring. As these outside pressures mounted, the internal strife in the group reached a critical point.

 

During the second half of 1983, Ray Davies started working on an ambitious solo film project, Return to Waterloo, about a London commuter who daydreams he's a serial murderer. (The film gave actor Tim Roth a significant early role.) Davies' commitment to writing, directing and scoring the new work caused tension in his relationship with his brother. Another problem was the stormy end of the volatile romance between Ray Davies and Chrissie Hynde. The old feud between Dave Davies and drummer Mick Avory also re-ignited. Soon Dave Davies wanted Avory replaced by the former drummer from Argent (a band in which Jim Rodford had also been a member), Robert Henrit, who had played drums on Dave's solo albums. It is also believed that Rodford also was instrumental in bringing his former bandmate in the fold.

 

Dave Davies refused to work with Avory. Ray Davies said that Avory was his best friend in the band and he unwillingly had to choose sides, as said later in a 1989 interview: "The saddest day for me was when Mick left. Dave and Mick didn't get along. There were terrible fights, and I got to the point where I couldn't cope with it any more...Mick had an important sound. Mick wasn't a great drummer, but he was a jazz drummer - same school, same era as Charlie Watts." Bob Henrit was brought in to take Avory's place. At Ray Davies' invitation Avory agreed to manage Konk Studios, where he also served as a producer and occasional contributor on later Kinks albums.

 

Between the completion of Return to Waterloo and Avory's departure, the band had already begun work on Word of Mouth, released in late 1984 with Avory still part of the line-up on three tracks. The album was similar to the last few Kinks records, but many of the songs had already been featured in solo versions on Ray Davies' companion album for Return to Waterloo, A third of the tracks featured Avory, others with Henrit, and still others supported by a drum machine which the band employed before the arrival of Henrit. Despite everything, some standout material made the cut on Word of Mouth, including Ray's ballad "Missing Persons", Dave's death-of-empire themed "Living on a Thin Line", and The Kinks' last Billboard Hot 100 entry, "Do it Again" (No. 41). They have not made the Top 40 since.

 

Word of Mouth was the last Kinks album for Arista Records. In early 1986, the group signed with MCA Records in the United States and London Records in the UK. Their first album for the new label, Think Visual, (1986) was a moderate success, peaking at #81 on the Billboard albums chart. The subject matter of the album was varied, with songs like the ballad "Lost and Found" and "Working at the Factory" concerning blue-collar life on an assembly line, and the title track, an attack on the very MTV video culture the band had been profiting off of during the earlier part of the decade.

 

The Kinks followed Think Visual in 1987 with another live album, titled The Road, which was a mediocre commercial and critical performer. In 1989, The Kinks released UK Jive - an out and out commercial failure. MCA Records ultimately dropped them, leaving The Kinks scrambling to find a label deal for the first time in over a quarter of a century. Longtime keyboardist Ian Gibbons left the group during this period and was replaced by Mark Haley.

 

In 1990, their first year of eligibility, The Kinks were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside The Who, Simon and Garfunkel, The Four Seasons, The Four Tops, Hank Ballard, and The Platters.[5] Mick Avory and Pete Quaife were on hand for the award. When receiving the award Ray Davies looked out at the audience and said, "Seeing everybody makes me realise rock 'n' roll has become respectable. What a bummer."

 

The induction, however, did not bring back The Kinks' stagnated career. In 1991, a compilation from the MCA Records period, Lost & Found (1986-1989) was released to fulfill contractual obligations and their MCA period officially ended.[78] The band signed with Columbia Records and released the 5-song EP Did Ya in 1991, which, despite being coupled with a new studio re-recording of the band's 1968 British hit "Days," failed to chart.

 

The Kinks' first album for Columbia, Phobia (1993), was released and recorded by the band as a four piece. Following the departure of Mark Haley after the band's sold out performance at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Gibbons rejoined for a US tour and again became part of the band. The record only managed one week in the US Billboard chart at No. 166. As usual, no impression was made on the group's home country chart in the UK. One single, "Only a Dream" narrowly failed to reach the UK chart, climbing to No. 79. "Scattered", the album's final candidate for release as a single, was announced and TV and radio promotion followed, but the record could not be found in the shops. Several months later a small number appeared on the collector market.

 

The group was dropped by Columbia in 1994. In 1994 the band released the first version of the album To the Bone on their own Konk label in the UK, a live album recorded partly on the highly successful UK tours of 1993 and 1994, and in the Konk studio before a small invited audience. Two years later the band released a new improved double CD live set in the USA, still called To The Bone, which now consisted of two new studio tracks ("Animal" and "To The Bone") paired with effective new treatments of many old Kinks hits. The record drew respectable press but failed to chart in either the US or the UK.

 

The band's name and profile rose considerably in the mid 1990s, mainly due to the British rock boom called "Britpop" by the UK press. Several of the most prominent bands of the decade, including Blur, Pulp, Suede and Oasis, acknowledged The Kinks as a major influence on their careers and proclaimed themselves as among The Kinks' most admiring students. Blur frontman Damon Albarn and Oasis' chief songwriter Noel Gallagher especially stressed that The Kinks were one of the bands that made the biggest impact on their songwriting as well as their development as artists and musicians. Noel Gallagher called The Kinks the 5th best band of all time.[80] Sadly, all these accolades made little difference to the commercial viability of the group. Rumours of a final break-up began to unfold.

 

Ray Davies took to his familiar role as a touchstone for yet another generation of British rockers, and acted as Britpop's "godfather" in a manner reminiscent of his relationship to The Jam and The Pretenders in the late-1970s. His intricate autobiographical novel X-Ray was published in early 1995, while the Britpop hysteria was at its peak in the UK. Not to be outdone, brother Dave Davies responded with his memoir Kink, published in the spring of 1996.

 

The Kinks performed the last time in mid-1996. Band members focused on their own solo projects with Ray and Dave releasing acclaimed studio albums. Talk of a Kinks reunion has circulated (including an aborted studio reunion of the original band members in 1999), but both Ray and Dave Davies had shown little interest in playing together again. One of Ray's projects has included a choral work commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, performed but never recorded.

 

In 1998, Ray Davies released the solo album Storyteller (a companion piece to his autobiographical novel X-Ray) which celebrated his old band and his estranged brother. Before becoming an album, Storyteller began life as a cabaret-style show in 1996. Seeing the programming possibilities inherent in Ray Davies' music/dialogue/reminiscence format, the American music television network VH-1 launched a series of similar projects featuring established rock artists, titling their show "VH1 Storytellers".

 

Meanwhile former members John Gosling, John Dalton and Mick Avory started performing on the oldies circuit under the name of The Kast Off Kinks with guitar-player/singer Dave Clarke (who had played in the Noel Redding Band).

 

In the autumn of 2005, The Kinks were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, at which time all of the original band members were present again. They are now the only major British Invasion band whose original members are all still alive. The award was given by long-time Kinks fan and friend of Ray, The Who's guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, who expressed his wish to see The Kinks be reunited in 2006.

 

In August 2007 a re-entry of The Ultimate Collection, a compilation of material spanning the bands' entire career, reached #48 in the UK Top 100 album chart and #1 in the UK Indie album chart.

 

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 on September 29, 2008, Ray Davies said that the seminal English band could reform soon. He said he wouldn't do it as a nostalgia act, but only to work on new material with the band. Davies told the UK radio station: "There is a desire to do it. The thing that would make me decide 'yes' or 'no' would be whether or not we could do new songs". Davies also went on to explain that the main barrier to the band getting back together was the illness of his brother, guitarist Dave Davies, who suffered a stroke in 2004.

 

In November 2008 Ray Davies told the BBC that the band was beginning to write new material for a possible reunion. The interview did not clarify who the band members were at this time. In an interview aired on the Biography Channel in December 2008, Pete Quaife flatly said he would never participate in any type of Kinks reunion. Dave Davies seconded this statement, claiming "it would be like a bad remake of Night of the Living Dead", and also added that, "Ray has been doing Karaoke Kinks shows since 1996".

 

In April 2009 Ray Davies performed a short set with the Kast Off Kinks in Utrecht, Holland. The line-up consisted of Ray, Mick Avory, Jim Rodford, Ian Gibbons and Dave Clarke - in other words, the Kinks line-up that recorded "Come Dancing" except for Dave Davies, being replaced by Dave Clarke.

 

The Kinks discography

 

1964 "Long Tall Sally - #129

1964 "You Really Got Me" - #7

1964 "All Day and All of the Night" - #7

1965 "Tired of Waiting for You" - #6

1965 "Set Me Free" - #23

1965 "See My Friends" - #111

1965 "Who'll Be the Next in Line" - #34

1965 "A Well Respected Man" - #13

1965 "Till the End of the Day" - #50

1966 "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" - #36

1966 "Sunny Afternoon" - #14

1966 "Dead End Street" - #73

1967 "Mister Pleasant" - #80

1969 "Victoria" - #62

1970 "Lola" - #9

1970 "Apeman" - #45

1971"20th Century Man" - #106

1972 "Supersonic Rocket Ship" - #111

1973 "One Of The Survivors" - #108

1977 "Sleepwalker" - #48

1978 "A Rock 'N Roll Fantasy" - #30

1979 "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman" - #41

1980 "Lola (Live)" - #81

1981 "Better Things" - #92

1981 "Destroyer" - #85

1982 "Come Dancing" - #6

1983 "Don't Forget - #41

 

 

Factoid: Dave Davies was responsible for creating the signature distorted power chord riff on The Kinks' first hit, "You Really Got Me". He achieved the sound by slitting the speaker cone on his Elpico amplifier, which he then ran through a larger Vox as a "pre-amp".

 

 

"Catch Me Now I'm Falling"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-yihshbhl

[knightni]

19. Aerosmith

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 56 points - highest ranking #4 knightni

 

Aerosmith is an American hard rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many subsequent rock artists. The band was formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1970. Guitarist Joe Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton, originally in a band together called the Jam Band, met up with singer Steven Tyler, drummer Joey Kramer, and guitarist Ray Tabano, and formed Aerosmith. In 1971, Tabano was replaced by Brad Whitford, and the band began developing a following in Boston.

 

They were signed to Columbia Records in 1972, and released a string of multi-platinum albums, beginning with their 1973 eponymous debut album. In 1975, the band broke into the mainstream with the album Toys in the Attic, and their 1976 follow-up Rocks cemented their status as hard rock superstars.[13] By the end of the 1970s, they were among the most popular hard rock bands in the world and developed a loyal following of fans, often referred to as the "Blue Army".[14] However, drug addiction and internal conflict took their toll on the band, which resulted in the departures of Perry and Whitford, in 1979 and 1981 respectively. They were replaced by Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay. The band did not fare well between 1980 and 1984, releasing a lone album, Rock in a Hard Place, which went gold but failed to match their previous successes.

 

Although Perry and Whitford returned in 1984 and the band signed a new deal with Geffen Records, it wasn't until the band sobered up and released 1987's Permanent Vacation that they regained the level of popularity they had experienced in the 1970s. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the band scored several hits and won numerous awards for music from the multi-platinum albums Pump (1989), Get a Grip (1993), and Nine Lives (1997). Their comeback has been described as one of the most remarkable and spectacular in rock 'n' roll history. After 39 years of performing, the band continues to tour and record music.

 

Aerosmith is the best-selling American hard rock band of all time, having sold more than 150 million albums worldwide, including 66.5 million albums in the United States alone. They also hold the record for the most gold and multi-platinum albums by an American group. The band has scored 21 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, nine #1 Mainstream Rock hits, four Grammy Awards, and ten MTV Video Music Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2005 they were ranked #57 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

 

After forming the band and finalizing the lineup in 1971, the band started to garner some local success doing live shows. Originally booked through the Ed Malhoit Agency, the band signed a promotion deal with Frank Connelly and eventually secured a management deal with David Krebs and Steve Leber in 1972. Krebs and Leber invited Columbia Records President Clive Davis to see the band at Max's Kansas City in New York City. Aerosmith was not originally scheduled to play that night at Max's Kansas City, but they were able to pay their way on the bill. Aerosmith signed with Columbia in mid-1972 for a reported $125,000 and issued their debut album, Aerosmith. Released in January 1973, the album peaked at #166. The album was straightforward rock and roll with well-defined blues influences, laying the groundwork for Aerosmith's signature blues-rock sound. Although the highest charting single from the album was "Dream On" at #59, several tracks (such as "Mama Kin" and "Walkin' the Dog") would become staples of the band's live shows and receive airplay on rock radio. The album reached gold status initially, eventually went on to sell two million copies, and was certified double platinum after the band reached mainstream success over a decade later. After constant touring, the band released their second album Get Your Wings in 1974, the first of a string of multi-platinum albums produced by Jack Douglas. This album included the rock radio hits "Same Old Song and Dance" and "Train Kept A-Rollin'", a cover done previously by The Yardbirds. The album also contained several fan favorites including "Lord of the Thighs", "Seasons of Wither", and "S.O.S. (Too Bad)", darker songs which have become staples in the band's live shows. To date, Get Your Wings has sold three million copies.

 

It was 1975's Toys in the Attic, however, that established Aerosmith as international stars competing with the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. Originally derided as Rolling Stones knockoffs in part due to the physical resemblance between lead singers Steven Tyler and Mick Jagger, Toys in the Attic showed that Aerosmith was a unique and talented band in their own right. Toys in the Attic was an immediate success, starting with the single "Sweet Emotion", which became the band's first Top 40 hit. This was followed by a successful re-release of "Dream On" which hit #6, becoming their best charting single of the 1970s. "Walk This Way", re-released in 1976, reached the Top 10 in early 1977.

 

In addition, "Toys in the Attic" and "Big Ten Inch Record" (a song originally recorded by Bull Moose Jackson) became concert staples. As a result of this success, both of the band's previous albums re-charted. Toys in the Attic has gone on to become the band's bestselling studio album in the States, with certified U.S. sales of eight million copies. The band toured in support of Toys in the Attic, where they started to get more recognition. Also around this time, the band established their home base as "The Wherehouse" in Waltham, Massachusetts, where they would record and rehearse music, as well as conduct business.

 

Aerosmith's next album was 1976's Rocks, which "captured Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking". It went platinum swiftly and featured two FM hits, "Last Child" and "Back in the Saddle", as well as the ballad "Home Tonight", which also charted. Rocks has sold four million copies to date. Both Toys in the Attic and Rocks are highly regarded, especially in the hard rock genre, and appear on such lists as Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and are cited by members of Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Mötley Crüe as having large influences on their music. Soon after Rocks was released, the band continued to tour heavily, this time headlining their own shows and playing to several large stadiums and rock festivals.

 

The next album, 1977's Draw the Line, was not as successful or as critically acclaimed as their two previous efforts, although the title track proved to be a minor hit (and is still a live staple), and "Kings and Queens" also experienced some success. The album went on to sell 2 million copies; however drug abuse and the fast-paced life of touring and recording began affecting their output. While continuing to tour and record into the late 1970s, Aerosmith acted in the movie version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their cover of the Beatles hit "Come Together" was included in the album's soundtrack and would be the band's last Top 40 hit for nearly 10 years. The live release Live! Bootleg, originally released as a double album, was put out in 1978 and captured the band's rawness during the heyday of the Draw the Line tour. Lead singer Steven Tyler and lead guitarist Joe Perry became known as "The Toxic Twins" because of their notorious abuse of drugs on and off the stage.

 

Just after the recording of their sixth studio album, 1979's Night in the Ruts, Joe Perry left the band and formed The Joe Perry Project.[8][9] Perry was replaced first by longtime band friend and songwriter Richard Supa and then by guitarist Jimmy Crespo (formerly of the band Flame). Night in the Ruts quickly fell off the charts (although it would eventually go platinum several years later), its only single being a cover of The Shangri-Las' "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", which topped out at #67.[45]

 

The band continued to tour in support of Night in the Ruts with new guitarist Jimmy Crespo onboard, but as the 1970s came to a close, the band's popularity waned. Steven Tyler collapsed onstage during a performance in Portland, Maine in early 1980. Also in 1980, Aerosmith released its Greatest Hits album. The album has gone on to become the band's bestselling album in the United States, with sales of 11 million copies. In the fall of 1980, Tyler was injured in a serious motorcycle accident, which left him hospitalized for two months, and unable to tour or record well into 1981. In 1981, the band suffered another loss with the departure of Brad Whitford who recorded Whitford/St. Holmes with former Ted Nugent vocalist/guitarist Derek St. Holmes. After recording guitar parts for the song "Lightning Strikes", Whitford was replaced by Rick Dufay and the band recorded their seventh album Rock in a Hard Place in 1982. The album was considered a commercial failure, only going gold, and failing to produce a major hit single. During the tour for Rock in a Hard Place, Tyler again collapsed on stage, this time at the band's homecoming show in Worcester, Massachusetts, after getting high with Joe Perry, who met with Aerosmith backstage that evening.

 

On February 14, 1984, Perry and Whitford saw Aerosmith perform. They were officially re-inducted into the ranks of Aerosmith once more two months later.

 

In 1985 the band released the album Done with Mirrors, their first studio album with Geffen and their first album since the much-publicized reunion. While the album did receive some positive reviews, it only went gold and failed to produce a hit single, or generate much buzz outside the confines of rock radio. The album's most notable track, "Let the Music Do the Talking", was in fact a cover of a song originally recorded by The Joe Perry Project and released on that band's album of the same name. Nevertheless, the band became a popular concert attraction once again, touring in support of Done With Mirrors, well into 1986. In 1986, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry appeared on Run D.M.C.'s cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", a track blending rock and roll and hip hop that not only cemented rap into the mainstream of American popular music, but also marked Aerosmith's true comeback. The song reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and its associated video helped introduce Aerosmith to a new generation.

 

Yet the band members' drug problems still stood in their way. In 1986, lead singer Steven Tyler completed a successful drug rehabilitation program, at the discretion of his fellow band members and manager Tim Collins, who believed that the band's future would not be bright if Tyler did not get treated. The rest of the band members also completed drug rehab programs over the course of the next couple of years. According to the band's tell-all autobiography, Collins pledged in September 1986 he could make Aerosmith the biggest band in the world by 1990 if they all completed drug rehab. Their next album was crucial because of the commercial disappointment of Done With Mirrors, and as the band members became clean, they worked hard to make their next album a success.

 

Permanent Vacation was released in September 1987, becoming a major hit and the band's bestselling album in over a decade (selling 5 million copies in the U.S.), with all three of its singles ("Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Rag Doll", and "Angel") reaching the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. The group went on a subsequent tour with labelmates Guns N' Roses (who have cited Aerosmith as a major influence), which was intense at times because of Aerosmith's new struggle to stay clean amidst GN'Rs well-publicized, rampant drug use.

 

Aerosmith's next album was even more successful. Pump, released in September 1989, featured three Top Ten singles: "Janie's Got a Gun", "What It Takes", and "Love in an Elevator", as well as the Top 30 "The Other Side", re-establishing Aerosmith as a serious musical force. Pump was a critical and commercial success, eventually selling 7 million copies, achieving four-star ratings from major music magazines, and earning the band their first ever Grammy win in the category of Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, for "Janie's Got a Gun". The recording process for Pump was documented in the video The Making of Pump, which has since been re-released as a DVD. The music videos for the album's singles were featured on the release Things That Go Pump in the Night, which quickly went platinum.

 

In support of Pump, the band embarked on the 12-month Pump Tour, which lasted for most of 1990. On February 21, 1990, the band appeared in a "Wayne's World" sketch on Saturday Night Live, debating the fall of communism and the Soviet Union, and performed their recent hits "Janie's Got a Gun" and "Monkey on My Back". On August 11, 1990, the band's performance on MTV's Unplugged aired. In October 1990, the Pump Tour ended, with the band's first ever performances in Australia. That same year, the band was also inducted to the Hollywood Rock Walk. In November 1991, the band appeared on The Simpsons episode "Flaming Moe's" and released a box set titled Pandora's Box. In 1992, Tyler and Perry appeared live as guests of Guns N' Roses during the latter's 1992 worldwide pay-per-view show in Paris, performing a medley of "Mama Kin" (which GN'R covered in 1986) and "Train Kept-A Rollin".

 

1993's Get a Grip was just as successful commercially, becoming their first album to debut at #1 and racking up sales of 7 million copies in a two-and-a-half-year timespan. The first singles were the hard rocking "Livin' on the Edge" and "Eat the Rich". Though many critics were unimpressed by the focus on the subsequent interchangeable power-ballads in promoting the album, all three ("Cryin'", "Crazy" and "Amazing") proved to be huge successes on radio and MTV. The music videos featured then up-and-coming actress Alicia Silverstone; her provocative performances earned her the title of "the Aerosmith chick" for the first half of the decade. Steven Tyler's daughter Liv Tyler was also featured in the "Crazy" video. Get a Grip would go on to sell more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone, and over 15 million copies worldwide. The band won two Grammy Awards for songs from this album in the category of Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: for "Livin' on the Edge" in 1994 and "Crazy" in 1995.

 

Aerosmith had signed a $30 million contract with Columbia Records/Sony Music in 1991, but had only recorded three of their six contractual albums with Geffen Records at that point (Done with Mirrors, Permanent Vacation, and Pump). Between 1991 and 1996, they released two more albums with Geffen (Get a Grip and Big Ones), which meant they now had five albums with Geffen under their belt (along with a planned live compilation), which meant they could now begin recording for their new contract with Columbia. The band took time off with their families before working on their next album, Nine Lives, which was plagued with personnel problems, including the firing of manager Tim Collins, who, according to band members, had nearly caused the band to break up. The album's producer was also changed from Glen Ballard to Kevin Shirley. Nine Lives was released in March 1997. Reviews were mixed, and Nine Lives initially fell down the charts, although it had a long chart life and sold double platinum in the United States alone, fueled by its singles, "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)", the ballad "Hole in My Soul", and the crossover-pop smash "Pink" (which won the band their fourth Grammy Award in 1999 in the Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category). It was followed by the over two-year-long Nine Lives Tour, which was plagued by problems including lead singer Steven Tyler injuring his leg at a concert, and Joey Kramer suffering second degree burns when his car caught fire at a gas station. However, the band also released their only #1 single to date: "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", the love theme, written by Diane Warren, from the 1998 film Armageddon, starring Steven Tyler's daughter Liv. The song stayed on top of the charts for four weeks and was nominated for an Academy Award. The song helped open Aerosmith up to a new generation and remains a slow-dance staple. 1998 also saw the release of the double-live album, A Little South of Sanity, which was assembled from performances on the Get a Grip and Nine Lives tours. The album went platinum shortly after its release. The band continued with their seemingly neverending world tours promoting Nine Lives and the "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" single well into 1999.

 

In March 2001, the band released their 13th studio album Just Push Play, which quickly went platinum,[34] fueled by the Top 10 single "Jaded"[45] and the appearance of the title track in Dodge commercials.[109] They were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soon after their album was released, in late March 2001.[51] Aerosmith is the only band to be inducted to the Hall of Fame with a song active in the charts ("Jaded").[64] Later that year, the band performed as part of the United We Stand: What More Can I Give benefit concert in Washington D.C. for 9/11 victims and their families.[110] The band flew back to Indianapolis for a show the same night, as part of their Just Push Play Tour.[111]

 

The band started 2002 by ending the Just Push Play tour, and simultaneously recording segments for their Behind the Music special on VH1, which not only chronicled the band's history but also the band's current activities and touring. The special was one of the few Behind the Musics to run two hours in length. In July 2002, Aerosmith released a two-disc career-spanning compilation O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits, which featured the new single "Girls of Summer" and embarked on the Girls of Summer Tour with Kid Rock and Run-D.M.C. opening. O, Yeah! has since been certified double platinum. MTV honored Aerosmith with their mtvICON award in 2002. Performances included Pink covering "Janie's Got a Gun". Shakira performed "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", Kid Rock played "Mama Kin" and "Last Child", Train performed "Dream On" and Papa Roach covered "Sweet Emotion". In addition, testimonials featured surprise guests Metallica, as well as Janet Jackson, Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst, Alicia Silverstone and Mila Kunis. In 2003, Aerosmith co-headlined with Kiss on the Rocksimus Maximus Tour, in preparation for release of their blues album. They also performed a song for Rugrats Go Wild,"Lizard Love".

 

Aerosmith's long-promised blues album Honkin' on Bobo was released in 2004. This was a return to the band's roots, including recording the album in live sessions, working with former producer Jack Douglas, and laying down their blues-rock grit. It was followed by a live DVD, You Gotta Move, in December 2004, culled from performances on the Honkin' on Bobo Tour. "Dream On" was also featured in an advertising campaign for Buick in 2004, targeting that marque's market which is now composed largely of people who were teenagers when the song first charted.

 

On November 1, 2007, the band began work on the final studio album of their current contract with Sony. It is believed that the album will be a mix of re-recorded tracks left off previous albums as well as brand new material. In an interview, guitarist Joe Perry revealed that in addition to creating a new album, the band was working closely with the makers of the Guitar Hero series to develop Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which is dedicated to the band's music. The game was released on June 29, 2008 and contains many of their most popular songs. Steven Tyler announced on VH1 Classic Radio on September 4, 2008 that Aerosmith intends to enter the studio at the end of September 2008 to complete the band's 15th studio album. It will be the band's first album of original material since 2001's Just Push Play. Tyler also confirmed that the band plans to begin a new U.S. tour in June 2009, in support of the as-yet-untitled album. This tour was supposed to be preceded by a concert in Venezuela on February 1, 2009. However, on January 15, Tyler said the band would be unable to play the gig because of a second knee injury of guitarist Joe Perry. In mid-February 2009, it was announced that the album would be produced by the famed Brendan O’Brien and that the album would likely be recorded live, like their earlier records. Although the band had hoped to finish the album before the tour starts in June 2009, Perry said that the group "realized there wasn't any chance of getting [the album] finished before we hit the road for the summer." The tour is also slated to feature ZZ Top as the opening act. The Aerosmith/ZZ Top Tour, presented by Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, was officially announced and the first dates released on April 8, 2009.

 

Tyler pulled out of a planned South American tour at the end of the year and seems intent on pursuing solo projects. Tyler told Classic Rock magazine, "I don’t know what I'm doing yet, but it's definitely going to be something Steven Tyler: working on the brand of myself – Brand Tyler." Meanwhile, guitarist Joe Perry will be touring the States at the end of 2009 with talks of performing some shows in Japan and the UK early in 2010.

 

In November 2009, Joe Perry stated that Tyler had not been in contact with the band and could be on the verge of quitting Aerosmith. Perry stated that the rest of the group was "looking for a new singer to work with."

 

However, despite the rumors of his leaving the band, Tyler joined The Joe Perry Project onstage on November 10, 2009 at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, and they performed the Aerosmith single "Walk This Way" together. According to sources at the event, Tyler assured the crowd that he is "not quitting Aerosmith."

 

Aerosmith discography

 

1973 "Mama Kin" - Hot #75

1973 "Dream On" - Hot #59

1974 "Same Old Song and Dance" - #54

1975 "Sweet Emotion" - #36

1975 "Toys in the Attic" - #96

1976 "Dream On" (re-issue) - #6

1976 "Last Child" - #21

1976 "Home Tonight" - #71

1976 "Rats in the Cellar" - #100

1976 "Walk This Way" (re-issue) - #10

1977 "Back in the Saddle" - #38

1977 "Draw the Line" - #42

1978 "Kings and Queens" - #70

1978 "Come Together" - #23

1978 "Chip Away the Stone" - #77

1979 "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - #67

1982 "Lightning Strikes" - Rock #21

1985 "Let the Music Do the Talking" - Rock #18

1985 "Shela" - Rock #20

1987 "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" - Hot #14 - Rock #4

1987 "Hangman Jury" - Rock #14

1988 "Angel" - H #3 - R #2

1988 "Rag Doll" - #17 - #12

1988 "Magic Touch" - R #42

1988 "Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" - R #44

1989 "Chip Away the Stone (re-issue)" - R #13

1989 "Love in an Elevator" - #5 - #1

1989 "F.I.N.E.*" - R #14

1989 "Janie's Got a Gun" - #4 - #2

1990 "What It Takes" - #9 - #1

1990 "The Other Side" - #22 - #1

1990 "Monkey on My Back" - R #17

1990 "Love Me Two Times"- R #27

1991 "Sweet Emotion (re-issue)" - R #36

1991 "Helter Skelter" - R #21

1993 "Livin' on the Edge" - #18 - #1

1993 "Eat the Rich" - R #5

1993 "Fever" - R #5

1993 "Cryin'" - #12 - #1

1993 "Amazing" - #24 - #3

1994 "Deuces Are Wild" - R #1

1994 "Crazy" - #17 - #7

1994 "Blind Man" - #48 - #3

1995 "Walk on Water" - R #16

1997 "Nine Lives" - R #37

1997 "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)" - #35 - #1

1997 "Hole in My Soul" - #51 - #4

1997 "Pink" - #27 - #1

1998 "Taste of India"- #3 - #40

1998 "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" - #1 - #4

1998 "What Kind of Love Are You On" - R #4

2000 "Angel's Eye" - R #4

2001 "Jaded" - #7 - #1

2001 "Fly Away From Here" - H #103

2001 "Sunshine" - R #23

2001 "Just Push Play" - R #10

2002 "Girls of Summer" - R #25

2004 "Baby, Please Don't Go" - R #7

2006 "Devil's Got a New Disguise" - R #15

 

Factoid: It took 25 years with "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", for Aerosmith to get their first #1 on the US Hot 100.

 

"Love In An Elevator"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-lzpkjjxs

[knightni]

18. Frank Zappa / Mothers of Invention

 

 

3 of 24 lists - 59 points - highest ranking #1 FlaSoxxJim, Felix

 

In 1965, Zappa was approached by Ray Collins who asked him to join a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist. Zappa accepted, and soon he assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract. The band was renamed The Mothers, coincidentally on Mother's Day. The group increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, while they gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene. In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots. Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the folk-rock act Simon & Garfunkel, and was notable as one of the few blacks working as a major label pop music producer at this time.

 

Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve Records division of MGM Records, which had built up a strong reputation in the music industry for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially re-title themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother", in slang terminology, was short for "motherf***er"—a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.

 

With Wilson credited as producer, The Mothers of Invention and a studio orchestra recorded the groundbreaking double album Freak Out! (1966). It mixed R&B, doo-wop, and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time. The album immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America". The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. (Some of the session musicians were shocked that they should read from charts with Zappa conducting them, as this was not standard at a rock recording.) The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs. Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections to get the group the financial resources needed.

 

During the recording of Freak Out!, Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album. The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their drug use. He labeled people on drugs "assholes in action", and he only tried marijuana a few times without any pleasure. He was a regular tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns. After a short promotional tour following the release of Freak Out!, Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer. They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.

 

Wilson produced the follow-up album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York. It featured extended playing by the Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements. Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s. As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for a self-produced album based on orchestral works to be released under his own name. Due to contractual problems, the recordings were shelved and only made ready for release late in 1967. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue to finalize what became his first solo album (under the name Francis Vincent Zappa), Lumpy Gravy (1968). It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.

 

The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year. As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with the Mothers of Invention, moved to New York. Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals. Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some US Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".

 

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968). It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. We're Only in It for the Money featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a life-long collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.

 

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute. Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?" A theme from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is heard during one song.

 

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album Uncle Meat (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts, and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations)—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time). Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.

 

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album Trout Mask Replica for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance.

 

Zappa and the Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn. This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being a success with fans in Europe, the Mothers of Invention were not faring well financially. Their first records were vocally oriented, but Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical oriented music for the band's concerts, which confused audiences. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music".

 

In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group himself from his publishing royalties whether they played or not. In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason, but also commented on the band members' lack of sufficient effort. Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's preference for perfection over feelings. Others were irritated by "his autocratic ways", which was manifested by the fact that Zappa never stayed at the same hotel as the band members. Several members would, however, play for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings with the band from this period were collected on Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Burnt Weeny Sandwich (both released in 1970).

 

After he disbanded the Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album Hot Rats (1969). It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings. It was backed by jazz, blues and R&B session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and previous member of Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart (providing vocals to the only non-instrumental track, "Willie the Pimp"). It became a popular album in England, and had a major influence on the development of the jazz-rock fusion genre.

 

In 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with the Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie 200 Motels. Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one. His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career, where he often felt that the money spent on performances of his classical music rarely matched the final product.

 

Later in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".

 

This version of the Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album Chunga's Revenge (1970), which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie 200 Motels (1971), featuring The Mothers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London. Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting; co-director Palmer tried afterwards to have his name removed from the film. The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician. It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process which allowed for novel visual effects. It was released to mixed reviews. The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.

 

After 200 Motels, the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, Fillmore East - June 1971 and Just Another Band From L.A.; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances in which songs were used to build up sketches based on 200 Motels scenes as well as new situations often portraying the band members' sexual encounters on the road.

 

In December 1971, there were two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, the Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino. After a week's break, The Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing. This left him wheelchair bound, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain. Meanwhile, the Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.

 

During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni. Musically, the albums were close to that of Hot Rats. Zappa began touring again in late 1972. His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the US for five weeks from October to December 1972.

 

Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin).

 

By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. In their place, Zappa and Cohen created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner Bros. Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album Apostrophe (') (1974), which reached a career-high #10 on the Billboard pop album charts helped by the chart single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow". Other albums from the period are Over-Nite Sensation (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) and One Size Fits All (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called the Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)". A live recording from 1974, You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–75 band".[114] Zappa released Bongo Fury (1975), which featured live recordings from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period. They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.

 

Zappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in 1976. The breakup was an acrimonious affair in which Zappa sued Cohen for skimming more than he was allocated from DiscReet Records, as well as for signing acts of which Zappa did not approve. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen had gained from an out-of-court settlement with MGM over the rights of the early Mothers of Invention recordings. It also prevented Zappa access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the rock-oriented Zoot Allures (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thereby bypassing DiscReet.

 

In the mid-1970s Zappa prepared material for Läther (pronounced "leather"), a four-LP project. Läther encapsulated all the aspects of Zappa's musical styles—rock tunes, orchestral works, complex instrumentals, and Zappa's own trademark distortion-drenched guitar solos. Wary of a quadruple-LP, Warner Bros. Records refused to release it. Zappa managed to get an agreement with Mercury-Phonogram, and test pressings were made targeted at a Halloween 1977 release, but Warner Bros. prevented the release by claiming rights over the material. Zappa responded by appearing on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast Läther and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings. A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros. followed, during which no Zappa material was released for more than a year. Eventually, Warner Bros. issued major parts of Läther against Zappa's will as four individual albums with limited promotion. Läther was released posthumously in 1996.

 

Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner Bros. contracts, the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands. Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show Saturday Night Live. The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting. Zappa's song, "I'm the Slime", was performed with a voice-over by SNL booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing.

 

Zappa's band at the time, with the additions of Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker), performed during Christmas in New York, recordings of which appear on one of the albums released by Warner Bros., Zappa in New York (1978). It mixes intense instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer". The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure, radical changes of tempo and meter, and short, densely arranged passages.

 

Zappa in New York featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", which featured Don Pardo providing the opening narrative in the song. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references, leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content. Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it. Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?" The remaining albums released by Warner Bros. Records without Zappa's consent were Studio Tan in 1978 and Sleep Dirt in 1979, which contained complex suites of instrumentally-based tunes recorded between 1973 and 1976, and which was overlooked in the midst of the legal problems. Also released by the label without the artist's consent was Orchestral Favorites in 1979, which featured recordings of a concert with orchestral music from 1975.

 

Resolving the lawsuits successfully, Zappa ended the 1970s "stronger than ever", by releasing two of his most successful albums in 1979: the best selling album of his career, Sheik Yerbouti, and the "bona fide masterpiece", Joe's Garage. The double album Sheik Yerbouti was the first release on Zappa Records, and contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached #45 on the Billboard charts, and "Jewish Princess", which received controversial attention when a Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics. Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments and disregarded the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time". The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the US, but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language. The triple LP Joe's Garage featured lead singer Ike Willis as the voice of the character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems, the suppression of freedom of speech and music—inspired in part by the Islamic revolution that had made music illegal within its jurisdiction at the time—and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness". The album contains rock songs like "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"), "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up", and the title track, as well as extended live-recorded guitar improvisations combined with a studio backup band dominated by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly good musical rapport) adopting the xenochrony process. The album contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay".

 

After spending most of 1980 on the road, Zappa released Tinsel Town Rebellion in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records, and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of sprechstimme (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg—showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta). While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, in the sense that some found them sexist,[148] the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything". The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in the fall of 1980.

 

The same year the double album You Are What You Is was released. Most of it was recorded in Zappa's brand new Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house, thereby giving him complete freedom to work. The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but focused mainly on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics targeted at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy. "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the US administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money. Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reaganite era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness".

 

In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, and The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through the CBS label due to popular demand. The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979–1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well". Another guitar-only album, Guitar, was released in 1988, and a third, Trance-Fusion, which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.

 

In May 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at #32 on the Billboard charts). In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon" and "barf out". Most Americans who only knew Zappa from his few singles successes now thought of him as a person writing "novelty songs", even though the rest of the album contained highly challenging music. Zappa was irritated by this and never played the song live.

 

In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with The Man From Utopia, a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on Tinseltown Rebellion. The second album, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1, contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. A second record of these sessions, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 2 was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl". Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes. Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that in "fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult". Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far. In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of A Zappa Affair with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice.

 

The album Thing-Fish was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government. New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage". Finally, in 1984, Zappa released Francesco Zappa, a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th century composer Francesco Zappa (no known relation), and Them or Us, a two-record set of heavily edited live and session pieces.

 

The album Jazz From Hell, released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo, the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier. Although an instrumental album, Meyer Music Markets sold Jazz from Hell featuring an "explicit lyrics" sticker—a warning label introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in an agreement with the PMRC.

 

Zappa's last tour in a rock band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums Broadway the Hard Way (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's Boléro to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), and Make a Jazz Noise Here (mostly instrumental and avant-garde music). Parts are also found on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, volumes 4 and 6.

 

Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable. After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. In 1993 he completed Civilization, Phaze III shortly before his death. It was a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.

 

In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the world-acclaimed Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alexander Knaifel). Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble, Ensemble Modern, which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, Zappa invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material. In addition to being satisfied with the ensemble's performances of his music, Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for the fall. In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled, but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation. It would become his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating". Recordings from the concerts appeared on The Yellow Shark (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999).

 

Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles. On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".

 

Frank Zappa was one of the first to try tearing down the barriers between rock, jazz and classical music. In the late Sixties his Mothers of Invention would slip from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" into The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" before breaking down into saxophone squeals inspired by Albert Ayler

—The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll

 

Zappa earned widespread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. The 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable". Even though his work found inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite". On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity'".

 

Guitar Player Magazine devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music". Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s. He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s, and said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music." Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that". Pierre Boulez stated in Musician Magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive." Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation. As an electric guitarist, he has become highly regarded.

 

In 1994, jazz magazine Down Beat's critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease". He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board included We're Only in It for the Money in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it". The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

 

A number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper, Primus, Fee Waybill of The Tubes and Billy Bob Thornton cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and John Frusciante. Heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath, Mike Portnoy, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, System of a Down, and Clawfinger acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble, and the Fireworks Ensemble regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton. Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa include new age pianist George Winston, electronic composer Bob Gluck, parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic, and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.

 

Frank Zappa / Mothers discography

 

1974 "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" - Hot #86

1979 "Dancin' Fool" - Hot #45

1982 "Valley Girl" - Hot #32 - Rock #12

 

 

Factoid: Seldom charting with singles, Zappa's albums proved to be far more successful due to their conceptual nature.

 

 

 

"Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, Nanook Rubs It, St. Alphonzos Pancake Breakfeast, Father O'Blivion"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-iketuweq

[knightni]

17. U2

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 59 points - highest ranking #3 Flash Tizzle, whitesoxfan99

 

U2 are a rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland. The band consists of Bono (vocals and rhythm guitar), The Edge (guitar, keyboards, and vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums and percussion).

 

The band formed at secondary school in 1976 when the members were teenagers with limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they signed to Island Records and released their debut album. By the mid-1980s, they had become a top international act. They were more successful as a live act than they were at selling records, until their 1987 album The Joshua Tree, which, according to Rolling Stone, elevated the band's stature "from heroes to superstars". Their 1991 album Achtung Baby and the accompanying Zoo TV Tour were a musical and thematic reinvention for the band. Reacting to their own sense of musical stagnation and a late-1980's critical backlash, U2 incorporated dance music and alternative rock into their sound and performances, replacing their earnest image with a more ironic tone. Since 2000, U2 have pursued a more conventional sound, while maintaining influences from their 1990's musical explorations.

 

U2 have released 12 studio albums, with worldwide sales totaling more than 145 million records, and they have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band. In 2005, the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone magazine listed U2 at #22 in its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes, including Amnesty International, the ONE Campaign, Product Red, and Bono's DATA campaign.

 

The band formed in Dublin on 25 September 1976. Larry Mullen, Jr., then 14 years old, posted a notice on his secondary school (Mount Temple Comprehensive School) notice board in search of musicians for a new band. Setting up in his kitchen, Mullen later described it as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." Mullen was on drums, Paul Hewson (Bono) on lead vocals, Dave Evans (The Edge) and his older brother Dik Evans on guitar, Adam Clayton, a friend of the Evans brothers on bass guitar, and initially Ivan McCormick and Peter Martin, two other friends of Mullen. Soon after, the group settled on the name "Feedback", because it was one of the few technical terms they knew. Martin did not return after the first practice, and McCormick left the group within a few weeks. Most of the group's material initially consisted of cover versions, which the band said was not their forte.[citation needed] The band's early original material was influenced by punk rock acts such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols.

 

We couldn't believe it. I was completely shocked. We weren't of an age to go out partying as such but I don't think anyone slept that night.... Really, it was just a great affirmation to win that competition, even though I've no idea how good we were or what the competition was really like. But to win at that point was incredibly important for morale and everyone's belief in the whole project.

—The Edge, on winning the CBS competition

 

In March 1977, the band changed their name to "The Hype". Dik Evans, who was older and by this time at college, was becoming the odd man out. The rest of the band was leaning towards the idea of a four-piece ensemble and he was "phased out" in March 1978. During a farewell concert in the Presbyterian Church Hall in Howth, which featured The Hype playing covers, Dik ceremoniously walked offstage. The remaining four band members completed the concert playing original material as "U2". Steve Averill, a punk rock musician and family friend of Clayton's, had suggested six potential names from which the band chose "U2" for its ambiguity and open-ended interpretations, and because it was the name that they disliked the least.

 

On Saint Patrick's Day in 1978, U2 won a talent show in Limerick, Ireland. The prize consisted of £500 and studio time to record a demo which would be heard by CBS Ireland. This win was an important milestone and affirmation for the fledgling band. The band recorded their first demo tape at Keystone Studios in Dublin, in May 1978. Hot Press magazine was influential in shaping the band's future; in May, Paul McGuinness, who had earlier been introduced to the band by the magazine's journalist Bill Graham, agreed to be U2's manager. U2's first release, an Ireland-only EP entitled Three, was released in September 1979 and was the band's first Irish chart success. In December 1979, U2 performed in London for their first shows outside Ireland, although they failed to get much attention from audiences or critics. In February 1980, their second single "Another Day" was released on the CBS label, but again only for the Irish market.

 

Island Records signed U2 in March 1980, and in May, the band released "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" as their first international single. The band's debut album, Boy, followed in October. It was produced by Steve Lillywhite and received generally positive reviews. Although Bono's lyrics were unfocused and seemingly improvised, a common theme was the dreams and frustrations of adolescence. The album included the band's first United Kingdom hit single, "I Will Follow". Boy's release was followed by U2's first tour of continental Europe and the United States. Despite being unpolished, these early live performances demonstrated U2's potential, as critics noted that Bono was a "charismatic" and "passionate" showman.

 

The band's second album, October, was released in 1981 and contained overtly spiritual themes. During the album's recording sessions, Bono and The Edge left the band due to spiritual conflicts, and U2 ceased to exist for a brief period of time. Bono, The Edge, and Mullen had joined a Christian group in Dublin called the 'Shalom Fellowship', which led them to question the relationship between the Christian faith and the rock and roll lifestyle. Ultimately, they left the group to continue with the band. Recording was further complicated when a briefcase containing lyrics for several working songs was stolen from backstage during the band's performance at a nightclub in Portland, Oregon. The album received mixed reviews and limited radio play. Low sales outside the UK put pressure on their contract with Island and focused the band on improvement.

 

Resolving their doubts of the October period, U2 released War in 1983. A record where the band "turned pacifism itself into a crusade", War's sincerity and "rugged" guitar was intentionally at odds with the "cooler" synthpop of the time. The album included the politically-charged "Sunday Bloody Sunday", where Bono had lyrically tried to contrast the events of Bloody Sunday with Easter Sunday. Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the song showed the band was capable of deep and meaningful songwriting. War was U2's first album to feature the photography of Anton Corbijn, who remains U2's principal photographer and has had a major influence on their vision and public image. U2's first commercial success, War debuted at number one in the UK, and its first single, "New Year's Day", was the band's first hit outside Ireland or the UK.

 

On the subsequent War Tour, the band performed sold-out concerts in mainland Europe and the US. Bono, waving a white flag during performances of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", became the tour's iconic image. U2 recorded the Under a Blood Red Sky live album on this tour, as well as the Live at Red Rocks concert film, both of which received extensive play on the radio and MTV, expanding the band's audience and showcasing their live performance. Their record deal with Island Records was coming to an end, and in 1984 the band signed a more lucrative extension. They negotiated the return of their copyrights (so that they owned the rights to their own songs), an increase in their royalty rate, and a general improvement in terms, at the expense of a larger initial payment.

 

 

We knew the world was ready to receive the heirs to The Who. All we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin, without a doubt. But something just didn't feel right. We felt we had more dimension than just the next big anything, we had something unique to offer. The innovation was what would suffer if we went down the standard rock route. We were looking for another feeling.

—Bono, on The Unforgettable Fire's new direction.

 

The Unforgettable Fire was released in 1984. Ambient and abstract, it was at the time the band's most marked change in direction. The band feared that following the overt rock of the War album and tour, they were in danger of becoming another "shrill", "sloganeering arena-rock band". Thus, experimentation was sought as Adam Clayton recalls, "We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty." The Edge admired the ambient and "weird works" of Brian Eno, who, along with his engineer Daniel Lanois, eventually agreed to produce the record.

 

The Unforgettable Fire has a rich and orchestrated sound. Under Lanois' direction, Mullen's drumming became looser, funkier, and more subtle and Clayton's bass became more subliminal; the rhythm section no longer intruded, but flowed in support of the songs. Complementing the sonic atmospherics, the album's lyrics are open to many interpretations, providing what the band called a "very visual feel". Bono's recent immersion in fiction, philosophy, and poetry made him realise that his songwriting responsibility—about which he had always been reluctant—was a poetic one. Due to a tight recording schedule, however, Bono felt songs like "Bad" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" were incomplete "sketches". "Pride (In the Name of Love)", about Martin Luther King, Jr., was the album's first single and became the band's biggest hit to that point, including being their first to enter the U.S. top 40.

 

Much of The Unforgettable Fire Tour moved into indoor arenas as U2 began to win their long battle to build their audience. The complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks, such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad", were problematic to translate to live performance. One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use, but are now used in the majority of the band's performances. Songs on the album had been criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy", and "unfocused", but were better received by critics when played on stage.

 

U2 participated in the Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief at Wembley Stadium in July 1985. U2's performance was a pivotal point in the band's career. During the song "Bad", Bono leapt down off the stage to embrace and dance with a fan, showing a television audience of millions the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. In 1985, Rolling Stone magazine called U2 the "Band of the 80s", saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters".

 

Motivated by friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards, the band looked back to the roots of rock music, and Bono focused on his skills as a song and lyric writer. Realising "that U2 had no tradition", the band explored American blues, country, and gospel music. For their fifth album, the band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's atmospherics, but instead of its out-of-focus tracks, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the strict discipline of conventional song structures. U2 interrupted their 1986 album sessions to serve as a headline act on Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope tour. Rather than a distraction, the tour added extra intensity and power to their new music. In 1986 Bono travelled to San Salvador and Nicaragua, and saw first-hand the distress of peasants bullied in internal conflicts that were subject to American political intervention. The experience became a central influence on the new music.

 

The wild beauty, cultural richness, spiritual vacancy and ferocious violence of America are explored to compelling effect in virtually every aspect of The Joshua Tree—in the title and the cover art, the blues and country borrowings evident in the music ... Indeed, Bono says that "dismantling the mythology of America" is an important part of "The Joshua Tree's" artistic objective.

—Rolling Stone

 

The Joshua Tree was released in March 1987. The album juxtaposes antipathy towards America against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom, and what it stands for. The band wanted music with a sense of location, a 'cinematic' quality and the album's music and lyrics draw on imagery created by American writers whose works the band had been reading. The Joshua Tree became the fastest-selling album in British chart history, and was number one for nine weeks in the United States. The album's first two singles, "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", quickly went to number one in the U.S. U2 became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which declared U2 "Rock's Hottest Ticket". It won U2 their first two Grammy Awards. The album brought U2 a new level of success and is cited by Rolling Stone as one of rock's greatest. The Joshua Tree Tour was the first during which the band played numerous stadium shows alongside smaller arena shows.

 

The documentary Rattle and Hum featured footage recorded from The Joshua Tree Tour, and the accompanying double album of the same name included nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances. Released in October 1988, the album and film were intended as a tribute to American music, and included recordings at Sun Studios in Memphis and performances with Bob Dylan and B. B. King. Rattle and Hum performed modestly at the box office and received mixed reviews from both film and music critics; one Rolling Stone editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "bombastic and misguided". The film's director, Phil Joanou, described it as "an overly pretentious look at U2". Most of the album's new material was played on 1989's Lovetown Tour, which played in Australia, Japan and Europe, because the band wanted to avoid the American backlash. In addition, they had grown disatisfied with their live performances; Mullen recalled that "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best". With a sense of musical stagnation, Bono said on one of the last dates of the Tour that it was "the end of something for U2..." and that they had to "... go away and just dream it all up again".

 

 

Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy, and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad). It was good if a song took you on a journey or made you think your hifi was broken, bad if it reminded you of recording studios or U2...

—Brian Eno, on the recording of Achtung Baby

 

Stung by the criticism of Rattle and Hum, the band made a calculated change in musical and thematic direction for their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby; the change was their most dramatic since The Unforgettable Fire. The band began work on Achtung Baby in East Berlin in October 1990 with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, seeking inspiration and renewal on the eve of German reunification. The sessions instead proved to be difficult, as conflict arose within the band over their musical direction and the quality of their material. While Clayton and Mullen preferred a sound similar to U2's previous work, Bono and Edge were inspired by alternative rock and European dance music and advocated a change. Weeks of slow progress, arguments, and tension subsided when the band rallied around a chord progression The Edge had written to improvise the song "One". The band completed the album in 1991 in Dublin.

 

In November 1991, U2 released Achtung Baby. Sonically, the album incorporated alternative rock, dance, and industrial influences of the time and the band referred to the album as the sound of "four men chopping down the Joshua Tree". Thematically, it was a more inward-looking and personal record; it was darker, yet at times more flippant, than the band's previous work. Commercially and critically, it has been one of the band's most successful albums and was a crucial part of the band's early 1990s reinvention. Like The Joshua Tree, it is cited by Rolling Stone as one of rock's greatest.

The Zoo TV stage featured a complex setup with over 30 video screens.

 

The Zoo TV Tour of 1992–1993 was a multimedia event, and showcased an extravagant but intentionally bewildering array of hundreds of video screens, upside-down flying Trabant cars, mock transmission towers, satellite TV links, subliminal messages, and Bono's over-the-top stage characters such as "The Fly", "Mirror-Ball Man", and "(Mister) MacPhisto". The extravagant shows were intentionally in contrast to the austere staging of previous U2 tours, and mocked the excesses of rock and roll by appearing to embrace these very excesses. The shows were, in part, U2's way to represent the pervasive nature of cable television and its blurring of news, entertainment, and home shopping. Prank phone calls were made to President Bush, the United Nations, and others. Live satellite uplinks to war-torn Sarajevo caused controversy.

 

Quickly recorded and released during a break in the Zoo TV tour in mid-1993, the Zooropa album continued many of the themes from Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV tour. Initially intended as an EP, the band expanded Zooropa into a full-length LP album. It was an even greater departure from the style of their earlier recordings, incorporating techno influences and other electronic effects. Johnny Cash sang the vocal on the "The Wanderer". Most of the songs were played at least once during the 1993 leg of the tour, which extended through Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan; half the album's tracks became fixtures in the set.

 

It's not enough to write a great lyric; it's not enough to have a good idea or a great hook, lots of things have to come together and then you have to have the ability to discipline and screen. We should give this album to a re-mixer, go back to what was originally intended...

—Bono, on Pop

 

In 1995, U2 released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks 1. Brian Eno, producer of three previous U2 albums, contributed as a full partner, including writing and performing. For this reason, and due to the record's highly experimental nature, the band chose to release it under the moniker "Passengers" to distinguish it from U2's conventional albums. Mullen said of the album, "There's a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record." It was commercially unnoticed by U2 standards and it received generally poor reviews. However, the single "Miss Sarajevo" featuring Luciano Pavarotti, which Bono cites as one of his favourite U2 songs, was a hit.

 

On 1997's Pop, U2 continued experimenting; tape loops, programming, rhythm sequencing, and sampling provided much of the album with heavy, funky dance rhythms. Released in March, the album debuted at number one in 35 countries, and drew mainly positive reviews. Rolling Stone, for example, stated that U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives". Others felt that the album was a major disappointment and sales were poor compared to previous U2 releases. The band was hurried into completing the album in time for the impending pre-booked tour, and Bono admitted that the album "didn't communicate the way it was intended to".

 

The subsequent tour, PopMart, commenced in April 1997. Like Zoo TV, it poked fun at pop culture and was intended to send a sarcastic message to those accusing U2 of commercialism. The stage included a 100-foot (30 m) tall golden yellow arch (reminiscent of the McDonald's logo), a 150-foot (46 m) long video screen, and a 40-foot (12 m) tall mirrorball lemon. U2's "big shtick" failed, however, to satisfy many who were seemingly confused by the band's new kitsch image and elaborate sets. The late delivery of Pop meant rehearsal time was severely reduced, and performances in early shows suffered. A highlight of the tour was a concert in Sarajevo where U2 were the first major group to perform following the Bosnian War. Mullen described the concert as "an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life, and if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile." One month following the conclusion of the PopMart Tour, U2 appeared on the 200th episode of The Simpsons, "Trash of the Titans", in which Homer Simpson disrupted the band on stage during a PopMart concert.

 

All That You Can't Leave Behind is easy to relate to, full of solid songs that appeal to a wide audience with its clear notions of family, friendship, love, death, and re-birth. ...the sounds on this album come from a band that has digested the music it started to consume while making Rattle and Hum. This time they are neither imitating or paying tribute. This time it's soul music, not music about soul.

—Caroline van Oosten de Boer, on All That You Can't Leave Behind

 

Following the comparatively poor reception of Pop, U2 declared they were "reapplying for the job ... [of] the best band in the world", and have since pursued a more conventional rock sound mixed with the influences of their 1990s musical explorations. All That You Can't Leave Behind was released in October 2000 and was produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. For many of those not won over by the band's 1990s music, it was considered a return to grace; Rolling Stone called it U2's "third masterpiece" alongside The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. The album debuted at number one in 22 countries and its worldwide hit single, "Beautiful Day" earned three Grammy Awards, as did the album's three other singles.

 

For the Elevation Tour, U2 performed in a scaled-down setting, returning to arenas after nearly a decade of stadium productions. A heart-shaped stage and ramp permitted greater proximity to the audience. Following the September 11 attacks, the new album gained added resonance, and in October, U2 performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Bono and the Edge later said these New York City shows were among their most memorable and emotional performances. In early 2002, U2 performed during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVI, which SI.com ranked as the best halftime show in Super Bowl history.

 

The band's next studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was released in November 2004. The band were looking for a harder-hitting rock sound than All That You Can't Leave Behind. Thematically, Bono states that "A lot of the songs are paeans to naiveté, a rejection of knowingness." The first single, "Vertigo", was featured on a widely-aired television commercial for the Apple iPod, and a U2 iPod and an iTunes U2 box set was released. The album debuted at number one in the U.S. where first week sales doubled that of All That You Can't Leave Behind and set a record for the band. Claiming it as a contender as one of U2's three best albums, Bono said, "There are no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it f***ing annoys me." The Vertigo Tour featured a set list that varied more across dates than any U2 tour since the Lovetown Tour, and included songs not played since the early 1980s. Like the Elevation Tour, the Vertigo Tour was a commercial success. The album and its singles won Grammy Awards in all eight categories in which U2 were nominated. In 2005, Bruce Springsteen inducted U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A 3-D concert film, U2 3D, filmed at nine concerts during the South America leg of the Vertigo Tour was released on 23 January 2008.

 

The band began work on their twelfth album No Line on the Horizon in 2006, originally writing and recording with producer Rick Rubin, but the material was shelved. The band subsequently chose to begin writing and recording for the album with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno in June 2007. A two-week trip to Fez, Morocco where the six recorded led to the band experimenting with North African sounds and indicating the album would be more experimental than their previous efforts. During the album sessions, on 31 March 2008, it was confirmed that U2 signed a 12 year deal with Live Nation worth an estimated $100 million (£50 million), which includes Live Nation controlling the band's merchandise, sponsoring, and their official website.

 

The band completed No Line on the Horizon in December 2008, and it was released on 27 February 2009. The album received generally positive reviews, but critics noted the end result was not as experimental as expected. The band have said they have material from the No Line on the Horizon sessions that could form another album, provisionally titled Songs of Ascent. Bono says it would be "a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage" and may be released in 2010.

 

The U2 360° Tour began on 30 June 2009 and features European and North American stadium dates in 2009, with additional shows in 2010. The shows feature a 360-degree staging/audience configuration, in which the fans surround the stage from all sides.

 

Since their inception, U2 have developed and maintained a distinctly recognisable sound, with emphasis on melodic instrumentals and expressive, larger-than-life vocals. This approach is rooted partly in the early influence of record producer Steve Lillywhite at a time when the band was not known for musical proficiency. The Edge has consistently used a rhythmic echo and a signature delay to craft his guitar work, coupled with an Irish-influenced drone played against his syncopated melodies that ultimately yields a well-defined ambient, chiming sound. Bono has nurtured his falsetto operatic voice and has exhibited a notable lyrical bent towards social, political, and personal subject matter while maintaining a grandiose scale in his songwriting. In addition, The Edge has described U2 as a fundamentally live band.

 

Despite these broad consistencies, U2 have introduced new elements into their musical repertoire with each new album. U2's early sound was influenced by bands such as Television and Joy Division, and has been described as containing a "sense of exhilaration" that resulted from The Edge's "radiant chords" and Bono's "ardent vocals". U2's sound began with post-punk roots and minimalistic and uncomplicated instrumentals heard on Boy and October, but evolved through War to include aspects of rock anthem, funk, and dance rhythms to become more versatile and aggressive. Boy and War were labelled "muscular and assertive" by Rolling Stone, influenced in large part by Lillywhite's producing. The Unforgettable Fire, which began with the Edge playing more keyboards than guitars, as well as follow-up The Joshua Tree, had Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois at the production helm. With their influence, both albums achieved a "diverse texture". The songs from The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum placed more emphasis on Lanois-inspired rhythm as they mixed distinct and varied styles of gospel and blues music, which stemmed from the band's burgeoning fascination with America's culture, people and places. In the 1990s, U2 reinvented themselves as they began using synthesizers, distortion, and electronic beats derived from alternative rock, industrial music, dance, and hip-hop on Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. The 2000s had U2 returning to a stripped-down sound, with less obvious use of synthesizers and effects and a more traditional rhythm.

 

Social and political commentary, often embellished with Christian religious and spiritual imagery, are a major aspect of U2's lyrical content. Songs such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Silver and Gold", and "Mothers of the Disappeared" were motivated by current events of the time. The former was written about the troubles in Northern Ireland, while the latter concerns the struggle of mothers whose children were kidnapped and killed under Argentina's military dictatorship that began in 1976.

 

Bono's personal conflicts and turmoil inspired family colour songs like "Mofo", "Tomorrow" and "Kite". An emotional yearning or pleading frequently appears as a lyrical theme, in tracks such as "Yahweh", "Peace on Earth", and "Please". Much of U2's songwriting and music is also motivated by contemplations of loss and anguish, coupled with hopefulness and resiliency, themes that are central to The Joshua Tree. Some of these lyrical ideas have been amplified by Bono and the band's personal experiences during their youth in Ireland, as well as Bono's campaigning and activism later in his life. U2 have used tours such as Zoo TV and PopMart to caricature social trends, such as media overload and consumerism, respectively.

 

While the band and its fans often affirm the political nature of their music, U2's lyrics and music have been criticized as apolitical because of their vagueness and "fuzzy imagery", and a lack of any specific references to actual people or characters.

 

The band cites The Who, The Clash, Ramones, The Beatles, Joy Division, Siouxsie & the Banshees and Patti Smith as influences. Van Morrison has been cited by Bono as an influence and his influence on U2 is pointed out by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Other musicians and bands such as Snow Patrol, The Fray, OneRepublic,, Coldplay, This Allure, The Academy Is..., The Killers, Your Vegas, and Angels & Airwaves have in turn been influenced by the work of U2. U2 have also worked and/or had influential relationships with artists including Johnny Cash, Green Day, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King, Luciano Pavarotti, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Wim Wenders, R.E.M., Salman Rushdie, and Anton Corbijn.

 

 

U2 discography

 

1980 "I Will Follow" - Mainstream Rock #20

1983 "New Year's Day" - Hot 100 #53 - Main #2

1983 "Two Hearts Beat as One" - Hot #101 - Main #12

1983 "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - Main #7

1984 "I Will Follow" (live from West Germany) - Hot #81

1984 "Pride (In the Name of Love)" - Hot #33 - Main #2

1987 "With or Without You" - #1 - #1

1987 "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - #1 - #2

1987 "Where the Streets Have No Name" - #13 - #11

1987 "In God's Country" - #44 - #6

1988 "Desire" - Hot #3 - Main #1 - Modern #1

1988 "Angel of Harlem" - Hot #14 - Main #1 - Mod #3

1989 "When Love Comes to Town" (with B.B. King) - Hot #68 - Main #2

1989 "All I Want Is You" - Hot #83 - Main #13

1991 "The Fly" - #61 - #2 - #1

1991 "Mysterious Ways" - #9 - #1 - #1

1992 "Even Better Than the Real Thing" - #32 - #1 - #9

1992 "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" - #35 - #2 - #7

1993 "Numb" (video single) - Main #18 - Mod #2

1993 "Lemon" - Main #18 - Mod #3

1993 "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" - #61 - #12 - #15

1995 "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" - #16 - #1- #1

1997 "Discothèque" - #10 - #6 - #1

1997 "Staring at the Sun" - #26 - #2 - #1

1997 "Last Night on Earth" - #57 - #18 - #11

1997 "Please" - Main #31

1998 "Sweetest Thing" - #63 - #31 - #9

2000 "Beautiful Day" - #21 - #14 - #5

2001 "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" - #52 - #35 - #35

2001 "Elevation" - Main #21 - Mod #8

2001 "Walk On" - Main #19 - Mod #10

2002 "Electrical Storm" - #77 - #26 - #14

2004 "Vertigo" - #31 - #3 - #1

2005 "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" - Hot #97 - Mod #29

2005 "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (with Paul McCartney) - Hot #48

2005 "All Because of You" - Main #20 - Mod #6

2006 "The Saints Are Coming" (with Green Day) - #51 - #33 - #22

2007 "Window in the Skies" - Mod #32

2009 "Get on Your Boots" - #37 - #26 - #5

2009 "Magnificent" - #79 - #29 - #18

2009 "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" - Main #27 - Mod #31

 

 

Factoid: Bono and The Edge are Paul Hewson and David Evans respectively.

 

"Mysterious Ways"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-shawaufw

 

[knightni]

16. Queen

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 62 points - highest ranking #5 Soxy, RibbieRubarb

 

Queen were an English rock band. Formed in London in 1970 following the demise of the band Smile, Queen consisted of vocalist Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor. The band became popular with audiences via their hit singles, live performances, originality and showmanship, being voted the greatest British band of all time in a national BBC poll. Their 1985 Live Aid performance was voted the best live rock performance of all time in an industry poll. According to the BBC, Queen have sold more than 300 million albums as of 2009.

 

Queen enjoyed success in the UK in the early to mid-1970s with the albums Queen and Queen II, but it was with the release of Sheer Heart Attack in 1974 and A Night at the Opera the following year that the band gained international success. They have released fifteen studio albums, five live albums and numerous compilation albums. Since Mercury's death and Deacon's retirement, May and Taylor have performed infrequently together at special events and programmes as members of other ensembles. Between 2004 to 2009 the duo collaborated with Paul Rodgers under the moniker Queen + Paul Rodgers.

 

In 1968, guitarist Brian May, a student at London's Imperial College, and bassist Tim Staffell decided to form a band. May placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a "Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type" drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. The group called themselves Smile.

 

Smile signed to Mercury Records in 1970 and had their first session in a recording studio in Trident Studios that year. Tim Staffell was attending Ealing Art College with Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury, and introduced him to the band. Bulsara soon became a keen fan. After Staffell left in 1970 to join the band Humpy Bong, the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to "Queen" and continued working together. Bulsara, who joined the group as vocalist, explained, "I thought up the name Queen. It's just a name, but it's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it." The band had a number of bass players during this period who did not fit with the band's chemistry. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for their first album.

 

In 1973, after a series of delays, Queen released their eponymous debut album, an effort influenced by the heavy metal and progressive rock of the day. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone said "their debut album is superb", and Chicago's Daily Herald called it an "above average debut". However, it drew little mainstream attention and the lead single "Keep Yourself Alive", a Brian May composition, sold poorly. Greg Prato of Allmusic later called Queen "one of the most underrated hard rock debuts of all time."

 

The group's second LP Queen II was released in 1974. The album reached number five on the British album charts, and the Freddie Mercury-written lead single "Seven Seas of Rhye," reached number ten in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album is their heaviest and darkest release, featuring long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics and musical virtuosity. The band toured as support to Mott the Hoople in the UK and US during this period, and they began to gain notice for their energetic and engaging stage shows. However, like its predecessor, sales of Queen II in the US were low.

 

Brian May was absent when the band started work on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. The album reached number two in the United Kingdom, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the United States. It gave the band their first real taste of commercial success. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British Music Hall ("Killer Queen"), heavy metal ("Flick of the Wrist", "Brighton Rock", "Tenement Funster", "Now I'm Here", and "Stone Cold Crazy"), ballads ("Lily Of The Valley" and "Dear Friends"), ragtime ("Bring Back That Leroy Brown") and Caribbean ("Misfire"). At this point Queen started to move away from the progressive tendencies of their first two releases into a more radio-friendly, song-oriented style. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound and melody patterns that would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.

 

The single "Killer Queen" reached number two on the British charts, and became their first US hit, reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. It combines camp, vaudeville, British music hall with May’s guitar virtuosity. The album’s second single, "Now I’m Here", a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.

 

In 1975, the band left for a world tour with each member in Zandra Rhodes-created costumes and banks of lights and effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April. At the same time, the band's manager Jim Beach successfully negotiated the band out of their Trident contract. Of the options they considered, was an offer from Led Zeppelin’s manager, Peter Grant. Grant wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin’s own production company, Swan Song Records. The band found the contract unacceptable and instead, contacted Elton John’s manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time.

 

Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. In "The Prophet's Song", an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States. In 2003, it was ranked number 230 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Mercury, seen during a 1978 concert.

 

The album also featured the hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was number one in the UK for nine weeks, and is Britain’s third-best-selling single of all time; beaten only by Band Aid's Do They Know it's Christmas? and Elton John's Candle in the Wind 1997 - making it the best selling commercial single in the UK. It also reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two). Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted, numerous times, the greatest song of all time. The band decided to make a video to go with the single; the result is generally considered to have been the first "true" music video ever produced. Although other bands (including The Beatles) had made short promotional films or videos of songs prior to this, generally those were made for specific showings or programs (such as the Beatles' videos for "Hey Jude" and "Revolution", which were specifically made to be aired on the Smothers Brothers' television show). "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first music video offered free of charge, to any program, network or station which would air it. The second single from the album, "You're My Best Friend", which is the second song ever composed by John Deacon, and his first single, peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.

 

By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races, what may be mistaken simply as a companion album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers' movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was by both fans’ and critics’ standards a strong effort, and reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album was "Somebody to Love", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom, and number thirteen on the US singles chart.. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, Brian May’s "Tie Your Mother Down", which became a staple of their live shows.

 

Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 free concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience.

 

News of the World was released a year later. It contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including "We Will Rock You" and the rock ballad "We Are the Champions", both of which reached number four in the United States and became enduring international sports anthems. Roger Taylor released his first solo effort in 1977 in the form of a single: the A-side was a cover of a song by The Parliaments "I Wanna Testify", and the B-side was a song by Taylor called "Turn On The TV".

 

In 1978 the band released Jazz, including the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" which were also released as a double-A-side single. This album was "the target of a bizarre marketing campaign, in which sixty-five naked women were perched atop bicycles rented from Halford's Cycles and sent racing around Wimbledon Stadium." The word "jazz" was not used in a strict sense, and the album was noted by critics for its collection of different styles, jazz not being one of them. Rolling Stone Magazine criticised it for being "dull", saying "Queen hasn’t the imagination to play jazz – Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll." Important tracks of the album include "Dead on Time", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Let Me Entertain You", and "Mustapha", in which Arabesque music is combined with heavy rock guitar.

 

The band’s first live album, Live Killers, was released in 1979; it went platinum twice in the United States. They also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a rockabilly song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, and was the band’s first number one single in the United States.

 

ueen began the 1980s with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the United States. The album stayed number one for four weeks in the United States, and sold over four million copies. It was also the only album to ever top the Billboard rock, dance, and R&B charts simultaneously. The album also marked the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album. Heretofore, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers were used on this Album" sleevenote. The note is widely assumed to reflect an anti-synth, pro-"hard"-rock stance by the band, but was later revealed by producer Roy Thomas Baker to be an attempt to clarify that those albums' multi-layered solos were created with guitars, not synths, as record company executives kept assuming at the time.

 

1980 also saw the release of the soundtrack Queen had recorded for Flash Gordon.

 

In 1981, Queen became the first major rock band to play in Latin American stadiums. Queen played to a total audience of 479,000 people on their South American tour, including five shows in Argentina and two in Brazil where they played to an audience of more than 130,000 people in the first night and more than 120,000 people the following night at São Paulo (Morumbi Stadium). In October of the same year, Queen performed for more than 150,000 fans on October 9 at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and 17 and 18 at Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico.

 

Also in 1981, Queen worked with David Bowie on the single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. The band were immediately pleased with the results, but Bowie did not play the song live for several years. Upon its release, the song was extremely successful, reaching number one in Britain. The bass line was later used for Vanilla Ice's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby".

 

Later that year, Queen released their first compilation album, entitled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974-1981. It was highly successful, and as of 2007, it is the United Kingdom's best selling album. Taylor became the first member of the band to release his own solo album in 1981, entitled Fun In Space.

Queen concert in Norway in 1982.

 

In 1982 the band released the funk album Hot Space. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they would perform on American television for the only time during the eighth season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.

 

After working steadily for over ten years, Queen decided that they would not perform any live shows in 1983. During this time, they recorded a new album, and several members of the band explored side projects and solo work. May released a mini-album entitled Star Fleet Project, on which he collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. A computer musician composer in Canada, Kevin Chamberlain, helped with vocals and background music for Mercury's solo project, which was later cancelled due to creative differences.

 

In 1984, Queen released the album The Works, which included the successful singles "Radio Ga Ga" and "I Want to Break Free". Despite these hit singles, the album failed to do well in the United States. "Radio Ga Ga" was the band's last original American Top Forty hit until 1989's "I Want It All".

 

Queen embarked that year on a set of dates during their The Works Tour in Bophuthatswana, South Africa at the arena at Sun City. Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played there during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts. The band responded to the critics by stating that they were playing music for fans in that country, and they also stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences.

 

On 12 January 1985, the band headlined two nights of the first Rock in Rio festival at Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). They were the main act on the 11 and 18 January lineups. On each night, they played in front of over 300,000 people. A selection of highlights of both performances was released on VHS on May with the title Queen Live in Rio.

 

At Live Aid, held at Wembley on 13 July 1985, Queen performed some of their greatest hits in what has been considered their best performance to date. The band, now revitalised by the response to Live Aid and the ensuing increase in record sales, ended 1985 by releasing the single "One Vision". The song was used in the film Iron Eagle. Also, a limited-edition boxed set containing all Queen albums to date was released under the title of "The Complete Works". The package included previously unreleased material, most notably Queen's non-album single of Christmas 1984, titled Thank God it's Christmas.

 

In early 1986, Queen recorded the album A Kind of Magic, containing several songs written for the Russell Mulcahy film Highlander. The album was very successful, producing a string of hits, including the title track, "A Kind of Magic." This contains the key lyrics, "There can be only one." (The phrase is a reference to the movie's plot.) Also charting from the album were "Friends Will Be Friends", "Who Wants to Live Forever?", and the de facto theme from Highlander, "Princes of the Universe".

 

Later that year, Queen went on a sold-out tour (the band's largest) in support of A Kind of Magic. The Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium in London and resulted in the live double album, Queen Live At Wembley Stadium, released on CD and as a live concert film. They could not book Wembley for a third night because it was already booked, but they did play at Knebworth Park. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what proved to be Queen's final live performance with Mercury. More than 1 million people saw Queen on the tour – 400,000 in the United Kingdom alone, a record at the time.

 

After working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, Barcelona) the band released The Miracle in 1989. The album continued the direction of A Kind of Magic, using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the European hits "I Want it All", "Breakthru", "The Invisible Man", "Scandal", and "The Miracle".

 

The Miracle also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Since the band's beginning, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member, with other members adding minimally. With The Miracle, however, the band's songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.

 

After fans noticed Mercury's gaunt appearance during 1988, rumours began to spread that Mercury was suffering from AIDS. For reasons that are still not confirmed, Mercury flatly denied them at the time, insisting he was merely "exhausted" and too busy to provide interviews. However, the band decided to continue making albums free of internal conflict and differences, starting with The Miracle and continuing with Innuendo, which was recorded during 1990 but not released until the beginning of 1991 as Mercury's health was a major factor in the delay.

 

Despite his deteriorating health, Mercury continued to contribute. The band released their second greatest hits compilation, Greatest Hits II, in October 1991.

 

On 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury confirmed that he had AIDS. Within twenty four hours of that statement, he died of bronchial pneumonia, which was brought on by AIDS. His funeral service was private, held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family. It was said that Queen's latest song at the time, The Show Must Go On, was recorded in one try, showing how much Freddie Mercury put into his final song.

 

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with "These Are the Days of Our Lives" as the double A-side. The single went to number 1 for the second time in the UK. Initial proceeds from the single – approximately £1,000,000 – were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust.

 

Queen's popularity increased once again in the United States after "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in the comedy film Wayne's World, helping the song reach number two for five weeks in the United States charts in 1992. The song was made into a Wayne's World music video, with which the band and management were delighted.

 

On 20 April 1992, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium. Performers included Def Leppard, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Annie Lennox, Guns N' Roses, Extreme, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Zucchero, Metallica, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor and Spinal Tap, along with the three remaining members of Queen, performed many of Queen's major hits. It was a successful concert that was televised to over 1 billion viewers worldwide. The concert is listed in The Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert". It raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.

 

The band also terminated their Capitol Records contract and signed a deal with Hollywood Records as their new US label.

The statue of Freddie Mercury in Montreux that is also featured on the cover of the album Made in Heaven (1995).

 

Queen never actually disbanded, although their last album of original material, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after Mercury's death. It was constructed from Mercury's final recording sessions in 1991, plus material left over from their previous studio albums. In addition, re-worked material from Mercury's solo album Mr. Bad Guy and a track originally featured on the first album of Taylor's side-project The Cross were included. May and Taylor have often been involved in projects related to raising money for AIDS research. John Deacon's last involvement with the band was in 1997, when the band recorded the track "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". It was the last song recorded by Queen, and it was released as a bonus track on the Queen Rocks compilation album later that year. Due to demand from Queen fans, the song was later released as a single reaching #13 in the UK chart.

 

Queen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Among the genres they have been associated with are: dance/disco,, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock, progressive rock and psychedelic rock. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by genres that are not typically associated with rock, such as country, ragtime, opera, gospel, vaudeville and folk.

 

Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually composed of the voices of May, Mercury and Taylor best heard on the studio albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Some of the ground work for the development of this sound can be attributed to their former producer Roy Thomas Baker as well as their engineer Mike Stone. Besides vocal harmonies, Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. According to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in "Bohemian Rhapsody". Many Queen songs were also written with audience participation in mind, such as "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".

 

Queen have been recognised as having made significant contributions to such genres as hard rock and heavy metal, amongst others. Hence the band has been cited as an influence by many other musicians. Moreover, like their music, the bands and artists that have claimed to be influenced by Queen are diverse and span different generations, countries and genres.

 

Some of the musicians that have cited the band as an influence include: AC/DC, Anthrax, Ben Folds Five, Kurt Cobain, Def Leppard, Extreme, The Killers, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Helloween, Iron Maiden, Kansas, Keane, Manic Street Preachers, Metallica, Mika, Muse, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, George Michael, and Styx.

 

Queen have been cited as a major influence on the "neo-classical metal" genre by Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen. Metallica recorded a cover version of "Stone Cold Crazy", which first appeared on the "Rubaiyat — Elektra's 40th Anniversary" album in 1990, and won their first Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1991. In the early '70s, Queen helped spur the heavy metal genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; the New Wave of British Heavy Metal followed in a similar vein, fusing the music with a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed.

 

As of 2005, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, Queen albums have spent a total of 1,322 weeks or twenty-seven years on the United Kingdom album charts; more time than any other musical act. Also in 2005, with the release of their live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts.

 

In 2006 the Greatest Hits album was the United Kingdom's all-time best selling album, with sales upwards of 5,407,587 copies, over 604,295 more copies than its nearest competitor, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their Greatest Hits II album came in seventh with sales upwards of 3,631,321 copies.

 

The band has released a total of eighteen number one albums, eighteen number one singles, and ten number one DVDs worldwide making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Their total album sales have been estimated at over 300 million worldwide including 32.5 million in the United States alone as of 2004. The band is also the only group in which every member has composed more than one chart-topping single.

 

In January 2007 it was announced that Queen's Greatest Hits I & II was the most downloaded album on iTunes in the US.

 

Queen are one of the most bootlegged bands ever, according to Nick Weymouth, who manages the band's official website. A 2001 survey discovered the existence of 12,225 websites dedicated to Queen bootlegs, the highest number for any band. Bootleg recordings have contributed to the band's popularity in certain countries where Western music is censored, such as Iran. In a project called Queen: The Top 100 Bootlegs, many of these have been made officially available to download for a nominal fee from Queen's website, with profits going to the Mercury Phoenix Trust.

 

Queen were named 13th on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock list.

 

 

Queen discography

 

1974 "Killer Queen" - #12

1975 "Bohemian Rhapsody" - #9

1976 "You're My Best Friend" - #16

1976 "Somebody to Love" - #13

1977 "Tie Your Mother Down" - #49

1977 "We Are the Champions"/"We Will Rock You" - #4

1978 "Fat Bottomed Girls"/"Bicycle Race" - #24

1979 "Don't Stop Me Now" - #86

1979 "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" - #1

1980 "Play the Game" - #42

1980 "Another One Bites the Dust" - #1

1980 "Flash" - #42

1981 "Under Pressure" (with David Bowie) - #29

1982 "Body Language" - #11

1984 "Radio Ga Ga" - #16

1984 "I Want to Break Free" - #45

1984 "It's a Hard Life" - #72

1985 "One Vision" - #61

1986 "A Kind of Magic" - #42

1989 "I Want It All" - #50

1991 "Bohemian Rhapsody"/"These Are the Days of Our Lives" - #2

 

Factoid: The Queen logo, also known as the Queen Crest, was designed by Mercury shortly before the release of their first album. The logo features the zodiac signs of all four members: two lions for Leo (Deacon and Taylor), a crab for Cancer (May), and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury).

 

"The Show Must Go On"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-vsubssnb

[knightni]

15. Black Sabbath

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 62 points - highest ranking #3 Milkman delivers

 

Black Sabbath are an English rock band, formed in Birmingham in 1968 by Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terry "Geezer" Butler (bass), and Bill Ward (drums and percussion). The band has since experienced multiple lineup changes, with a total of twenty-two former members. Originally formed as a heavy blues-rock band named Earth, the band began incorporating occult- and horror-inspired lyrics with tuned-down guitars, changing their name to Black Sabbath and achieving multiple gold and platinum records in the 1970s. As one of the first and most influential heavy metal bands of all time, Black Sabbath helped define the genre with releases such as quadruple-platinum Paranoid, released in 1970. They were ranked by MTV as the "Greatest Metal Band" of all time, and placed second in VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" list, behind Led Zeppelin. They have sold over fifteen million records in the United States alone.

 

Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne's drinking led to his firing from the band in 1979 and was replaced by former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio. After a few albums with Dio's vocals and his songwriting collaborations, Black Sabbath endured a revolving lineup in the 1980s and 1990s that included vocalists Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen and Tony Martin. In 1992, Iommi and Butler rejoined Dio and drummer Vinny Appice to record Dehumanizer, an album which stands to be Black Sabbath's heaviest album to date. The original lineup reunited with Osbourne in 1997 and released a live album, Reunion. The early/mid 1980s line-up featuring Iommi, Butler, Dio, and Appice reformed in 2006 under the title, Heaven & Hell.

 

Following the breakup of their previous band Mythology in 1968, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward sought to form a heavy blues band in Aston, Birmingham. The group enlisted bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who had played together in a band called Rare Breed, Osbourne having placed an advertisement in a local music shop: "Ozzy Zig requires gig- has own PA". The new group was initially named The Polka Tulk Blues Company, after an Indian clothes emporium, and also featured slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan "Aker" Clarke. After shortening the name to Polka Tulk, the band changed their name to Earth, and continued as a four-piece without Phillips and Clarke.

 

Earth played club shows in England, Denmark, and Germany; their set-list consisted of cover songs by Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and Cream, as well as lengthy improvised blues jams. In December 1968, Iommi abruptly left Earth to join Jethro Tull. Although his stint with the band would be short-lived, Iommi made an appearance with Jethro Tull on the The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV show. Unsatisfied with the direction of Jethro Tull, Iommi returned to Earth in January 1969. "It just wasn't right, so I left", Iommi said. "At first I thought Tull were great, but I didn't much go for having a leader in the band, which was Ian Anderson's way. When I came back from Tull, I came back with a new attitude altogether. They taught me that to get on you got to work for it."

 

While playing shows in England in 1969, the band discovered they were being mistaken for another English group named Earth, and decided to change their name again. A movie theatre across the street from the band's rehearsal room was showing the 1963 Boris Karloff horror film Black Sabbath. While watching people line up to see the film, Butler noted that it was "strange that people spend so much money to see scary movies". Following that, Osbourne wrote the lyrics for a song called "Black Sabbath," which was inspired by the work of occult writer Dennis Wheatley, along with a vision that Butler had of a black-hooded figure standing at the foot of his bed. Making use of the musical tritone, also known as "The Devil's Interval", the song's ominous sound and dark lyrics pushed the band in a darker direction, a stark contrast to the popular music of the late 1960s, which was dominated by flower power, folk music, and hippie culture. Inspired by the new sound, the band changed their name to Black Sabbath in August 1969, and made the decision to focus on writing similar material, in an attempt to create the musical equivalent of horror films.

 

Black Sabbath were signed to Philips Records in December 1969, and released their first single, "Evil Woman" through Philips subsidiary Fontana Records in January 1970. Later releases were handled by Philips' newly formed progressive rock label, Vertigo Records. Although the single failed to chart, the band were afforded two days of studio time in late January to record their debut album with producer Rodger Bain. Iommi recalls recording live: "We thought 'We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.' So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff."

 

The eponymous Black Sabbath was released on Friday the 13th, February 1970. The album reached number 8 in the UK Albums Chart, and following its US release in May 1970 by Warner Bros. Records, the album reached number 23 on the Billboard 200, where it remained for over a year. While the album was a commercial success, it was widely panned by critics, with Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone dismissing the album as "discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitised speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters, yet never quite finding synch". It has since been certified platinum in both US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and in the UK by British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

 

To capitalise on their chart success in the US, the band quickly returned to the studio in June 1970, just four months after Black Sabbath was released. The new album was initially set to be named War Pigs after the song "War Pigs", which was critical of the Vietnam War. However Warner changed the title of the album to Paranoid, fearing backlash by supporters of the Vietnam War. The album's lead-off single "Paranoid" was written in the studio at the last minute. As Bill Ward explains: "We didn't have enough songs for the album, and Tony just played the (Paranoid) guitar lick and that was it. It took twenty, twenty-five minutes from top to bottom." The single was released ahead of the album in September 1970 and reached number four on the UK charts, remaining Black Sabbath's only top ten hit.

 

Black Sabbath released their second full-length album, Paranoid in the UK in October 1970. Pushed by the success of the "Paranoid" single, the album hit number one in the UK. The US release was held until January 1971, as the Black Sabbath album was still on the charts at the time of Paranoid's UK release. The album broke into the top ten in the US in March 1971, and would go on to sell four million copies in the US, with virtually no radio airplay. The album was again panned by rock critics of the era, but modern-day reviewers such as AllMusic's Steve Huey cite Paranoid as "one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time", which "defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history". Paranoid's chart success allowed the band to tour the US for the first time in December 1970, which spawned the release of the album's second single "Iron Man". Although the single failed to reach the top 40, "Iron Man" remains one of Black Sabbath's most popular songs, as well as the bands highest charting US single until 1998's "Psycho Man".

 

In February 1971, Black Sabbath returned to the studio to begin work on their third album. Following the chart success of Paranoid, the band were afforded more studio time, along with a "briefcase full of cash" to buy drugs. "We were getting into coke, bigtime", Ward explained. "Uppers, downers, Quaaludes, whatever you like. It got to the stage where you come up with ideas and forget them, because you were just so out of it."

 

Production completed in April 1971, and in July the band released Master of Reality, just six months after the release of Paranoid. The album reached the top ten in both the US and UK, and was certified gold in less than two months, eventually receiving platinum certification in the 1980s and Double Platinum in the early 21st century. Master of Reality contained Black Sabbath's first acoustic songs, alongside fan favourites such as "Children of the Grave" and "Sweet Leaf". Critical response of the era was again unfavourable, with Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone dismissing Master of Reality as "naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel", although the very same magazine would later place the album at number 298 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, compiled in 2003.

 

Following the Master of Reality world tour in 1972, Black Sabbath took its first break in three years. As Bill Ward explained: "The band started to become very fatigued and very tired. We'd been on the road non-stop, year in and year out, constantly touring and recording. I think Master of Reality was kind of like the end of an era, the first three albums, and we decided to take our time with the next album."

 

In June 1972, the band reconvened in Los Angeles to begin work on their next album at the Record Plant. The recording process was plagued with problems, many as a result of substance abuse issues. While struggling to record the song "Cornucopia" after "sitting in the middle of the room, just doing drugs", Bill Ward was nearly fired from the band. "I hated the song, there were some patterns that were just... horrible" Ward said. "I nailed it in the end, but the reaction I got was the cold shoulder from everybody. It was like 'Well, just go home, you're not being of any use right now.' I felt like I'd blown it, I was about to get fired". The album was originally titled "Snowblind" after the song of the same name, which deals with cocaine abuse. The record company changed the title at the last minute to Black Sabbath Vol. 4, with Ward stating "There was no Volume 1, 2 or 3, so it's a pretty stupid title really".

 

Black Sabbath's Volume 4 was released in September 1972, and while critics of the era were again dismissive of the album, it achieved gold status in less than a month, and was the band's fourth consecutive release to sell a million copies in the US. With more time in the studio, Volume 4 saw the band starting to experiment with new textures, such as strings, piano, orchestration and multi-part songs. The song "Tomorrow's Dream" was released as a single—the band's first since Paranoid—but failed to chart. Following an extensive tour of the US, the band travelled to Australia for the first time in 1973, and later mainland Europe.

 

Following the Volume 4 world tour, Black Sabbath returned to Los Angeles to begin work on their next release. Pleased with the Volume 4 album, the band sought to recreate the recording atmosphere, and returned to the Record Plant studio in Los Angeles. With new musical innovations of the era, the band were surprised to find that the room they had used previously at the Record Plant was replaced by a "giant synthesiser". The band rented a house in Bel Air and began writing in the summer of 1973, but in part because of substance issues and fatigue, they were unable to complete any songs. "Ideas weren't coming out the way they were on Volume 4 and we really got discontent" Iommi said. "Everybody was sitting there waiting for me to come up with something. I just couldn't think of anything. And if I didn't come up with anything, nobody would do anything."

 

Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne on stage at the California Jam festival on 6 April 1974. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC in the US, exposing the band to a new audience.After a month in Los Angeles with no results, the band opted to return to England, where they rented Clearwell Castle in The Forest of Dean. "We rehearsed in the dungeons and it was really creepy but it had some atmosphere, it conjured up things, and stuff started coming out again". While working in the dungeon, Iommi stumbled onto the main riff of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", which set the tone for the new material. Recorded at Morgan Studios in London by Mike Butcher and building off the stylistic changes introduced on Volume 4, new songs incorporated synthesisers, strings, and complex arrangements. Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman was brought in as a session player, appearing on "Sabbra Cadabra" .

 

In November 1973, Black Sabbath released the critically acclaimed Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. For the first time in their career, the band began to receive favourable reviews in the mainstream press, with Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone calling the album "an extraordinarily gripping affair", and "nothing less than a complete success". Later reviewers such as AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia cite the album as a "masterpiece, essential to any heavy metal collection," while also displaying "a newfound sense of finesse and maturity". The album marked the band's fifth consecutive platinum selling album in the US, reaching number four on the UK charts, and number eleven in the US. The band began a world tour in January 1974, which culminated at the California Jam festival in Ontario, California on 6 April 1974. Attracting over 200,000 fans, Black Sabbath appeared alongside such 70's pop giants as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Deep Purple, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seals & Crofts, and Eagles. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC Television in the US, exposing the band to a wider American audience. In 1974, the band shifted management, signing with notorious English manager Don Arden. The move caused a contractual dispute with Black Sabbath's former management, and while on stage in the US, Osbourne was handed a subpoena that led to two years of litigation.

 

Black Sabbath began work on their sixth album in February 1975, again in England at Morgan Studios in Willesden, this time with a decisive vision to differ the sound from Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath. "We could've continued and gone on and on, getting more technical, using orchestras and everything else which we didn't particularly want to. We took a look at ourselves, and we wanted to do a rock album - Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath wasn't a rock album, really." Produced by Black Sabbath and Mike Butcher, Sabotage was released in July 1975. Again the album initially saw favourable reviews, with Rolling Stone stating "Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath's best record since Paranoid, it might be their best ever", although later reviewers such as Allmusic noted that "the magical chemistry that made such albums as Paranoid and Volume 4 so special was beginning to disintegrate".

 

Sabotage reached the top 20 in both the US and the UK, but was the band's first release not to achieve Platinum status in the US, having only achieving Gold certification. Although the album's only single "Am I Going Insane (Radio)" failed to chart, Sabotage features fan favourites such as "Hole in the Sky", and "Symptom of the Universe". Black Sabbath toured in support of Sabotage with openers Kiss, but were forced to cut the tour short in November 1975, following a motorcycle accident in which Osbourne ruptured a muscle in his back. In December 1975, the band's record companies released a greatest hits record without input from the band, titled We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll. The album charted throughout 1976, eventually selling two million copies in the US.

 

Black Sabbath began work for their next album at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, in June 1976. To expand their sound, the band added keyboard player Gerry Woodruffe, who also had appeared to a lesser extent on Sabotage. Technical Ecstasy, released on 25 September 1976, was met with mixed reviews. For the first time the reviews did not become more favorable as time passed, two decades after its release AllMusic gave the album two stars, and noted that the band was "unravelling at an alarming rate". The album featured less of the doomy, ominous sound of previous efforts, and incorporated more synthesisers and uptempo rock songs. Technical Ecstasy failed to reach the top 50 in the US, and was the band's second consecutive release not to achieve platinum status, although it was later certified gold in 1997. The album included "Dirty Women", which remains a live staple, as well as Bill Ward's first lead vocal on the song "It's Alright." Touring in support of Technical Ecstasy began in November 1976, with openers Boston and Ted Nugent in the US, and completed in Europe with AC/DC in April 1977.

 

In November 1977, while in rehearsal for their next album, and just days before the band was set to enter the studio, Ozzy Osbourne quit the band. "The last Sabbath albums were just very depressing for me", Osbourne said. "I was doing it for the sake of what we could get out of the record company, just to get fat on beer and put a record out." Former Fleetwood Mac and Savoy Brown vocalist Dave Walker was brought into rehearsals in October 1977, and the band began working on new songs. Black Sabbath made their first and only appearance with Walker on vocals, playing an early version of the song "Junior's Eyes" on the BBC Television program "Look! Hear!".

 

Osbourne initially set out to form a solo project, which featured ex-Dirty Tricks members John Frazer-Binnie, Terry Horbury, and Andy Bierne. As the new band were in rehearsals in January 1978, Osbourne had a change of heart and rejoined Black Sabbath. "Three days before we were due to go into the studio, Ozzy wanted to come back to the band," Iommi explained. "He wouldn't sing any of the stuff we'd written with the other guy, so it made it very difficult. We went into the studio with basically no songs. We'd write in the morning so we could rehearse and record at night. It was so difficult, like a conveyor belt, because you couldn't get time to reflect on stuff. 'Is this right? Is this working properly?' It was very difficult for me to come up with the ideas and putting them together that quick."

 

The band spent five months at Sounds Interchange Studios in Toronto, Canada, writing and recording what would become Never Say Die!. "It took quite a long time," Iommi said. "We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We'd go down to the sessions, and have to pack up because we were too stoned, we'd have to stop. Nobody could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody's playing a different thing. We'd go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day." The album was released in September 1978, reaching number twelve in the UK, and number 69 in the US. Press response was again unfavourable and again did not improve over time with Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic stating two decades after its release that the album's "unfocused songs perfectly reflected the band's tense personnel problems and drug abuse." The album featured the singles "Never Say Die" and "Hard Road", both of which cracked the top 40 in the UK, and the band made their second appearance on the Top of the Pops, performing "Never Say Die". It took nearly 20 years for the album to be certified Gold in the US.

 

Touring in support of Never Say Die! began in May 1978 with openers Van Halen. Reviewers called Black Sabbath's performance "tired and uninspired", a stark contrast to the "youthful" performance of Van Halen, who were touring the world for the first time. The band filmed a performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, which was later released on DVD as Never Say Die. The final show of the tour, and Osbourne's last appearance with the band (until later reunions) was in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 11 December.

 

Following the tour, Black Sabbath returned to Los Angeles and again rented a house in Bel Air, where they spent nearly a year working on material for the next album. With pressure from the record label, and frustrations with Osbourne's lack of ideas coming to a head, Tony made the decision to fire Ozzy Osbourne in 1979. "At that time, Ozzy had come to an end", Iommi said. "We were all doing a lot of drugs, a lot of coke, a lot of everything, and Ozzy was getting drunk so much at the time. We were supposed to be rehearsing and nothing was happening. It was like 'Rehearse today? No, we'll do it tomorrow.' It really got so bad that we didn't do anything. It just fizzled out." Drummer Bill Ward, who was close with Osbourne, was chosen by Tony to break the news to the singer. "I hope I was professional, I might not have been, actually. When I'm drunk I am horrible, I am horrid," Ward said. "Alcohol was definitely one of the most damaging things to Black Sabbath. We were destined to destroy each other. The band were toxic, very toxic."

 

Sharon Arden, (later Sharon Osbourne) daughter of Black Sabbath manager Don Arden, suggested former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio to replace Ozzy Osbourne in 1979. Dio officially joined in June, and the band began writing their next album. With a notably different vocal style from Osbourne's, Dio's addition to the band marked a change in Black Sabbath's sound. "They were totally different altogether", Iommi explains. "Not only voice-wise, but attitude-wise. Ozzy was a great showman, but when Dio came in, it was a different attitude, a different voice and a different musical approach, as far as vocals. Dio would sing across the riff, whereas Ozzy would follow the riff, like in "Iron Man". Ronnie came in and gave us another angle on writing."

 

Dio's term in Black Sabbath has also brought "metal horns" gesture to popularity in heavy metal subculture. Dio adopted it, originally a superstitious move to ward off the "evil eye", as a greeting to audience. Since then, the gesture became widely copied by fans and other musicians alike.

 

Geezer Butler temporarily left the band in September 1979, and was initially replaced by Geoff Nicholls of Quartz on bass. The new lineup returned to Criteria Studios in November to begin recording work, with Butler returning to the band in January 1980, and Nicholls moving to keyboards. Produced by Martin Birch, Heaven and Hell, was released on 25 April 1980, to critical acclaim. Over a decade after its release AllMusic said the album was "one of Sabbath's finest records, the band sounds reborn and re-energised throughout". Heaven and Hell peaked at number 9 in the UK, and number 28 in the US, the band's highest charting album since Sabotage. The album eventually sold a million copies in the US, and the band embarked on an extensive world tour, making their first live appearance with Dio in Germany on April 17, 1980.

 

Black Sabbath toured the US throughout 1980 with Blue Öyster Cult on the "Black and Blue" tour, with a show at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York filmed and released theatrically in 1981 as Black and Blue. On 26 July 1980, the band played to 75,000 fans at a sold-out Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles with Journey, Cheap Trick, and Molly Hatchet. The next day, the band appeared at the 1980 Day on the Green at Oakland Coliseum. While on tour, Black Sabbath's former label in England issued a live album culled from a seven-year old performance, entitled Live at Last without any input from the band. The album reached number five on the British charts, and saw the re-release of "Paranoid" as a single, which reached the top 20.

 

On 18 August 1980, after a show in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bill Ward was fired from Black Sabbath. "I was sinking very quickly", Ward later said. "I was an unbelievable drunk, I was drunk twenty-four hours a day. When I went on stage, the stage wasn't so bright. It felt like I was dying inside. The live show seemed so bare, Ron was out there doing his thing and I just went 'It's gone'. I like Ronnie, but musically, he just wasn't for me." Concerned with Ward's declining health, Iommi brought in drummer Vinny Appice, without informing Ward. "They didn't talk to me, they booted me from my chair and I wasn't told about that. I knew they'd have to bring in a drummer to save the (tour), but I'd been with the band for years and years, since we were kids. And then Vinny was playing and it was like 'What the f***?' It hurt a lot."

 

The band completed the Heaven and Hell world tour in February 1981, and returned to the studio to begin work on their next album. Black Sabbath's second studio album produced by Martin Birch and featuring Ronnie James Dio as vocalist, Mob Rules was released in October 1981, to be well received by fans, but less so by the critics. Rolling Stone reviewer J. D. Considine gave the album one star, claiming "Mob Rules finds the band as dull-witted and flatulent as ever". Like most of the band's earlier work, time helped to improve the opinions of the music press, a decade after its release, AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia called Mob Rules "a magnificent record". The album was certified gold, and reached the top 20 on the UK charts. The album's title track "The Mob Rules", which was recorded at John Lennon's old house in England, also featured in the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal, although the film version is an alternate take, and differs from the album version.

 

Unhappy with the quality of 1980's Live at Last, the band recorded another live album—titled Live Evil—during the Mob Rules world tour, across the United States in Dallas, San Antonio, and Seattle, in 1982. During the mixing process for the album, Iommi and Butler had a falling out with Dio. Iommi and Butler accused Dio of sneaking into the studio at night to raise the volume of his vocals. In addition, Dio was not satisfied with the pictures of him in the artwork. "Ronnie wanted more say in things," Iommi said. "And Geezer would get upset with him and that is where the rot set in. Live Evil is when it all fell apart. Ronnie wanted to do more of his own thing, and the engineer we were using at the time in the studio didn't know what to do, because Ronnie was telling him one thing and we were telling him another. At the end of the day, we just said, 'That's it, the band is over'". "When it comes time for the vocal, nobody tells me what to do. Nobody! Because they're not as good as me, so I do what I want to do," Dio later said. "I refuse to listen to Live Evil, because there are too many problems. If you look at the credits, the vocals and drums are listed off to the side. Open up the album and see how many pictures there are of Tony, and how many there are of me and Vinny".

 

Ronnie James Dio left Black Sabbath in November 1982 to start his own band, and took drummer Vinny Appice with him. Live Evil was released in January 1983, but was overshadowed by Ozzy Osbourne's Speak of the Devil, a platinum selling live album that contained only Black Sabbath songs, released five months earlier.

 

Left with just two original members, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler began auditioning new singers for the band's next release. After failed attempts with the likes of Whitesnake's David Coverdale, Samson's Nicky Moore, and Lone Star's John Sloman, the band settled on former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan to replace Ronnie James Dio in 1983. While the project was not initially set to be called Black Sabbath, pressures from the record label forced the group to retain the name. The band entered The Manor Studios in Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, England, in June 1983 with a returned and newly sober Bill Ward on drums. Born Again was met with mixed reviews from fans and critics alike. The album reached number four on the UK charts, and number 39 in the US. However, even a decade after its release AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia called the album "dreadful", noting that "Gillan's bluesy style and humorous lyrics were completely incompatible with the lords of doom and gloom".

 

Although he performed on the album, drummer Bill Ward was unable to tour because of the pressures of the road, and quit the band in 1984. "I fell apart with the idea of touring," Ward later said. "I got so much fear behind touring, I didn’t talk about the fear, I drank behind the fear instead and that was a big mistake." Ward was replaced by former Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan for the Born Again world tour, which began in Europe with Diamond Head, and later in the US with Quiet Riot and Night Ranger. The band headlined the 1983 Reading Festival, adding the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" to their set list.

 

Following the completion of the Born Again tour in March 1984, vocalist Ian Gillan left Black Sabbath to re-join Deep Purple, which was reforming after a long hiatus. Bevan left at the same time, and Gillan remarked that he and Bevan were made to feel like "hired help" by Iommi. The band then recruited an unknown Los Angeles vocalist named David Donato. The new lineup wrote and rehearsed throughout 1984, and eventually recorded a demo with producer Bob Ezrin in October. Unhappy with the results, the band parted ways with Donato shortly after. Disillusioned with the band's revolving lineup, bassist Geezer Butler quit Black Sabbath in November 1984 to form a solo band. "When Ian Gillan took over that was the end of it for me", Butler later said. "I thought it was just a joke and I just totally left. When we got together with Gillan it was not supposed to be a Black Sabbath album. After we had done the album we gave it to Warner Bros. and they said they were going to put it out as a Black Sabbath album and we didn’t have a leg to stand on. I got really disillusioned with it and Gillan was really pissed off about it. That lasted one album and one tour and then that was it."

 

Following Butler's exit, sole remaining original member Tony Iommi put Black Sabbath on hiatus, and began work on a solo album with keyboardist Geoff Nicholls. While working on new material, the original Black Sabbath lineup were offered a spot at Bob Geldof's Live Aid benefit concert; the band agreed, performing at the Philadelphia show, on 13 July 1985. The event marked the first time the original lineup appeared on stage since 1978, and also featured reunions of The Who and Led Zeppelin. Returning to his solo work, Iommi enlisted bassist Dave Spitz and drummer Eric Singer, and initially intended to use multiple singers, including Rob Halford of Judas Priest, ex-Deep Purple and Trapeze vocalist Glenn Hughes, and ex-Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio. "We were going to use different vocalists on the album, guest vocalists, but it was so difficult getting it together and getting releases from their record companies. Glenn Hughes came along to sing on one track and we decided to use him on the whole album."

 

The band spent the remainder of the year in the studio, recording what would become Seventh Star. Warner Bros. refused to release the album as a Tony Iommi solo release, instead insisting on using the name Black Sabbath. Pressured by the band's manager, Don Arden, the two compromised and released the album as "Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi" in January 1986. "It opened up a whole can of worms really," Iommi explained, "because I think if we could have done it as a solo album, it would have been accepted a lot more." Seventh Star, which sounded little like a Black Sabbath album, incorporated more hard rock elements popularised by the 1980s Sunset Strip hard rock scene, and was panned by the critics of the era, although later reviewers such as AllMusic gave the album favourable reviews, calling the album "often misunderstood and underrated".

 

The new lineup rehearsed for six weeks, preparing for a full world tour, although the band were again forced to use the Black Sabbath name. "I was into the 'Tony Iommi project', but I wasn't into the Black Sabbath moniker," Hughes said. "The idea of being in Black Sabbath didn't appeal to me whatsoever. Glenn Hughes singing in Black Sabbath is like James Brown singing in Metallica. It wasn't gonna work". Just four days before the start of the tour, vocalist Glenn Hughes got into a bar fight with the band's production manager John Downing which splintered the singer's orbital bone. The injury interfered with Hughes' ability to sing, and the band brought in vocalist Ray Gillen to continue the tour with W.A.S.P. and Anthrax, although nearly half of the US dates would eventually be cancelled because of poor ticket sales.

 

One vocalist whose status is disputed, both inside and outside Black Sabbath, is Christian evangelist Jeff Fenholt. He has insisted that he was a singer in Black Sabbath between January and May 1985. Tony Iommi has never confirmed this, as he was working on a solo release that was later named as a Sabbath album. Fenholt gives a detailed account of his time with Iommi and Sabbath in Garry Sharpe-Young's book Sabbath Bloody Sabbath: The Battle for Black Sabbath.

 

Black Sabbath began work on new material in October 1986 at Air Studios in Montserrat with producer Jeff Glixman. The recording was wrought with problems from the beginning, as Glixman left after the initial sessions, and was replaced by producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven. Bassist Dave Spitz quit over "personal issues", and ex-Rainbow bassist Bob Daisley was brought in. Daisley re-recorded all of the bass tracks, and wrote the album's lyrics, but before the album was complete, he left to join Gary Moore's solo band, taking drummer Eric Singer with him. After problems with second producer Coppersmith-Heaven, the band returned to Morgan Studios in England in January 1987 to work with new producer Chris Tsangarides. While working in the UK, new vocalist Ray Gillen abruptly left Black Sabbath to form Blue Murder with John Sykes. The band enlisted ex-Alliance vocalist Tony Martin to re-record Gillen's tracks, and former drummer Bev Bevan to complete a few percussion overdubs. Before the release of the new album, Black Sabbath accepted an offer to play six shows at Sun City, South Africa during the apartheid era. The band drew criticism from activists and artists involved with Artists United Against Apartheid, who had been boycotting South Africa since 1985. Drummer Bev Bevan refused to play the shows, and was replaced by Terry Chimes, formerly of The Clash.

 

After nearly a year in production, The Eternal Idol was released on 8 December 1987 and ignored by contemporary reviewers. On-line internet era reviews were mixed. AllMusic said that "Martin's powerful voice added new fire" to the band, and the album contained "some of Iommi's heaviest riffs in years." Blender gave the album two stars, claiming the album was "Black Sabbath in name only". The album would stall at #66 in the UK, while peaking at 168 in the US The band toured in support of Eternal Idol in Germany, Italy and for the first time, Greece. Unfortunately, in part because of a backlash from promoters over the South Africa incident, other European shows were cancelled. Bassist Dave Spitz left the band shortly before the tour, and was replaced by Jo Burt, formerly of Virginia Wolf.

 

Following the poor commercial performance of Eternal Idol, Black Sabbath were dropped by Vertigo Records and Warner Bros. Records, and signed with I.R.S. Records. The band took time off in 1988, returning in August to begin work on their next album. As a result of the recording troubles with Eternal Idol, Tony Iommi opted to produce the band's next album himself. "It was a completely new start", Iommi said. "I had to rethink the whole thing, and decided that we needed to build up some credibility again". Iommi enlisted ex-Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell, long-time keyboardist Nicholls and session bassist Laurence Cottle, and rented a "very cheap studio in England".

 

Black Sabbath released Headless Cross in April 1989, and again ignored by contemporary reviewers. Eventually, AllMusic would give the album four stars, calling Headless Cross "the finest non-Ozzy or Dio Black Sabbath album". Anchored by the number 62 charting single "Headless Cross", the album reached number 31 on the UK charts, and number 115 in the US. Queen guitarist Brian May, a friend of Iommi's, played a guest solo on the song "When Death Calls". Following the album's release, the band added touring bassist Neil Murray, formerly of Whitesnake.

 

The ill-fated Headless Cross US tour began in May 1989 with openers Kingdom Come and Silent Rage, but because of poor ticket sales, the tour was cancelled after just eight shows. The European leg of the tour began in September, where the band were enjoying chart success. After a string of Japanese shows, the band embarked on a 23 date Russian tour with Girlschool. Black Sabbath was one of the first bands to tour Russia, after Mikhail Gorbachov opened the country to western acts for the first time in 1989.

 

The band returned to the studio in February 1990 to record Tyr, the follow-up to Headless Cross. While not technically a concept album, some of the album's lyrical themes are loosely based on Norse mythology. Tyr was released on 6 August 1990, and reached number 24 on the UK albums chart, but was the first Black Sabbath release not to break the Billboard 200 in the US. The album again would receive mixed internet-era reviews, with AllMusic noting that the band "mix myth with metal in a crushing display of musical synthesis," while Blender gave the album just one star, claiming that "Iommi continues to besmirch the Sabbath name with this unremarkable collection". The band toured in support of Tyr with Circus of Power in Europe, but the final seven UK dates were cancelled because of poor ticket sales. For the first time in their career, the band's touring cycle did not include US dates.

 

Following a performance in 1990, both Ronnie James Dio and Geezer Butler (pictured) expressed interest in rejoining Black SabbathWhile on his own Lock Up The Wolves US tour in August 1990, former Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio was joined on stage at the Minneapolis Forum by former Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler to perform "Neon Knights". Following the show, the two expressed interest in rejoining Black Sabbath. Butler convinced Iommi, who in turn broke up the current lineup, dismissing vocalist Tony Martin and bassist Neil Murray. "I do regret that in a lot of ways", Iommi said. "We were at a good point then. We decided to [reunite with Dio] and I don't even know why, really. There's the financial aspect, but that wasn't it. I seemed to think maybe we could recapture something we had".

 

Ronnie James Dio and Geezer Butler joined Tony Iommi and Cozy Powell in the fall of 1990 to begin working on the next Black Sabbath release. While rehearsing in November, Powell suffered a broken hip when his horse died, falling on the drummer's legs. Unable to complete work on the album, Powell was replaced by former drummer Vinny Appice, reuniting the Mob Rules era lineup, and the band entered the studio with producer Reinhold Mack. The year-long recording process was plagued with problems, primarily stemming from writing tension between Iommi and Dio, and some songs were re-written multiple times. "Dehumanizer took a long time, it was just hard work", Iommi said. "We took too long on it, that album cost us a million dollars, which is bloody ridiculous". Dio later recalled the album as difficult, but worth the effort. "It was something we had to really wring out of ourselves, but I think that's why it works", he said. "Sometimes you need that kind of tension, or else you end up making the Christmas album".

 

The resulting album, Dehumanizer was released on 22 June 1992. In the US, the album was released on 30 June 1992 by Reprise Records, as Ronnie James Dio and his namesake band were still under contract with the label at the time. While the album received mixed reviews, it was the band's biggest commercial success in a decade. Anchored by the top 40 rock radio single "TV Crimes", the album peaked at number 44 on the Billboard 200. The album also featured the song "Time Machine", a version of which had been recorded for the 1992 film Wayne's World. Additionally, the perception by many fans of a return of some semblance of the "real" Black Sabbath provided the band with some much needed momentum.

 

Black Sabbath began touring in support of Dehumanizer in July 1992 with Testament, Danzig, Prong, and Exodus. While on tour, former vocalist Ozzy Osbourne announced his first retirement, and invited Black Sabbath to open for his solo band at the final two shows of his No More Tours tour in Costa Mesa, California. The band agreed, aside from vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who said:

I was told in the middle of the tour that we would be opening for Ozzy in Los Angeles. And I said, "No. Sorry, I have more pride than that." A lot of bad things were being said from camp to camp, and it created this horrible schism. So by [the band] agreeing to play the shows in L.A. with Ozzy, that, to me, spelled out reunion. And that obviously meant the doom of that particular project.

 

Dio quit Black Sabbath following a show in Oakland, California on 13 November 1992, one night before the band were set to appear at Osbourne's retirement show. Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford stepped in at the last minute, performing two nights with the band. Iommi and Butler also joined Osbourne and former drummer Bill Ward on stage for the first time since 1985's Live Aid concert, performing a brief set of Black Sabbath songs.

 

Drummer Vinny Appice left the band following the reunion show to join Ronnie James Dio's solo band, later appearing on Dio's Strange Highways and Angry Machines. Iommi and Butler enlisted former Rainbow drummer Bobby Rondinelli, and reinstated former vocalist Tony Martin. The band returned to the studio to work on new material, again not originally intended to be released under the Black Sabbath name. As Geezer Butler explains:

 

It wasn't even supposed to be a Sabbath album; I wouldn't have even done it under the pretence of Sabbath. That was the time when the original band were talking about getting back together for a reunion tour. Tony and myself just went in with a couple of people, did an album just to have, while the reunion tour was (supposedly) going on. It was like an Iommi/Butler project album.

 

Under pressure from their record label, the band released their seventeenth studio album, Cross Purposes, on 8 February 1994, under the Black Sabbath name. The album again received mixed reviews, with Blender giving the album two stars, calling Soundgarden's 1994 album Superunknown "a far better Sabbath album than this by-the-numbers potboiler". Allmusic's Bradley Torreano called Cross Purposes "the first album since Born Again that actually sounds like a real Sabbath record". The album just missed the Top 40 in the UK reaching number 41, and also reached 122 on the Billboard 200 in the US. Cross Purposes contained the song "Evil Eye", which was co-written by Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen, although uncredited because of record label restrictions. Touring in support of Cross Purposes began in February with Morbid Angel and Motörhead in the US. The band filmed a live performance at the Hammersmith Apollo on 13 April 1994, which was released on VHS accompanied by a CD, entitled Cross Purposes Live. After the European tour with Cathedral and Godspeed in June 1994, drummer Bobby Rondinelli quit the band and was replaced by original Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward for five shows in South America.

 

Following the touring cycle for Cross Purposes, bassist Geezer Butler again quit the band. "I finally got totally disillusioned with the last Sabbath album, and I much preferred the stuff I was writing to the stuff Sabbath were doing". Butler formed a solo project called GZR, and released Plastic Planet in 1995. The album contained the song "Giving Up the Ghost", which was critical of Tony Iommi for carrying on with the Black Sabbath name, with the lyrics: You plagiarized and parodied / the magic of our meaning / a legend in your own mind / left all your friends behind / you can't admit that you're wrong / the spirit is dead and gone.

 

Following Butler's departure, newly returned drummer Bill Ward once again left the band. Iommi reinstated former members Neil Murray on bass, and Cozy Powell on drums, effectively reuniting the Tyr lineup. The band enlisted Body Count guitarist Ernie C to produce the new album, which was recorded in London in the fall of 1994. The album featured a guest vocal on "Illusion of Power" by Body Count vocalist Ice T. The resulting Forbidden, was released on 8 June 1995, but failed to chart in the US or the UK. The album was widely panned by critics; Allmusic's Bradley Torreano said "with boring songs, awful production, and uninspired performances, this is easily avoidable for all but the most enthusiastic fan"; while Blender magazine called Forbidden "an embarrassment ... the band’s worst album".

 

Black Sabbath embarked on a world tour in July 1995 with openers Motörhead and Tiamat, but two months into the tour, drummer Cozy Powell left the band, citing health issues, and was replaced by former drummer Bobby Rondinelli. After completing Asian dates in December 1995, Tony Iommi put the band on hiatus, and began work on a solo album with former Black Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes, and former Judas Priest drummer Dave Holland. The album was not officially released following its completion, although a widely traded bootleg called Eighth Star surfaced soon after. The album was officially released in 2004 as The 1996 DEP Sessions, with Holland's drums re-recorded by session drummer Jimmy Copley

 

In 1997, Tony Iommi disbanded the current lineup to officially reunite with Ozzy Osbourne and the original Black Sabbath lineup. Vocalist Tony Martin claimed that an original lineup reunion had been in the works since the band's brief reunion at Ozzy Osbourne's 1992 Costa Mesa show, and that the band released subsequent albums to fulfill their record contract with I.R.S. records. Martin later recalled Forbidden as a "filler album that got the band out of the label deal, rid of the singer, and into the reunion. However I wasn’t privy to that information at the time". I.R.S. Records released a compilation album in 1996 to fulfill the band's contract, entitled The Sabbath Stones, which featured songs from Born Again to Forbidden.

 

Ozzy Osbourne in 2007.In the summer of 1997, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne officially reunited to co-headline the Ozzfest festival tour along side Osbourne's solo band. The lineup featured Osbourne's drummer Mike Bordin filling in for Bill Ward, who was unable to participate because of previous commitments with his solo project, The Bill Ward Band. In December 1997, the group was joined by Ward, marking the first reunion of the original four members since Osbourne's 1992 "retirement show". The original lineup recorded two shows at the Birmingham NEC, which were released as the double live album Reunion on 20 October 1998. Reunion reached number eleven on the Billboard 200, and went platinum in the US. The album spawned the single "Iron Man", which won Black Sabbath its first Grammy award in 2000 for Best Metal Performance, 30 years after the song was originally released. Reunion also featured two new studio tracks, "Psycho Man" and "Selling My Soul", both of which cracked the top 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

 

Shortly before the band embarked on a European tour in the summer of 1998, drummer Bill Ward suffered a heart attack and was temporarily replaced by former drummer Vinny Appice. Ward returned in time for the US tour with openers Pantera, which began in January 1999 and continued through the summer, headlining the annual Ozzfest tour. Following the Ozzfest appearances, the band was put on hiatus while members worked on solo material. Tony Iommi released his first official solo album, Iommi, in 2000, while Osbourne continued work on his next solo release, Down to Earth.

 

Black Sabbath returned to the studio to work on new material with all four original members and producer Rick Rubin in the spring of 2001, but the sessions were halted when Osbourne was called away to finish tracks for his solo album in the summer of 2001. "It just came to an end", Iommi said. "We didn't go any further, and it's a shame because [the songs] were really good".

 

Vinnie Appice performing a drum solo with Heaven and Hell at Katowice in 2007. While Ozzy Osbourne was working on new solo material in 2006, Rhino Records released The Dio Years, a compilation of songs culled from the four Black Sabbath releases featuring Ronnie James Dio. For the release, Iommi, Butler, Dio and Appice reunited to write and record three new songs. The Dio Years was released on 3 April 2007, reaching number 54 on the Billboard 200, while the single "The Devil Cried" reached number 37 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Pleased with the results, Iommi and Dio decided to reunite the Heaven and Hell era lineup for a world tour. While the lineup of Osbourne, Butler, Iommi and Ward were still officially called Black Sabbath, the new lineup opted to call themselves Heaven and Hell, after the album of the same name, to avoid confusion. Drummer Bill Ward was initially set to participate, but dropped out before the tour began, and was replaced by former drummer Vinny Appice, effectively reuniting the lineup that had featured on the Mob Rules and Dehumanizer albums.

 

Heaven and Hell toured the US with openers Megadeth and Machine Head, and recorded a live album and DVD in New York on 30 March 2007, entitled Live from Radio City Music Hall. In November 2007, Dio confirmed that the band have plans to record a new studio album, which was recorded in the following year. In April 2008 the band announced the upcoming release of a new box set and their participation in The Metal Masters Tour, alongside Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament. The box set, The Rules of Hell, featuring remastered versions of all the Dio fronted Black Sabbath albums, was supported by the Metal Masters Tour. In 2009, the band announced the name of their debut studio album, The Devil You Know, released on April 28.

 

Although Black Sabbath have gone through many lineups and stylistic changes, their original sound focused on ominous lyrics and doomy music, often making use of the musical tritone, also called the "devil's interval". Standing in stark contrast to popular music of the early 1970s, Black Sabbath's dark sound was dismissed by rock critics of the era. Much like many of their early heavy metal contemporaries, the band received virtually no airplay on rock radio.

 

As the band's primary songwriter, Tony Iommi wrote the majority of Black Sabbath's music, while Osbourne would write vocal melodies, and bassist Geezer Butler would write lyrics. The process was sometimes frustrating for Iommi, who often felt pressured to come up with new material. "If I didn't come up with anything, nobody would do anything." On Iommi's influence, Osbourne later said:

 

Black Sabbath never used to write a structured song. There'd be a long intro that would go into a jazz piece, then go all folky... and it worked. Tony Iommi—and I have said this a zillion times—should be up there with the greats. He can pick up a guitar, play a riff, and you say, 'He's gotta be out now, he can't top that.' Then you come back, and I bet you a billion dollars, he'd come up with a riff that'd knock your f***ing socks off.

 

Early Black Sabbath albums feature tuned-down guitars, which contributed to the dark feel of the music. In 1966, before forming Black Sabbath, guitarist Tony Iommi suffered an accident while working in a sheet metal factory, losing the tips of two fingers on his right hand. Iommi almost gave up music, but was urged by a friend to listen to Django Reinhardt, a jazz guitarist who lost the use of two fingers. Inspired by Reinhardt, Iommi created two thimbles made of plastic and leather to cap off his missing fingers. The guitarist began using lighter strings, and detuning his guitar, to better grip the strings with his prosthetics, a move which inadvertently gave the music a darker feel". Early in the band's history Iommi experimented with different dropped tunings, including C tuning, or 3 semitones down, before settling on E♭ tuning, or a half-step down from standard tuning.

 

Black Sabbath are arguably the most influential heavy metal band of all time. The band helped to create the genre with ground breaking releases such as Paranoid, an album that Rolling Stone magazine said "changed music forever", and called the band "the Beatles of heavy metal". Time Magazine called Paranoid "the birthplace of heavy metal", placing it in their Top 100 Albums of All Time. MTV placed Black Sabbath at number one on their Top Ten Heavy Metal Bands and VH1 placed them at number two on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. VH1 ranked Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" the number one song on their 40 Greatest Metal Songs countdown. Allmusic's William Ruhlmann said:

 

Black Sabbath has been so influential in the development of heavy metal rock music as to be a defining force in the style. The group took the blues-rock sound of late '60s acts like Cream, Blue Cheer, and Vanilla Fudge to its logical conclusion, slowing the tempo, accentuating the bass, and emphasising screaming guitar solos and howled vocals full of lyrics expressing mental anguish and macabre fantasies. If their predecessors clearly came out of an electrified blues tradition, Black Sabbath took that tradition in a new direction, and in so doing helped give birth to a musical style that continued to attract millions of fans decades later.

 

Black Sabbath's influence on heavy metal is almost unparalleled, the band are cited as highly influential by countless bands, including Metallica, Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Disturbed, Iced Earth, Opeth, Pantera, Megadeth, The Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot, the Foo Fighters, Fear Factory, Candlemass, and Godsmack. Two gold selling tribute albums have been released, Nativity in Black Volume 1 & 2, including covers by Sepultura, White Zombie, Type O Negative, Faith No More, Machine Head, System of a Down and Monster Magnet.

 

Metallica's Lars Ulrich, who, along with bandmate James Hetfield inducted Black Sabbath into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, said "Black Sabbath is and always will be synonymous with heavy metal", while Hetfield said "Sabbath got me started on all that evil-sounding s***, and it's stuck with me. Tony Iommi is the king of the heavy riff." Ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash said of the Paranoid album: "There's just something about that whole record that, when you're a kid and you're turned onto it, it's like a whole different world. It just opens up your mind to another dimension...Paranoid is the whole Sabbath experience; very indicative of what Sabbath meant at the time. Tony's playing style — doesn’t matter whether it's off 'Paranoid' or if it's off 'Heaven and Hell' — it's very distinctive." Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian said "I always get the question in every interview I do, 'What are your top five metal albums?' I make it easy for myself and always say the first five Sabbath albums." Lamb of God's Chris Adler said: "If anybody who plays heavy metal says that they weren't influenced by Black Sabbath's music, then I think that they're lying to you. I think all heavy metal music was, in some way, influenced by what Black Sabbath did."

 

Black Sabbath discography

 

1970 "Paranoid" - Hot 100 #61

1971 "Iron Man" - Hot #71

1980 "Neon Knights" - Mainstream Rock #17

1982 "Turn up the Night" - Main #24

1982 "Voodoo" - Main #46

1998 "Psycho Man" - M #3

1999 "Selling My Soul" - M #17

2007 "The Devil Cried" - M #37

 

Factoid: The tour in support of Born Again included a giant set of the Stonehenge monument. In a move that would be later parodied in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, the band made a mistake in ordering the set piece. As Geezer Butler later explained:

 

We had Sharon Osbourne's dad, Don Arden, managing us. He came up with the idea of having the stage set be Stonehenge. He wrote the dimensions down and gave it to our tour manager. He wrote it down in meters but he meant to write it down in feet. The people who made it saw fifteen meters instead of fifteen feet. It was 45 feet high and it wouldn't fit on any stage anywhere so we just had to leave it in the storage area. It cost a fortune to make but there was not a building on earth that you could fit it into.

 

"War Pigs"

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[knightni]

14. AC/DC

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 64 points - highest ranking #2 MexSoxFan#1

 

AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Although the band are commonly classified as hard rock and are considered a pioneer of heavy metal, they have always classified their music as rock and roll.

 

AC/DC underwent several line-up changes before releasing their first album, High Voltage, in 1975. Membership remained stable until bassist Mark Evans was replaced by Cliff Williams in 1977. The band recorded their highly successful album Highway to Hell in 1979. Lead singer and co-songwriter Bon Scott died on 19 February 1980, after a night of heavy alcohol consumption. The group briefly considered disbanding, but soon ex-Geordie singer Brian Johnson was selected to replace Scott. Later that year, the band released their best-selling album, Back in Black.

 

The band's next album, For Those About to Rock We Salute You, was their first album to reach number one in the United States. AC/DC declined in popularity soon after drummer Phil Rudd was fired in 1983 and was replaced by future Dio drummer Simon Wright. Phil Rudd returned in 1994 (after Chris Slade was asked to leave in favour of him) and contributed to the band's 1995 album Ballbreaker. Stiff Upper Lip was released in 2000 and was well received by critics. The band's most recent album, Black Ice, was released on 20 October 2008.

 

As of 2008, AC/DC have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, including 71 million albums in the United States. Back in Black has sold an estimated 45 million units worldwide, making it the highest-selling album by any band and the 2nd highest-selling album in history, behind "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. The album has sold 22 million in the US alone, where it is the fifth-highest-selling album. AC/DC ranked fourth on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" and was named the seventh "Greatest Heavy Metal Band of All Time" by MTV. In 2004, the band was ranked number 72 in the Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".

 

Brothers Malcolm, Angus and George Young were born in Glasgow, Scotland, and moved to Sydney with most of their family in 1963. George was the first to learn to play the guitar. He became a member of the Easybeats, one of Australia's most successful bands of the 1960s. In 1966, they became the first local rock act to have an international hit, with the song "Friday on My Mind". Malcolm followed in George's footsteps by playing with a Newcastle, New South Wales, band called the Velvet Underground (not to be confused with the New York–based Velvet Underground).

The band's official logo

 

Malcolm and Angus Young developed the idea for the band's name after their older sister saw the initials "AC/DC" on a sewing machine. "AC/DC" is an abbreviation for "alternating current/direct current". The brothers felt that this name symbolised the band's raw energy, power-driven performances, and a love for their music. "AC/DC" is pronounced one letter at a time, though the band is popularly known as "Acca Dacca" in Australia.

 

In November 1973 Malcolm and Angus Young formed AC/DC and recruited bassist Larry Van Kriedt, vocalist Dave Evans, and Colin Burgess, ex-Masters Apprentices drummer. The band played their first gig at a club named Chequers in Sydney on New Year's Eve, 1973. They were later signed to the EMI-distributed Albert Productions label for Australia and New Zealand. The early line-up of the band changed often; Colin Burgess was the first member fired, and several bassists and drummers passed through the band during the next year.

 

The Young brothers decided that Evans was not a suitable frontman for the group, because they felt he was more of a glam rocker like Gary Glitter. On stage, Evans was occasionally replaced by the band's first manager, Dennis Laughlin, who was the original lead singer with Sherbet prior to Daryl Braithwaite joining the band. Evans did not get along with Laughlin, which also contributed to the band's ill feeling toward Evans.

 

In September 1974 Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott, an experienced vocalist and friend of George Young, replaced Dave Evans. Like the Young brothers, Scott had been born in Scotland before emigrating to Australia in his childhood. The band had recorded only one single with Evans, "Can I Sit Next to You, Girl" / "Rockin' in the Parlour"; eventually, the song was re-recorded with Bon Scott as "Can I Sit Next to You Girl."

 

By January 1975, the Australia-only album High Voltage had been recorded. It took only ten days and was based on instrumental songs written by the Young brothers, with lyrics added by Scott. Within a few months, the band's line-up had stabilised, featuring Scott, the Young brothers, bassist Mark Evans and drummer Phil Rudd. Later that year they released the single "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)", which became their perennial rock anthem. It was included on their second album, T.N.T., which was also released only in Australia and New Zealand. The album featured another classic song, "High Voltage".

 

Between 1974 and 1977, aided by regular appearances on Molly Meldrum's Countdown, the ABC’s nationally broadcast pop-music television show, AC/DC became one of the most popular and successful acts in Australia. Their performance on 3 April 1977 was their last live TV appearance for more than 20 years.

 

In 1976, the band signed an international deal with Atlantic Records and toured extensively throughout Europe. They gained invaluable experience of the stadium circuit, supporting leading hard rock acts such as Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Kiss, Styx and Blue Öyster Cult, and co-headlined with Cheap Trick.

 

The first AC/DC album to gain worldwide distribution was a 1976 compilation of tracks taken from the High Voltage and T.N.T. LPs. Also titled High Voltage, and released on the Atlantic Records label, the album sold three million copies worldwide, partly because of its popularity with a British punk audience. The track selection was heavily weighted toward the more recent T.N.T., and included only two songs from their first LP. The band's next album, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, was released in the same year in both Australian and international versions, like its predecessor. Track listings varied worldwide, and the international version of the album also featured "Rocker" from T.N.T. The original Australian version included "Jailbreak" (now more readily available on the 1984 compilation EP '74 Jailbreak or as a live version on the 1992 Live album). Dirty Deeds was not released in the US until 1981, by which time the band were at the peak of their popularity.

 

Following the 1977 recording Let There Be Rock, bassist Mark Evans was sacked because of personal differences with Angus Young. He was replaced by Cliff Williams, who also provided backing vocals alongside Malcolm Young. Neither of the Young brothers has elaborated on the departure of Evans, though Richard Griffiths, the CEO of Epic Records and a booking agent for AC/DC in the mid-1970s, later commented, "You knew Mark wasn't going to last, he was just too much of a nice guy."

 

AC/DC were a formative influence on New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands who emerged in the late 1970s, such as Saxon and Iron Maiden, in part as a reaction to the decline of traditional early 1970s heavy metal bands. In 2007, critics noted that AC/DC, along with Thin Lizzy, UFO, Scorpions and Judas Priest, were among "the second generation of rising stars ready to step into the breach as the old guard waned."

 

AC/DC's first American exposure was through the Michigan radio station AM 600 WTAC in 1977. The station's manager, Peter C. Cavanaugh, booked the band to play at Flint's Capitol Theater. The supporting act was MC5, who had just briefly reunited and agreed to play at the event. The band opened with their popular song "Live Wire" and closed with "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)".

 

AC/DC came to be identified with the punk rock movement by the British press. Their reputation, however, managed to survive the punk upheavals of the late 1970s, and they maintained a cult following in the UK throughout this time.[3] Angus Young gained notoriety for mooning the audience during live performances.

 

The 1978 release of Powerage marked the debut of bassist Cliff Williams, and with its harder riffs, followed the blueprint set by Let There Be Rock. Only one single was released for Powerage, "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" and gave AC/DC the highest mark at the time, reaching #24. An appearance at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow during the Powerage tour was recorded and released as If You Want Blood You've Got It, featuring such songs as "Whole Lotta Rosie", "Problem Child", and "Let There Be Rock", as well as lesser-known album tracks like "Riff Raff". The album was the last produced by Harry Vanda and George Young with Bon Scott on vocals and is claimed to be AC/DC's most under-rated album.

 

The major breakthrough in the band's career came in their collaboration with producer "Mutt" Lange on a sixth album Highway to Hell, released in 1979. It became the first AC/DC LP to break into the US top 100, eventually reaching #17, and it propelled AC/DC into the top ranks of hard rock acts. Highway to Hell had lyrics that shifted away from flippant and comical toward more central rock themes, putting increased emphasis on backing vocals but still featured AC/DC's signature sound: loud, simple, pounding riffs and grooving backbeats. The final track, "Night Prowler", has two breaths in quick succession at the start of the song, intended to create a tone of fear and loathing.

 

On 19 February 1980, Bon Scott passed out after a night of heavy drinking in London and was left in a car owned by an acquaintance named Alistair Kinnear. The following morning, Kinnear rushed him to King's College Hospital in Camberwell, where Scott was pronounced dead on arrival. Pulmonary aspiration of vomit was the cause of Scott's death, and the official cause was listed as "acute alcohol poisoning" and "death by misadventure". Scott's family buried him in Fremantle, Western Australia, the area to which they had emigrated when he was a boy.

 

Inconsistencies in the official accounts of Scott's death have been cited in conspiracy theories, which suggest that Scott died of a heroin overdose, or was killed by exhaust fumes redirected into the car, or that Kinnear did not exist. Additionally, Scott was asthmatic, and the temperature was below freezing on the morning of his death.

 

Following Scott's death, the band briefly considered quitting; they eventually concluded, however, that Scott would have wanted AC/DC to continue, and various candidates were considered for his replacement, including Buzz Shearman, ex-Moxy member, who was not able to join because of voice problems, and ex-Back Street Crawler vocalist Terry Slesser, who turned down this opportunity when he decided not to join an established band and instead started a solo career. The remaining AC/DC members finally decided on ex-Geordie singer Brian Johnson.

 

Angus Young later recalled, "I remember Bon playing me Little Richard, and then telling me the story of when he saw Brian singing." He says about that night, "There's this guy up there screaming at the top of his lungs and then the next thing you know he hits the deck. He's on the floor, rolling around and screaming. I thought it was great, and then to top it off—you couldn't get a better encore—they came in and wheeled the guy off!" Later that night, Johnson would be diagnosed with appendicitis, which was the cause of his writhing around on stage.

 

For the audition, Johnson sang "Whole Lotta Rosie" from Let There Be Rock and Ike & Tina Turner's "Nutbush City Limits". He was hired a few days after the audition.

 

With Brian Johnson the band completed the songwriting that they had begun with Bon Scott for the album Back in Black. Recording took place at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas a few months after Scott's death. Back in Black, produced by Mutt Lange and recorded by Tony Platt, became their biggest-selling album and a hard-rock landmark; hits include "Hells Bells", "You Shook Me All Night Long", and the title track. The album was certified platinum three months after its release, and by 2007 it had sold more than 22 million copies in the United States, making it the fourth-highest-selling album ever in the US. The album reached #1 in the UK and #4 in the US, where it spent 131 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart.

 

The follow-up album, 1981's For Those About to Rock We Salute You, also sold well and was positively received by critics. The album featured two of the band's most popular singles: "Let's Get It Up" and the title track, "For Those About to Rock", which reached #13 and #15 in the UK, respectively. The band split with Lange for their self-produced 1983 album, Flick of the Switch, in an effort to recover the rawness and simplicity of their early albums.

 

Amid rumours of alcoholism and drug-induced paranoia, drummer Phil Rudd's friendship with Malcolm Young deteriorated and, after a long period of unfriendliness, the men's dislike for each other grew so strong that they fought. Rudd was fired two hours after the fight. Session drummer B.J. Wilson was drafted in to help complete the recordings, but his drum parts were eventually not used. Although Rudd had finished the drum tracks for their next album, he was replaced by Simon Wright in the summer of 1983 after the band held an anonymous audition.

 

Later in the year, AC/DC released the self-produced album Flick of the Switch, which was less successful than their previous albums, and was considered underdeveloped and unmemorable. One critic stated that the band "had made the same album nine times". AC/DC was voted the eighth-biggest disappointment of the year in the 1984 Kerrang! readers' poll. However, Flick of the Switch eventually reached #4 on the UK charts, and AC/DC had minor success with the singles "Nervous Shakedown" and "Flick of the Switch". Fly on the Wall, produced by the Young brothers in 1985, was also regarded as uninspired and directionless. A music concept video of the same name featured the band at a bar, playing five of the album's ten songs.

 

In 1986, the group returned to the charts with the made-for-radio "Who Made Who". The album Who Made Who was the soundtrack to Stephen King's film Maximum Overdrive, and is the closest the band has come to releasing a "greatest hits" collection, which AC/DC have always refused to do. It brought together older hits, such as "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Ride On", with newer songs such as title track "Who Made Who", and two new instrumentals, "D.T." and "Chase the Ace".

 

AC/DC's 1988 album, Blow Up Your Video, was recorded at Studio Miraval in Le Val, France, and reunited the band with their original producers, Harry Vanda and George Young. The group recorded nineteen songs, choosing ten for the final release; though the album was later criticised for containing excessive "filler", it was a commercial success. Blow Up Your Video sold more copies than the previous two studio releases combined, reaching #2 on the UK charts—AC/DC's highest position since "Back in Black" in 1980. The album featured the UK top-twenty single "Heatseeker" and popular songs such as "That's the Way I Wanna Rock and Roll". The Blow Up Your Video World Tour began in February 1988, in Perth, Australia. That April, following live appearances across Europe, Malcolm Young announced that he was taking time off from touring, principally to begin recovery from his alcoholism. Another member of the Young family, Stevie Young, temporarily took Malcolm's place.

 

Following the tour, Wright left the group to work on the upcoming Dio album Lock Up the Wolves, and was replaced by session veteran Chris Slade. Johnson was unavailable for several months while finalising his divorce, so the Young brothers wrote all the songs for the next album, a practice they continued for all subsequent releases through Black Ice in 2008.

 

In February 1988, AC/DC were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association's Hall of Fame.

 

The new album, The Razors Edge, was recorded in Vancouver, Canada, and produced by Bruce Fairbairn, who had previously worked with Aerosmith and Bon Jovi. Released in 1990, it was a major comeback for the band, and included the hits "Thunderstruck" and "Are You Ready", which reached #5 and #16 respectively on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart, and "Moneytalks", which peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album went multi-platinum and reached the US top ten. Several shows on the Razors Edge tour were recorded for the 1992 live album, titled Live. Live was produced by Fairbairn, and is considered one of the best live albums of the 1990s. A year later, AC/DC recorded "Big Gun" for the soundtrack of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero, and was released as a single, reaching #1 on the US Mainstream Rock chart, the band's first #1 single on that chart.

 

In 1994, Angus and Malcolm invited Rudd to several jam sessions. He was eventually rehired to replace Slade, whose amicable departure arose in part because of the band's strong desire to again work with Rudd. In 1995, with the 1980–83 line-up back together, the group released Ballbreaker, recorded at the Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, California, and produced by Rick Rubin. The first single from the album was "Hard as a Rock". Two more singles were released from the album: "Hail Caesar" and "Cover You in Oil".

 

In 1997, a box set named Bonfire was released. It contained four albums; a remastered version of Back in Black; Volts (a disc with alternate takes, outtakes, and stray live cuts) and two live albums, Live from the Atlantic Studios and Let There Be Rock: The Movie. Live from the Atlantic Studios was recorded on 7 December 1977 at the Atlantic Studios in New York. Let There Be Rock: The Movie was a double album recorded in 1979 at the Pavillon de Paris and was the soundtrack of a motion picture, AC/DC: Let There Be Rock. The US version of the box set included a colour booklet, a two-sided poster, a sticker, a temporary tattoo, a keychain bottle opener, and a guitar pick.

 

In 2000, the band released Stiff Upper Lip, produced by brother George Young at the Warehouse Studio, again in Vancouver. The album was better received by critics than Ballbreaker but was considered lacking in new ideas. The Australian release included a bonus disc with three promotional videos and several live performances recorded in Madrid, Spain in 1996. Stiff Upper Lip reached #1 in five countries, including Argentina and Germany; #2 in three countries, Spain, France and Switzerland; #3 in Australia; #5 in Canada and Portugal; and #7 in Norway, the US and Hungary. The first single, "Stiff Upper Lip", remained at #1 on the US Mainstream Rock charts for four weeks. The other singles released also did very well; "Satellite Blues" and "Safe in New York City" reached #7 and #31 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, respectively.

 

In 2002, AC/DC signed a long-term, multi-album deal with Sony Music, who went on to release a series of remastered albums as part of their AC/DC remasters series. Each release contained an expanded booklet featuring rare photographs, memorabilia, and notes. In 2003, the entire back-catalogue (except Ballbreaker and Stiff Upper Lip) was remastered and re-released. Ballbreaker was eventually re-released in October 2005; Stiff Upper Lip was later re-released in April 2007.

 

On 30 July 2003, the band performed with the Rolling Stones and Rush at Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto. The concert, held before an audience of half a million, was intended to help the city overcome the negative publicity stemming from the effects of a 2003 SARS epidemic. The concert holds the record for the largest paid music event in North American history. The band came second in a list of Australia's highest-earning entertainers for 2005, and sixth for 2006, despite having neither toured since 2003 nor released an album since 2000. Verizon Wireless has gained the rights to release AC/DC's full albums and the entire Live at Donington concert to download in 2008.

 

On 16 October 2007, Columbia Records released a double and triple DVD titled Plug Me In. The set consists of five and seven hours of rare footage, and even a recording of AC/DC at a high school performing "School Days", "T.N.T.", "She's Got Balls", and "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". As with Family Jewels, disc one contains rare shows of the band with Bon Scott, and disc two is about the Brian Johnson era. The collector's edition contains an extra DVD with 21 more rare performances of both Scott and Johnson and more interviews.

 

AC/DC made their video game debut on Rock Band 2, with "Let There Be Rock" included as a playable track. The setlist from their Live at Donington live album was released as playable songs for the Rock Band series by means of a Wal-Mart-exclusive retail disc titled AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack.

 

No Bull: The Directors Cut, a newly edited, comprehensive Blu-Ray and DVD of the band's July 1996 Plaza De Toros de las Ventas concert in Madrid, Spain, was released on 9 September 2008.

 

On 18 August 2008, Columbia Records announced the 18 October Australian release, and 20 October worldwide release, of the studio album Black Ice. The 15-track album was the band's first studio release in eight years, and was produced by Brendan O'Brien. Like Stiff Upper Lip, it was recorded at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia. Black Ice was sold in the US exclusively at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and the band's official website.

 

"Rock 'n' Roll Train", the album's first single, was released to radio on 28 August. On 15 August, AC/DC recorded a video for a song from the new album in London with a special selection of fans getting the chance to be in the video.[63] Black Ice made history debuting at #1 on album charts in 29 countries and also has the distinction of being Columbia Records' biggest debut album (since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales data for Billboard in March of 1991). Black Ice has been certified Multi Platinum in eight countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Germany and the Czech Republic. Additionally Black Ice has achieved Platinum status in twelve countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, UK, Argentina, Singapore and New Zealand) and Gold status in four countries (Netherland, Spain, Poland and Brazil). With over 6.5 million copies of Black Ice shipped worldwide, combined with over 5.5 million in catalog sold, AC/DC have surpassed The Beatles as the #1 selling catalog artist in the US for 2008. The 18-month Black Ice World Tour supporting the new album was announced on September 11 and began on 28 October in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. They band played 42 dates in North America, ending in Nashville, Tennessee on 31 January 2009. The Answer was the opening act during the North American portion of the tour.

 

On 15 September 2008, AC/DC Radio debuted on Sirius Channel 19 and XM channel 53. The channel plays AC/DC music along with interviews with the band members.

 

With the North American release of Black Ice on 20 October 2008, Columbia Records and Walmart created "Rock Again AC/DC Stores" to promote the album. In October 2008, MTV, Walmart, and Columbia created "AC/DC Rock Band Stores" in New York City, at Times Square, and in Los Angeles. "Black Ice" trucks were also dispatched on the streets of these two cities after the release, playing AC/DC music aloud and making various stops each day to sell merchandise.

 

In late September 2009, the band rescheduled six shows when Brian Johnson underwent an operation for ulcers. On September 29, the band announced a collection of studio and live rarities, Backtracks, which was released on November 10, 2009 as a 3-CD/2-DVD/1-LP box-set.

 

On the 4th November AC/DC were announced as the Business Review Weekly top Australian earner (entertainment) for 2009 with earnings of $105 million. This displaced The Wiggles from the number one spot for the first time in four years.

 

AC/DC were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2003. During the ceremony the band performed "Highway to Hell" and "You Shook Me All Night Long", with guest vocals provided by host Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. He described the band's power chords as "the thunder from down under that gives you the second-most-powerful surge that can flow through your body." During the acceptance speech, Brian Johnson quoted their 1977 song "Let There Be Rock".

 

In May 2003, Malcolm Young accepted a Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Service to Australian Music at the 2003 Music Winners Awards, during which he paid special tribute to Bon Scott.

 

On 1 October 2004, a central Melbourne thoroughfare, Corporation Lane, was renamed ACDC Lane in honour of the band. However, the City of Melbourne forbade the use of the slash character in street names, so the four letters were combined. The lane is near Swanston Street where, on the back of a truck, the band recorded their video for the 1975 hit "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". Additionally, a street in Leganés (Comunidad de Madrid – Spain), Spain was named "Calle de AC/DC" on 2 March 2000.

 

Since Nielsen SoundScan began to track music sales in 1991, AC/DC have sold over $26.4? million worth of albums, making their sales figures second only to The Beatles, outselling both The Rolling Stones and The Who. Over the last five years, as CD sales have declined in general, AC/DC albums have sold just as well or better. They sold over 1.3 million CDs in the US during 2007 despite not having released a new album since 2001 at that point.

 

In 2009 the Recording Industry Association of America upgraded the group's US sales figures from 69 million to 71 million, making AC/DC the fifth-best-selling band in US history and the ninth-best-selling artist, selling more albums than Madonna, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson. The RIAA also certified Back in Black as double Diamond (20 million) in US sales, and by 2007 the album had sold 22 million copies, which moved it into fifth place.

 

AC/DC discography

 

1979 "Highway to Hell" - Hot 100 #47

1980 "Touch Too Much" - Hot #106

1980 "You Shook Me All Night Long" - Hot #35

1981 "Hells Bells" - Rock #50

1981 "Back in Black" - R #51

1981 "Big Balls" - R #26

1982 "Let's Get It Up" - H #44 - R #9

1982 "For Those About to Rock" - R #4

1982 "Put the Finger on You" - R #38

1983 "Guns for Hire" - H #84 - R #37

1983 "Flick of the Switch" - R #26

1986 "Who Made Who" - R #23

1988 "Heatseeker" - R #20

1988 "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll" - H #28

1990 "Thunderstruck" - R #5

1990 "Moneytalks" - H #23

1991 "Are You Ready" - #34 - #16

1992 "Highway To Hell" (live) - R #29

1993 "Big Gun" - #65 - #1

1996 "Hard as a Rock" - R #1

1996 "Cover You in Oil" - R #9

2000 "Stiff Upper Lip" - H #115 - R #1

2000 "Safe in New York City" - R #21

2001 "Satellite Blues" - R #7

2008 "Rock 'n Roll Train" - R #1

2008 "Big Jack" - R #10

2009 "Anything Goes" - R #34

 

Factoid: Angus Young had tried other costumes before deciding to use "School Boy", such as Spider-Man, Zorro, a gorilla, and a parody of Superman, named Super-Ang.

 

"Thunderstruck" (duh)

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-iqzrbntt

[knightni]

13. Eagles

 

5 of 24 lists - 72 points - highest ranking #1 Tex

 

The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner.

 

With five number one singles and six number one albums, the Eagles were one of the most successful recording artists of the 1970s. At the end of the 20th century, two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and Hotel California, ranked among the 20 best-selling albums in the U.S. according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Hotel California is ranked 37th in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the band was ranked #75 on the magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

 

They also have the best selling album in the U.S. to date with Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971–1975.

 

The Eagles broke up in 1980, but reunited in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over, a mix of live and new studio tracks. They have toured intermittently since then, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2007, Eagles released Long Road out of Eden, their first full studio album in 28 years. The next year they launched The Long Road out of Eden Tour in support of the album. The tour continued on into 2009, crossing North America and Europe, with its last date on July 22, 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal.

 

The seeds for the band were planted when Linda Ronstadt and then-manager John Boylan recruited session musicians Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner to back Ronstadt. They were missing a drummer until Frey telephoned Don Henley, whom he had met at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles. The group auditioned for Ronstadt; she approved, and the band backed her on a two-month tour and on her eponymous 1972 album. After their tenure with Ronstadt and with her encouragement, they decided to form their own band, signing with Asylum Records, the new label started by David Geffen. Geffen and partner Elliot Roberts also initially managed the band.

 

The group's eponymous debut album was quickly recorded and released in June 1972. Eagles was filled with natural, sometimes innocent country rock, and yielded 3 Top 40 singles. The first single and lead track, "Take It Easy", was a song written by Glenn Frey and his neighbor and fellow country-folk rocker Jackson Browne. Browne had written the first and third verses, and the chorus, but his work on the song had stalled. After giving Frey permission to work on it, Frey added the second verse. The song reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelled the Eagles to stardom. The single was followed by the bluesy "Witchy Woman" and the soft country rock ballad "Peaceful Easy Feeling", charting at #9 and #22 respectively.

 

The Eagles were a major force in popularizing the Southern California country rock sound. Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" ranked Eagles at number 374.

 

Their second album, Desperado, was themed on Old West outlaws, drawing comparisons between their lifestyles and the lifestyles of modern rock stars. This album introduced the group's penchant for conceptual songwriting. It was during the recording sessions that Don Henley and Glenn Frey began writing with each other, co-writing 8 of the album's 11 songs, including two of the group's most popular songs: "Tequila Sunrise" and "Desperado". The bluegrass songs "Twenty-One," "Doolin' Dalton" and the ballad "Saturday Night" showcased guitarist Bernie Leadon's abilities on the banjo, fingerpicked guitar and mandolin.

 

Throughout the album, the story of the notorious Wild West "Doolin-Dalton" gang was the main focus, featuring in the songs "Doolin-Dalton," "Bittercreek" and "Desperado". The album was less successful than the first, reaching only #41 on the U.S. pop album charts, and yielding only 2 singles, "Tequila Sunrise," which reached #61 on the Billboard charts, and "Outlaw Man," which peaked at #59.

 

The album marked a significant change to the band, with Henley and Frey co-writing the bulk of the album, a pattern that would continue for years to come. Subsequently, the pair began to dominate the band in terms of leadership and songwriting, turning the focus of the band away from Leadon and Meisner despite early presumptions that it would be Leadon and Meisner who would steer the band.

 

For their next album, On the Border, Henley and Frey wanted the band to break away from the country music style they were known for, moving more towards hard rock. Initially, the Eagles started off with Glyn Johns producing, but he tended to emphasize the lush side of their double-edged music. After completing only two songs, the band turned to Bill Szymczyk to produce the rest of the album. Szymczyk brought in Don Felder to add slide guitar to a song called "Good Day in Hell," and the band was so impressed that two days later they invited Felder to become the fifth Eagle. He appeared on only one other song on the album, the uptempo breakup song "Already Gone," where he performed the guitar duet with Glenn Frey. On the Border yielded a No. 1 Billboard single ("Best of My Love"), which hit the top of the charts on March 1, 1975, becoming the Eagles' first of five chart toppers.

 

Their next album, One of These Nights, had an aggressive, sinewy rock stance. The album further displayed the growing strength of the Henley/Frey songwriting team, particularly on the album's title track and the Grammy Award winning "Lyin' Eyes". "One of These Nights" hit #1 on the Billboard chart on August 2, 1975. The song itself has often been cited by Frey as his all-time favorite Eagles tune. The album also contains the Leadon instrumental "Journey of the Sorcerer," which is known to many as the theme to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

By this time, conflict within the band had escalated. Recording and touring created stress; tempers were boiling over, and egos were clashing. Between the release of One of These Nights and the supporting tour, Bernie Leadon left the group, disillusioned with the direction the band's music was taking. The Eagles were no longer concentrating on the country rock in which Leadon excelled, and the hiring of Don Felder meant that Leadon's role had been significantly diminished. Leadon was also dating Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan's daughter, at the time – the two of them had co-written "I Wish You Peace" on the album – which created political tensions within the group.

 

Leadon left the band in December 1975, famously announcing his resignation by pouring a beer over Frey's head. In order to continue with their tour schedule, the group quickly replaced Leadon with Joe Walsh, a veteran of the James Gang and Barnstorm and a solo artist in his own right, who (like the Eagles) was produced by Szymczyk and managed by Irving Azoff.

 

Meanwhile, in early 1976, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) was released. It went on to become the best-selling album in U.S. history, selling over 29 million copies in the United States, 42 million copies worldwide to date.

 

The group's next album, Hotel California, came out in December 1976. "New Kid in Town" was a #1 hit in Billboard on February 26, 1977, and the title track, "Hotel California" on May 7, 1977. Told during a 60 Minutes interview (November 25, 2007) that "everyone wants to know what this song [Hotel California] means," Don Henley replied, "I know, it's so boring...It's a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America, which was something we knew about."

 

"Life in the Fast Lane" was also a major success, becoming a catch phrase in the process and established Joe Walsh's position in the band with its more hard rock sound. The ballad "Wasted Time" closed the first side of the album, while an instrumental reprise of it opened the second side. The album concluded with "The Last Resort", the song Frey, to this day, refers to as Don Henley's greatest work.

 

The run out groove on Side Two has the words "V.O.L. Is Five-Piece Live", this means that the song "Victim of Love" was recorded live, with just the band and no overdubbing. Don Henley confirms this on the inner booklet of The Very Best of the Eagles. Hotel California has appeared on several lists of the best albums of all time. It is also their best-selling studio album, with over 16 million copies sold to date in the U.S.

 

After the tour, Randy Meisner left the band and moved back to his native Nebraska, where he began a solo career. The band replaced Meisner with the same musician who had succeeded him in Poco, Timothy B. Schmit. In 1977, the group, minus Don Felder, performed some instrumental work and backing vocals for Randy Newman's album Little Criminals, including the controversial surprise hit "Short People" which has backing vocals by Frey and Schmit.

 

In 1977, the Eagles went into a recording studio to produce their next studio album, The Long Run. The album took 2 years to make, but yielded the group's fifth and last #1 single in Billboard, "Heartache Tonight" (November 10, 1979). "Heartache Tonight" was co-written by Frey and fellow Michigan native Bob Seger.

 

The Eagles also contributed to Boz Scaggs' hit single Look What You've Done to Me, the love theme from the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, and featured on its soundtrack.

 

On July 31, 1980, in Long Beach, California, tempers boiled over into what has been described as "Long Night at Wrong Beach." Frey and Felder spent the entire show describing to each other the beating each planned to administer backstage. "Only three more songs until I kick your ass, pal," Frey recalls Felder telling him near the end of the band's set. Felder recalls Frey making a similar threat to him during "The Best Of My Love."

 

It appeared to be the end of the Eagles, although the band still owed Warner Bros. a live record from the tour. Eagles Live (released in November 1980) was mixed by Frey and Henley on opposite coasts; the two decided they couldn't bear to be in the same state, let alone the same studio, and as Bill Szymczyk put it,"The record's perfect three-part harmonies were fixed courtesy of Federal Express." With credits that listed no fewer than five attorneys, the album's liner notes simply said, "Thank you and goodnight".

 

Fourteen years after the breakup, an Eagles country tribute album titled Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles was released in 1993. Travis Tritt insisted on having the Long Run-era Eagles in his video for "Take It Easy" and they agreed. After the "Take It Easy" video was completed the following year, and following years of public speculation, the band finally formally reunited. The lineup comprised the five Long Run-era members – Frey, Henley, Walsh, Felder and Schmit – supplemented by additional musicians: Scott Crago (drums), John Corey (keyboards, guitar, backing vocals), Timothy Drury (keyboards, guitar, backing vocals) and Al Garth (sax, violin) on stage.

 

"For the record, we never broke up, we just took a 14-year vacation", announced Frey at their first live performance in April 1994. The ensuing tour spawned a live album titled Hell Freezes Over which debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart, and included 4 new studio songs, with "Get Over It" and "Love Will Keep Us Alive" both becoming Top 40 hits. The album itself proved as successful as the reunion tour, selling 6 million copies in the U.S. While the tour was briefly interrupted in September 1994 due to Frey's serious recurrence of diverticulitis, it resumed in 1995 and continued into '96.

 

In 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During the induction ceremony, Frey, Henley, Felder, Walsh and Schmit performed together, and former members Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner rejoined the band for the performance, where the band played "Take It Easy" and "Hotel California". Several subsequent reunion tours followed (without Leadon or Meisner), notable for their record-setting ticket prices.

 

On February 6, 2001, Don Felder was fired from the Eagles. Felder responded by filing two lawsuits against "Eagles, Ltd., a California corporation; Don Henley, an individual; Glenn Frey, an individual; and "Does 1-50", alleging wrongful termination, breach of implied-in-fact contract, and breach of fiduciary duty, reportedly seeking $50 million in damages.

 

In his complaint, Felder alleged that from the 1994 Hell Freezes Over tour onward, Henley and Frey had "... insisted that they each receive a higher percentage of the band's profits ...", whereas the money had previously been split in five equal portions.

 

In 2003, the Eagles released a new greatest hits album The Very Best of the Eagles. The two-disc compilation was the first that encompassed their entire career, from Eagles to The Long Run. The album also included a new single, the September 11-themed "Hole in the World". The album debuted at #3 on the Billboard charts and eventually gained triple platinum status.

 

Also in 2003, Warren Zevon, a longtime Eagles friend, began work on his final album, The Wind, with the assistance of Henley, Walsh, and Schmit.

 

On June 14, 2005, the Eagles released a new 2-DVD set titled Farewell 1 Tour-Live from Melbourne featuring 2 new songs: Glenn Frey's "No More Cloudy Days" and Joe Walsh's "One Day at a Time." A special edition 2006 release exclusive to Wal-Mart and affiliated stores also included a bonus audio CD with three new songs: a studio version of "No More Cloudy Days" plus "Fast Company" and "Do Something."

 

In 2007, the Eagles consisted of Frey, Henley, Walsh, and Schmit. On August 20, 2007, "How Long," written by J. D. Souther – who had previously worked with the Eagles co-writing some of their biggest hits including "Best of My Love," "Victim of Love," "Heartache Tonight" and "New Kid in Town" – was released as a single to radio with an accompanying online video at Yahoo! Music and debuted on television on CMT during the Top 20 Countdown on August 23, 2007. The band performed the song as part of their live sets in the early-to-mid '70s, but did not record it at the time due to J.D. Souther's desire to use it on his first solo album.

 

On October 30, 2007, the Eagles released Long Road Out of Eden, their first album of all-new material since 1979. For the first year after the album's initial release, it was available in the U.S. exclusively via the band's website, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. It was commercially available through traditional retail outlets in other countries. The album debuted at #1 in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands and Norway. It became their third studio album, seventh release overall, to be certified at least seven times platinum. In an interview with CNN, Don Henley declared, "This is probably the last Eagles album that we'll ever make."

 

The Eagles made their awards show debut on November 7, 2007, when they performed "How Long" live at the Country Music Association Awards.

 

On January 28, 2008, the second single off Long Road Out of Eden was released. "Busy Being Fabulous" peaked at #28 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and at #12 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart.

 

The Eagles won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "How Long." It was the band's fifth Grammy Award.

 

On March 20, 2008, the Eagles launched their world tour in support of Long Road Out of Eden at The O2 Arena in London, England. Long Road out of Eden Tour concluded their last currently scheduled American venue on May 9, 2009 at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah. It was the first concert ever held in the new soccer stadium. The group was touring in Europe, their last tour date scheduled on July 22, 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal.

 

Eagles discography

 

1972 "Take It Easy" - Hot #12

1972 "Witchy Woman" - H #9

1972 "Peaceful Easy Feeling" - H #22

1973 "Tequila Sunrise" - #64

1973 "Outlaw Man" - #59

1974 "Already Gone" - #32

1974 "James Dean" - #77

1974 "Best of My Love" - Hot #1 - Adult Contemporary #1

1975 "One of These Nights" - Hot #1

1975 "Lyin' Eyes" - Hot #2 - AC #3 - Country #8

1975 "Take It to the Limit" - H #4- AC #4

1976 "New Kid in Town" - #1 - #2 - #43

1977 "Hotel California" - H #1

1977 "Life in the Fast Lane" - H #11

1978 "Please Come Home for Christmas" - H #18

1979 "Heartache Tonight" - H #1

1979 "The Long Run" - H #8

1980 "I Can't Tell You Why" - H #8 - AC #3

1980 "Seven Bridges Road" - H #21 - C #55

1994 "Get Over It" - H #31 - AC #21 - Mainstream #4

1994 "Love Will Keep Us Alive" - AC #1

1995 "Learn to Be Still" - AC #15 - Main #33

2003 "Hole in the World" - Hot #69 - AC #5

2005 "No More Cloudy Days" - AC #3

2007 "How Long" - Hot #101 - AC #7 - C #23 - M #38

2008 "Busy Being Fabulous" - AC #12 - C #28

2008 "What Do I Do With My Heart" - AC #13

2009 "I Don't Want to Hear Anymore" - AC #23

 

 

Factoid: The name of the 1994 live album Hell Freezes Over was named as such because, following the 1980 breakup, Don Henley stated that the group would get back together around that time.

 

"Hotel California"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-smetqxfe

[knightni]

12. Tool

 

 

4 of 24 lists - 74 points - highest ranking #1 Sonik22, JPN366

 

Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1990. Since their inception, the band's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. The current bassist is Justin Chancellor, who has been with the band since 1995. Tool is known to have rigorous touring schedules in support of their albums, they have performed well on charts worldwide, and have sold an estimated 9.25 million records in the US alone.

 

Tool emerged with a heavy metal sound on their first studio album, Undertow, at a time when the genre was dominated by thrash metal; and later became a dominant act in the alternative metal movement with the release of their second effort, Ænima, in 1996. Their efforts to unify musical experimentation, visual arts, and a message of personal evolution continued with their third album, Lateralus, in 2001; and their most recent album, 10,000 Days, released in 2006, gained the band critical acclaim and success around the world.

 

Due to Tool's incorporation of visual arts and relatively long and complex releases, the band is generally described as a style-transcending act and part of progressive rock and art rock. The relationship between the band and today's music industry is ambivalent, at times marked by censorship and the band members' insistence on privacy.

 

During the 1980s, each of the future members of Tool moved to Los Angeles. Both Paul D'Amour and Adam Jones wanted to enter the film industry, while Maynard James Keenan found employment remodeling pet stores after having studied visual arts in Michigan. Danny Carey performed as a drummer for Wild Blue Yonder, Green Jellÿ, and Carole King, and played in the Los Angeles area with Pigmy Love Circus.

 

Keenan and Jones met through a common friend in 1989. After Keenan played a tape recording for Jones of his previous band project, Jones was so impressed by his voice that he eventually talked his friend into forming their own band. They started jamming together and were on the lookout for a drummer and a bass player. Danny Carey happened to live above Keenan and was introduced to Jones by Tom Morello, an old high school friend of Jones and former bandmate of Electric Sheep. Carey began playing in their sessions because he "felt kinda sorry for them", as other invited musicians were not showing up. Tool's lineup was completed when a friend of Jones introduced them to bassist D'Amour. Early on, the band fabricated the story that they formed because of the pseudophilosophy "lachrymology". Although "lachrymology" was also explained to be an inspiration for the band's name, Keenan later explained their intentions differently: "Tool is exactly what it sounds like: It's a big dick. It's a wrench.... we are... your tool; use us as a catalyst in your process of finding out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you're trying to achieve."

 

After only a few gigs, the band was approached by record companies, and only three months into their career they signed a record deal with Zoo Entertainment. In March 1992, Zoo published the band's first effort, Opiate. Described by the band as "slam and bang" heavy metal and the "hardest sounding" six songs they had written to that point, the EP included the singles "Hush" and "Opiate". The band's first music video, "Hush", promoted their dissenting views about the then-prominent Parents Music Resource Center and its advocacy of the censorship of music. The video featured the band members naked with their genitalia covered by parental advisory stickers and their mouths covered by duct tape. The band began touring with Rollins Band, Fishbone, and Rage Against the Machine to positive responses which Janiss Garza of RIP Magazine summarized in September 1992 as a "buzz" and "a strong start".

 

The following year, at a time when alternative rock was at its height, Tool released their first full-length album, Undertow (1993). It expressed more diverse dynamics than Opiate and included songs the band had chosen not to publish on their previous release, when they had opted for a heavier sound. The band began touring again as planned, with an exception in May 1993. Tool was scheduled to play at the Garden Pavilion in Hollywood but learned at the last minute that the Garden Pavilion belonged to L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, which was perceived as a clash with "the band's ethics about how a person should not follow a belief system that constricts their development as a human being". Keenan "spent most of the show baa-ing like a sheep at the audience".

 

Tool later played several concerts during the Lollapalooza festival tour, and were moved from the second stage to the main stage by their manager and the festival co-founder Ted Gardner. At the last concert of Lollapalooza in Tool's hometown Los Angeles, comedian Bill Hicks introduced the band. Hicks had become a friend of the band members and an influence on them after being mentioned in Undertow's liner notes. He jokingly asked the audience of 60,000 people to stand still and help him look for a lost contact lens. The boost in popularity gained from these concerts led Undertow to be certified gold by the RIAA in September 1993 and to achieve platinum status in 1995, despite being sold with a censored album cover by distributors such as Wal-Mart. The single "Sober" became a hit single by March 1994 and won the band Billboard's "Best Video By A New Artist" award for the accompanying stop motion music video.

 

With the release of Tool's follow-up single "Prison Sex", the band again became the target of censorship. The song's lyrics and video dealt with child abuse, which sparked controversial reactions; Keenan's lyrics begin with: "It took so long to remember just what happened. I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive." The video was created primarily by guitarist Adam Jones, who saw it as his "surrealistic interpretation" of the subject matter. And while some contemporary journalists again praised the video and described the lyrics as "metaphoric", the American branch of MuchMusic asked Keenan to represent the band in a hearing. It deemed the respective music video too graphic and obscene, and MTV stopped airing it after a few viewings.

 

In September 1995, the band started writing and recording their second studio album. At that time Tool experienced its only lineup change to date, with bassist D'Amour leaving the band amicably to pursue other projects. Justin Chancellor, a member of former tourmates Peach, eventually replaced D'Amour, having been chosen over competitors such as Kyuss' Scott Reeder, Filter's Frank Cavanaugh, Pigmy Love Circus's E. Shepherd Stevenson and ZAUM's Marco Fox.

 

On October 1, 1996, Tool released their second full-length album, Ænima (pronounced /ˈɒnɪmə/) in Compact Disc format and in vinyl format on October 15, 1996. The album was recorded and cut at Ocean Way, Hollywood, California and The Hook, North Hollywood, California from 1995 to 1996. It was certified triple platinum by the RIAA on March 4, 2003.

 

The title Ænima (pronounced ON-ima) is a combination of the words 'anima' (Latin for 'soul' associated with the ideas of "life force" and a term often used by psychologist Carl Jung) and 'enema' the medical procedure.

 

After Paul D'Amour left Tool, Justin Chancellor came on board, and the recording of the already-begun Ænima continued. The band enlisted the help of producer David Bottrill, who had produced some of King Crimson's albums while Jones collaborated with Cam de Leon to create Ænima's Grammy-nominated artwork.

 

The first single, "Stinkfist", garnered limited and imperfect airplay: It was shortened by radio programmers, MTV (U.S.) renamed the music video of "Stinkfist" to "Track #1" due to offensive connotations, and the lyrics of the song were altered. Responding to fan complaints about censorship, Matt Pinfield of MTV's 120 Minutes expressed regret on air by waving his fist in front of his face while introducing the video and explaining the name change.

 

A tour began in October 1996, only two weeks after Ænima's release. Following numerous appearances in the United States and Europe, Tool headed for Australia and New Zealand in late March 1997. April 1 of that year saw the first of several April Fools' pranks related to the band. Kabir Akhtar, webmaster of the band's semi-official fanpage, The Tool Page, wrote that "at least three of the band are listed in critical condition" after a tour bus accident on a highway.[33] This hoax gained wide attention and was eventually exposed on radio and MTV. Akhtar later posted an apology, claiming that The Tool Page "will not indulge itself in such outlandish pranks in the future"—a claim that would be belied by later April Fools' pranks. The tour continued the next day as originally announced.

Bassist Justin Chancellor performing at 2006's Roskilde Festival.

 

Eventually returning to the United States, Tool appeared at Lollapalooza '97 in July, this time as a headliner, where they gained critical praise from The New York Times:

 

"Tool was returning in triumph to Lollapalooza after appearing among the obscure bands on the festival's smaller stage in 1993. Now Tool is the prime attraction for a festival that's struggling to maintain its purpose... Tool uses taboo-breaking imagery for hellfire moralizing in songs that swerve from bitter reproach to nihilistic condemnation. Its music has refined all the troubled majesty of grunge."

 

Notwithstanding a decline in popularity of alternative rock music during the mid-90s in the United States, Ænima eventually matched Tool's successful debut in sales. The progressive-influenced Ænima landed the band at the head of the alternative metal genre: It featured the Grammy Award-winning "Ænema" and appeared on several "Best Albums of 1996" lists, with notable examples being those of Kerrang! and Terrorizer.

 

A legal battle that began the same year interfered with the band's working on another release. Volcano Entertainment—the successor of Tool's by-then defunct label Zoo Entertainment—alleged contract violations by Tool and filed suit. According to Volcano, Tool had violated their contract when the band looked at offers from other record labels. After Tool filed a countersuit stating that Volcano had failed to use a renewal option in their contract, the parties settled out of court. In December 1998 Tool agreed to a new contract, a three-record joint venture deal. In 2000, the band dismissed their long-time manager Ted Gardner, who then sued the band over his commission on this lucrative agreement.

 

During this time, Keenan joined the band A Perfect Circle which was founded by long-time Tool guitar tech Billy Howerdel, while Jones joined The Melvins' Buzz Osborne and Carey drummed with Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra on other side projects. Although there were rumors that Tool were breaking up, Chancellor, Jones, and Carey were working on new material while waiting for Keenan to return. In 2000, the Salival box set (CD/VHS or CD/DVD) was released, effectively putting an end to the rumors. The CD contained one new original track, a cover of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter", a live version of Peach's "You Lied", and revised versions of old songs. The VHS and the DVD each contained four music videos, plus a bonus music video for "Hush" on the DVD. Although Salival did not yield any singles, the hidden track "Maynard's Dick" (which dates back to the Opiate era) briefly found its way to FM radio when several DJs chose to play it on air under the title "Maynard's Dead".

 

In January 2001, Tool announced a new album, Systema Encéphale, along with a 12-song tracklist containing titles such as "Riverchrist", "Numbereft", "Encephatalis", "Musick", and "Coeliacus". File-sharing networks such as Napster were flooded with bogus files bearing the titles' names.[48] At the time, Tool members were outspokenly critical of file-sharing networks in general due to the negative impact on artists that are dependent on success in record sales to continue their career. Keenan had this to say during an interview with NY Rock in 2000, "I think there are a lot of other industries out there that might deserve being destroyed. The ones who get hurt by MP3s are not so much companies or the business, but the artists, people who are trying to write songs."

 

A month later, the band revealed that the new album was actually titled Lateralus and that the name Systema Encéphale and the tracklist had been a ruse. Lateralus and the corresponding tours would take Tool a step further toward Art rock and progressive rock territory. Rolling Stone wrote in an attempt to summarize the album that "Drums, bass and guitars move in jarring cycles of hyperhowl and near-silent death march... The prolonged running times of most of Lateralus' thirteen tracks are misleading; the entire album rolls and stomps with suitelike purpose."Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club in turn expressed his opinion that Lateralus, with its 79 minutes and relatively complex and long songs—topped by the ten-and-a-half minute music video for "Parabola"—posed a challenge to fans and music programming alike.

 

The album became a worldwide success, reaching #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart in its debut week. Tool received their second Grammy Award for the best metal performance of 2001 for the song "Schism". During the band's acceptance speech, drummer Carey stated that he would like to thank his parents (for putting up with him) and Satan, and bassist Chancellor concluded: "I want to thank my dad for doing my mom."

 

Extensive touring throughout 2001 and 2002 supported Lateralus and included a personal highlight for the band: a 10-show joint mini-tour with King Crimson in August 2001. Comparisons between the two were made, MTV describing the bands as "the once and future kings of progressive rock". Keenan stated of the minitour: "For me, being on stage with King Crimson is like Lenny Kravitz playing with Led Zeppelin, or Britney Spears onstage with Debbie Gibson."

 

Although the end of the tour in November 2002 seemed to signal the start of another dormancy for the band, they did not become completely inactive. While Keenan recorded and toured with A Perfect Circle, the other band members released an interview and a recording of new material, both exclusive to the fan club. On April 1, 2005, the official Tool website announced that "Maynard has found Jesus" and would be abandoning the recording of the new Tool album temporarily and possibly permanently. Kurt Loder of MTV contacted Keenan via email to ask for a confirmation and received a nonchalant confirmation. When Loder asked again, Keenan's response was simply "heh heh." However, on April 7 the official site explained, "Good news, April fools fans. The writing and recording is back under way."

 

The writing and recording proceeded for the follow-up to Lateralus; meanwhile, a Lateralus vinyl edition and two DVD singles were released, and the band's official website received a new splash intro by artist Joshua Davis. The "double vinyl four-picture disc" edition of Lateralus was first released as a limited autographed edition exclusively available to fan club members and publicly released on August 23, 2005. On December 20, 2005, the two DVDs were released, one containing the single "Schism" and the other "Parabola", a remix by Lustmord, and the music video with a dual-commentary by David Yow and Jello Biafra, respectively.

 

Fifteen years into the band's career, Tool had acquired what Dan Epstein of Revolver described as a devoted "cult" following, and as details about the band's next album emerged, such as the influence of Lateralus tourmates Fantômas and Meshuggah, controversy surrounding the new Tool surfaced with speculation over song titles and pre-release rumors of leaked songs. Speculation over possible album titles was dismissed with a news item on the official Tool website, announcing that the new album's name was 10,000 Days. Nevertheless, speculation continued with allegations that 10,000 Days was merely a "decoy" album to fool audiences until the day of its actual release, which eventually proved false when a leaked copy of the album was distributed via filesharing networks a week prior to its official release.

 

The album opener, "Vicarious", premiered on U.S. radio stations on April 17. The record followed on May 2, 2006 in the U.S. and debuted at the top spots of various international charts. 10,000 Days sold 564,000 copies in its opening week in the U.S. and was number one on the Billboard 200 charts, doubling the sales of Pearl Jam's self-titled album, its closest competitor. However, 10,000 Days was received less favorably by critics than its predecessor Lateralus had been.

 

After the release of 10,000 Days, a tour kicked off at Coachella on April 30, 2006. The touring schedule was similar to the Lateralus tour of 2001; supporting acts were Isis and Mastodon. During a short break early the next year, after touring Australia and New Zealand, drummer Danny Carey suffered a biceps tear during a skirmish with his girlfriend's dog, casting uncertainty on the band's upcoming concerts in North America. Carey underwent surgery on February 21, and several gigs had to be postponed. Back on tour by April, Tool appeared on June 15 as a headliner at the Bonnaroo Music Festival with a guest appearance from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello on "Lateralus".

 

Meanwhile, "Vicarious" was a nominee for Best Hard Rock Performance and 10,000 Days won Best Recording Package at the 49th Grammy Awards. The music video for "Vicarious" was released on DVD on December 18.

 

In an interview conducted in May 2007, Justin Chancellor stated that the band would probably continue their tour until early 2008 and then "take some time off".

 

He qualified this statement by adding that the band has already written new material and would surely release another album at some point down the road. A possible project until a next album is to make a "band movie", a possibility the band has reportedly considered for a long time. The ideas range from "a narrative story in a surreal fashion with as much money and special effects as possible" to "pockets of all of that or something that's live or the band playing". Although Carey stated that the necessary know-how was at hand due to the many relations to artists working in the movie business, Jones dismissed the idea saying, "It's just talk right now." According to Rolling Stone, after the 50th Grammy Awards, while attending a Sony BMG after party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Keenan also promised another Tool album. Asked in an early 2009 interview with Guitar World about the new album, Jones replied, "It's been coming along... great! [laughs] No, we've been on hiatus. I'm writing and Justin's been writing, but Maynard has been working on his wine. We've all just been taking some time away from each other, which has been nice. I've also been working on producing some comics."

 

On hiatus since early 2008, Tool is expected to begin writing a new album sometime in 2009, according to Keenan, but gave no details on a possible release date. On March 24, 2009, the band's official website confirmed a Tool summer tour. The tour kicked off on July 18 in Commerce City, Colorado, at the Mile High Music Festival. The last dates were August 7–9 for Lollapalooza 2009 and a concluding show on August 22 for the Epicenter Festival in Pomona, California. Tool headlined both.

 

Tool was described by Patrick Donovan of The Age as "the thinking person's metal band. Cerebral and visceral, soft and heavy, melodic and abrasive, tender and brutal, familiar and strange, western and eastern, beautiful and ugly, taut yet sprawling and epic, they are a tangle of contradictions." Tool has gained critical praise from the International Herald Tribune's C.B. Liddell for their complex and ever-evolving sound. Describing their general sound, Allmusic refers to them as "grinding, post-Jane's Addiction heavy metal", and The New York Times sees similarities to "Led Zeppelin's heaving, battering guitar riffs and Middle Eastern modes". Their 2001 work Lateralus was compared by Allmusic to Pink Floyd's Meddle (1971), but thirty years later and altered by "Tool's impulse to cram every inch of infinity with hard guitar meat and absolute dread".

 

The band has named the Melvins among those that influenced their development, but the most-publicized influence are progressive rock pioneers King Crimson. Longtime King Crimson member Robert Fripp has downplayed any influence his band had on Tool. In an interview with Tool, he touched briefly on how the two bands relate to each other, stating "Do you hear the influence? There's just one figure where I hear an influence, just one. It was a piece we were developing that we dropped. And it's almost exactly the same figure: three note arpeggio with a particular accent from the guitar. So I do not think you could have heard it. That's the only thing." He also revealed, "I happen to be a Tool fan. The members of Tool have been generous enough to suggest that Crimson has been an influence on them. Adam Jones asked me if I could detect it in their music, and I said I couldn’t. I can detect more Tool influence in King Crimson, than I can hear King Crimson in Tool."

 

In turn, Maloof and Newquists attribute to Tool an influence on modern metal in its own right in their book The New Metal Masters. Sean Richardson of The Boston Phoenix sees System of a Down, Deftones, and Godsmack as examples of Tool's "towering influence" on the genre. Moreover, Keenan's unique style of singing has been repeatedly seen as influencing artists such as Pete Loeffler of Chevelle.

 

 

Tool discography

 

1993 "Sober" - Mainstream #13

1994 "Prison Sex" - Main #32

1996 "Stinkfist" - Modern #19 - Main #17

1997 "H." - Main #23

1997 "Ænema" - Main #25

1998 "Forty-Six & 2" - Main #22

2001 "Schism" - Hot #67 - Mod #2 - Main #2

2001 "Parabola" - Mod #31 - Main #10

2002 "Lateralus" - Mod #18 - Main #14

2006 "Vicarious" - Hot #115 - Mod #2 - Main #2

2006 "The Pot" - Mod #5 - Main #1

2007 "Jambi" - Mod #23 - Main #7

 

 

Factoid: The album Ænima was dedicated to satirist Bill Hicks, who had died two and a half years earlier. The band intended to raise awareness about Hicks's material and ideas, because they felt that Tool and Hicks "were resonating similar concepts".

 

"Schism"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-semgmkrn

[knightni]

11. Foo Fighters

 

 

6 of 24 lists - 76 points - highest ranking #7 StrangeSox

 

Foo Fighters is an American rock band formed in 1995. Singer and guitarist Dave Grohl formed the group as a one-man project after the dissolution of his previous band, Nirvana, in 1994. Prior to the release of Foo Fighters in 1995, Grohl drafted Nate Mendel as bassist, William Goldsmith as drummer, and Pat Smear as guitarist to complete the group. Goldsmith left during the recording of the group's second album, The Colour and the Shape (1997), and Smear's departure followed soon afterward. They were replaced by Taylor Hawkins and Franz Stahl, respectively, although Stahl left prior to the recording of the group's third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999).

 

Chris Shiflett joined as the band's second guitarist after the completion of There Is Nothing Left to Lose. The band released its fourth album, One by One, in 2002. The group followed that release with the two-disc In Your Honor (2005), which was split between acoustic songs and harder-rocking material. Foo Fighters released its sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, in 2007. Over the course of the band's career, three of its albums have won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album, and all six have been nominated for Grammys.

 

Dave Grohl joined the grunge group Nirvana as its drummer in 1990 after the break up Grohl's previous band: Scream. In order to occupy himself during tours, he took a guitar with him and wrote songs. Grohl held back these songs from the band; he said in 1997, "I was in awe of frontman Kurt Cobain's songs. And intimidated. I thought it was best that I keep my songs to myself." Instead, Grohl occasionally booked studio time to record demos, and even issued a cassette of some of those songs called Pocketwatch under the pseudonym "Late!" in 1992.

 

Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, and Nirvana subsequently disbanded. Grohl received offers to work with various artists including the Melvins, to which Grohl accepted, however this never came to fruition. He also almost accepted a permanent position as the drummer in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Ultimately Grohl declined and instead entered Robert Lang Studios in October 1994 to record twelve of the forty songs he had written. With the exception of a guitar part on "X-Static" by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Grohl played every instrument and sang every vocal on the tracks.. "I was supposed to just join another band and be a drummer the rest of my life," Grohl later said. "I thought that I would rather do what no one expected me to do. I enjoy writing music and I enjoy trying to sing, and there's nothing anyone can really do to discourage me." Grohl completed an album's worth of material in five days and handed out cassette copies of the sessions to his friends for feedback.

Nate Mendel.

 

Grohl hoped to keep his anonymity and release the recordings in a limited run under the title "Foo Fighters", taken from the World War II term "foo fighter", used to refer to unidentified flying objects. However, the demo tape circulated in the music industry, creating interest among record labels. Grohl formed a band to support the album. Initially, Grohl talked to former Nirvana band mate Krist Novoselic about joining the group, but both decided against it. "For Krist and I, it would have felt really natural and really great", Grohl explained. "But for everyone else, it would have been weird, and it would have left me in a really bad position. Then I really would have been under the microscope." Having heard about the disbanding of Seattle-based rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, Grohl drafted the group's bass player, Nate Mendel, and drummer, William Goldsmith. Grohl asked Pat Smear, who served as a touring guitarist for Nirvana after the release of its 1993 album In Utero, to join as the group's second guitarist. Grohl ultimately licensed the album to Capitol Records, releasing it on his new record label, Roswell Records.

 

The group played its debut show at a keg party in February 1995. Foo Fighters made their live debut on March 3, 1995 during a show at The Satyricon in Portland. They followed that up with a show at the Velvet Elvis in Seattle on 4 March (this one witnessed by a mere 150 people, although over 500 were left outside). The first show had been part of a benefit gig to aid the finances of the investigation into the rape and murder of ex-The Gits singer Mia Zapata. Grohl refused to do interviews or tour large venues to promote the album. Foo Fighters undertook their first major tour in the spring of 1995, opening for Mike Watt. The band's first single "This Is a Call" was released in June 1995, and its debut album Foo Fighters was released the next month. "I'll Stick Around", "For All The Cows" and "Big Me" were released as subsequent singles. The band spent the following months on tour, including their first appearance at the Reading Festival in England in August.

 

After touring through the spring of 1996, Foo Fighters entered a studio in Woodinville, Washington with producer Gil Norton to record its second album. While Grohl once again wrote all the songs, the rest of the band collaborated on the arrangements. With the sessions nearly complete, Grohl took the rough mixes with him to Los Angeles, intending to finish up his vocal and guitar parts. While there, Grohl realized that he wasn't happy with how the mixes were turning out, and the band "basically re-recorded almost everything". During the L.A. sessions, Grohl played drums on some of the songs. Goldsmith said Grohl did not tell him that he recorded new drum parts for the record and, feeling betrayed, left the band.

 

In need of a replacement for Goldsmith, Grohl contacted Alanis Morissette's touring drummer Taylor Hawkins to see if he could recommend anybody. Grohl was surprised when Hawkins volunteered his own services as drummer. Hawkins made his debut with the group in time for the release of its second album, The Colour and the Shape, in May 1997. The album spawned the singles "Monkey Wrench", "My Hero", and "Everlong".

 

Pat Smear announced to the rest of the group that he wanted to leave the band to pursue other interests. Four months later in September 1997 at the MTV Video Music Awards, Smear simultaneously publicly announced his departure from the band and introduced his replacement, Grohl's former Scream bandmate Franz Stahl. Stahl toured with the band for the next few months, and appeared on two tracks that the band recorded for movie soundtracks, a re-recording of "Walking After You" for The X-Files and "A320" for Godzilla.

 

In 1998, Foo Fighters traveled to Grohl's home state of Ohio to write music for its third album. However, Grohl and Stahl were unable to co-operate as songwriters; Grohl told Kerrang! in 1999, "in those few weeks it just seemed like the three of us were moving in one direction and Franz wasn't". Grohl was distraught about the decision to fire Stahl, as the two had been friends since childhood. The remaining trio of Grohl, Mendel, and Hawkins spent the next several months recording the band's third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, in Grohl's Virginia home studio. The album spawned several singles, including "Learn to Fly", the band's first single to reach the US Hot 100.

 

Before the release of the album, Capitol president Gary Gersh was forced out of the label. Given Grohl's history with Gersh, Foo Fighters' contract had included a "key man clause" that allowed them to leave the label upon Gersh's departure. They subsequently left Capitol and signed to RCA, who later acquired the rights to the band's Capitol albums.

Chris Shiflett joined Foo Fighters as a touring guitarist before becoming a full member

 

After recording was completed, the band auditioned a number of potential guitarists, and eventually settled on Chris Shiflett, who previously performed with No Use for a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Shiflett initially joined the band as touring guitarist, but achieved full-time status prior to the recording of the group's fourth album.

 

That same year, Foo Fighters established a relationship with rock band Queen, of whom the band (particularly Grohl and Hawkins) are fans. Guitarist Brian May added a guitar track to Foo Fighters' second cover of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar", which appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Mission: Impossible II. When Queen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2001, Grohl and Hawkins were invited to perform with the band on "Tie Your Mother Down", with Grohl filling in on vocals for Freddie Mercury. In 2002, guitarist May contributed guitar work to "Tired of You" and an outtake called "Knucklehead". The bands have performed together on several occasions since, including VH1 Rock Honors and Foo Fighters' headlining concert in Hyde Park, as well as the band's concert at the O2 arena in London in November 2007.

 

Near the end of 2001, the band reconvened to record their fourth album. After spending four months in a Los Angeles studio completing the album, Grohl spent some time helping Queens of the Stone Age complete their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf. Once the Queens of the Stone Age album was finished, Grohl, inspired by the sessions, decided to reconvene Foo Fighters to rework a few songs on their album. Instead, they re-recorded nearly all of the album (save "Tired of You") in a ten-day stretch at Grohl's studio in Virginia. The final album was released in October 2002 under the title One by One. Singles from the album included "All My Life", "Times Like These", "Low", and "Have It All". The band later expressed displeasure with the album. Grohl told Rolling Stone in 2005, "Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it."

 

For most of its history, the band chose to stay away from the political realm. However, in 2004, upon learning that George W. Bush's presidential campaign was using "Times Like These" at rallies, Grohl decided to lend his public support to John Kerry's campaign. Grohl attended several Kerry rallies and occasionally performed solo acoustic sets. The entire band eventually joined Grohl for a performance in Arizona coinciding with one of the presidential debates.

 

Having spent a year and a half touring behind One By One, Grohl did not want to rush into recording another Foo Fighters record. Initially Grohl intended to write acoustic material by himself, but eventually the project involved the entire band. To record its fifth album, the band shifted to Los Angeles and built a recording studio, dubbed Studio 606 West. Grohl insisted that the album be divided into two discs–one full of rock songs, the other featuring acoustic tracks. In Your Honor was released in June 2005. The album's singles included "Best of You", "DOA", "Resolve", "No Way Back", and "Miracle".

 

Between the months of September and October 2005, the band touring with Weezer on what was billed as the 'Foozer Tour' as the two bands co-headlined the tour. On June 17, 2006, Foo Fighters performed their largest non-festival headlining concert to date at London's Hyde Park. The band was supported by Juliette and the Licks, Angels & Airwaves, Queens of the Stone Age, and Motörhead. Motörhead's Lemmy joined the band on stage to sing "Shake Your Blood" from Dave Grohl's Probot album. Also, as a surprise performance, Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen jammed with Foo Fighters, playing part of "We Will Rock You" as a lead into "Tie Your Mother Down".

 

In further support of In Your Honor, the band decided to organize a short acoustic tour for the summer of 2006. The tour included former member Pat Smear, who rejoined the band as an extra guitarist, Petra Haden on violin and backup vocals, Drew Hester on percussion, and Rami Jaffee of The Wallflowers on keyboards/piano. While much of the setlist focused on In Your Honor's acoustic half, the band also used the opportunity to play lesser-known songs such as "Ain't It The Life", "Floaty", and "See You". The band also performed "Marigold", a Pocketwatch-era song that was best-known as a Nirvana B-side.

 

In November 2006, the band released their first ever live CD, Skin and Bones, featuring fifteen performances captured over a three-night stand in Los Angeles. An accompanying DVD was released, and featured tracks not available on the CD.

 

For the follow-up to In Your Honor, the band decided to call in The Colour and the Shape producer Gil Norton. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was released on September 25, 2007. The album's first single, "The Pretender", was issued to radio in early August. In mid-to-late 2007 "The Pretender" topped Billboard's Modern Rock chart for a record 18 weeks; it also gave the band their third consecutive year at the top (a record). The second single, "Long Road to Ruin", was released in December 2007, supported by a music video directed by longtime collaborator Jesse Peretz (formerly of the Lemonheads).

 

In October 2007, Foo Fighters started their world tour in support of Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. The band performed shows throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada and Asia, including headlining the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore on August 9. The band finished its world tour in September 2008 at the Virgin Festival at Toronto Island Park in Canada.

 

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace was nominated for five Grammy Awards in 2008. The Foo Fighters went home with Best Rock Album and Best Hard Rock Performance (for "The Pretender"). The album was also nominated for Album of the Year, while "The Pretender" was also nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Song.

 

On September 17, 2008, Grohl announced on The Chris Moyles Show that the band would be taking a long break from music so that they could return with a new sense of purpose, and also informed fans not to expect any new music for a while. "We've never really taken a long break, I think it's time," Grohl commented. "After doing Wembley, we shouldn't come back there for 10 years because we've played to everybody. We're over in the UK every year, every summer, so I think it's time to take a break and come back over when people really miss us." On February 11, 2009, Hawkins denied the band was planning on taking a break of that duration. "We've gotten together and minced ideas already," he said. "Just basic ideas and we'll probably do that over the next year until we have a log of ideas. We'll take our time and let everybody else enjoy other things -- their families and stuff. I'd say maybe by summer we'll get in the studio and start getting serious about a record."

 

On July 4, 2009, at an exclusive concert, the band announced that a greatest hits compilation would be released on November 3, 2009, and they debuted a new song from the compilation, "Wheels", which premiered on radio on September 23, 2009. The album also includes a new track, "Word Forward", and an acoustic version of "Everlong". In support of this new release, the Foo Fighters played a live performance on Facebook and Livestream from their Studio 606 complex in Los Angeles on Friday 30 October 2009 at 7:00 PM Pacific Time (10:00PM Eastern Time, 2:00AM on Saturday 31st, UTC/GMT. It was the first internet-only live concert including real-time interactivity with the fans on Facebook. Streamed live on Livestream, fans were able to ask questions directly and request songs using Facebook chat. It is currently the last performance of the band before their announced hiatus.

 

On November 3, 2009, the band released a compilation album, Greatest Hits, which features two new songs, "Word Forward" and the single "Wheels". However, on November 4th, 2009, Dave Grohl announced that the Greatest Hits record marks the end of a phase and the beginning of a real hiatus. "This greatest hits record, that's the end of something... It's time to move on into this next chapter or another phase. Maybe it will be different in whatever way. I don't know. It's nice to not know what's going to happen next. We're going over to do some shows in Europe, but, after that, it's like I don't even know when I'm going to see these guys. So it's kind of weird," he added.

 

The band have been entered for the MOJO awards show where they will be performing 'Long Road to Ruin' and 'Learn to Fly' bidding to become February 2010 champions.

 

When Grohl first started the band, its music was often compared to that of his previous group, Nirvana. Grohl acknowledged that Nirvana singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain was a major influence on his songwriting. Grohl said, "Through Kurt, I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down." Foo Fighters also utilize the Pixies' technique of shifting between quiet verses and loud chorus, which Grohl said was influenced by the members of Nirvana "liking the Knack, Bay City Rollers, Beatles, and ABBA as much as we liked Flipper and Black Flag, I suppose". Writing and recording songs for the first Foo Fighters album by himself, Grohl wrote the guitar riffs to be as rhythmic as possible. He approached the guitar similar to how he approached playing a drumkit, assigning different drum parts to different strings on the instrument. This allowed him to piece together songs easily; he said, "I could hear the song in my head before it was finished." Once Grohl assembled a full band, his bandmates assisted in song arrangements.

 

The members of Foo Fighters meld melodic elements with harder sounds. Grohl noted in 1997, "We all love music, whether it's the Beatles or Queen or punk rock. I think the lure of punk rock was the energy and immediacy; the need to thrash stuff around. But at the same time, we're all suckers for a beautiful melody, you know? So it is just natural." Grohl said in 2005, "I love being in a rock band, but I don't know if I necessarily wanna be in an alternative rock band from the 1990s for the rest of my life. It might be nice to broaden our range, open up the dynamic, so we can go out and just make music". Grohl noted that the band's acoustic tour was such an attempt to broaden the group's sound.

 

Foo Fighters discography

 

1995 "This Is a Call" - Hot Airplay #35 - Modern #2 - Mainstream #6

1995 "I'll Stick Around" - Air #51 - Mod #8 - Main #12

1996 "Big Me" - A #13 - Mo #3 - Ma #18

1997 "Monkey Wrench" - A #58 - Mo #9 - Ma #9

1997 "Everlong" Gold - A #42 - Mo #3 - Ma #4

1998 "My Hero" - A #59 - Mo #6 - Ma #8

1998 "Walking After You" - Mo #12

1999 "Learn to Fly" - Hot 100 #19 - A #13 - Ma #1 - Mo #2

2000 "Stacked Actors" - Mo #25 - Ma #9

2000 "Breakout" - Mo #8 - Ma #11

2000 "Next Year" - Mo #17

2002 "The One" - H #121 - Mo #14 - Ma #20

2002 "All My Life" - H #43 - A #41 - Mo #1 - Ma #3

2003 "Times Like These" Gold - #65 - #64 - #5 - #5

2003 "Low" - Mo #15 - Ma #23

2003 "Darling Nikki" - Mo #15

2005 "Best of You" Platinum - #18 - #46 - #1 - #1

2005 "DOA" - #68 - #67 - #1 - #5

2006 "No Way Back" / "Cold Day in the Sun" - Mo #2 - Ma #6

2007 "The Pretender" - #37 - #59 - #1 - #1

2007 "Long Road to Ruin" - #89 - #69 - #1 - #2

2008 "Let It Die" - H #106 - Mo #1 - Ma #5

2009 "Wheels" - H #72 - Mo #3 - Ma #4

 

Factoid: The gun featured on the cover of their first album "Foo Fighters" is the "XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol," which was originally released in 1935 as a tie-in toy for the Buck Rogers comic strip and radio show. The guns were originally manufactured by Daisy, best known for their line of youth BB guns, and today remain sought-after collector's items.

 

"There Goes My Hero"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-kzrppmfh

 

[knightni]

10. Red Hot Chili Peppers

 

 

7 of 24 lists - 96 points - highest ranking #2 SoxAce

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers (often abbreviated RHCP) is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1983. For most of the band's existence, the members have been vocalist Anthony Kiedis, guitarist John Frusciante, bassist Michael "Flea" Balzary, and drummer Chad Smith. The band's varied musical style has fused traditional funk with elements of other genres including alternative, punk rock, and psychedelic rock.

 

In addition to Kiedis and Flea, the group originally featured guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons. Slovak, however, died of a heroin overdose in 1988, resulting in Irons' departure. Irons was replaced briefly by former Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro before the band found a permanent replacement in Smith, while Slovak was replaced by up-and-coming guitarist Frusciante. This lineup recorded the band's fourth and fifth albums, Mother's Milk (1989) and Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991).

 

Blood Sugar Sex Magik was a significant record for the band; having sold over thirteen million copies, it provided the group's initial mainstream commercial success. Frusciante grew uncomfortable with this new found success and left abruptly in the middle of the tour for the album in 1992, descending into heroin addiction. Kiedis, Flea, and Smith employed Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction for their subsequent album, One Hot Minute (1995). Although fairly successful, it did not match the critical acclaim of Blood Sugar Sex Magik and sold less than half the copies of its predecessor. Shortly afterwards, Navarro departed the band due to creative differences. Frusciante, fresh out of drug rehabilitation, rejoined the band in 1998, at Flea's request. The reunited quartet returned to the studio to record Californication (1999), which went on to sell fifteen million units worldwide, becoming their most commercially successful album to date. It was followed three years later with By the Way (2002), which continued their success. In 2006, the group released the double album Stadium Arcadium, giving them their first American number one album.

 

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have won seven Grammy Awards. The band has sold over fifty-five million albums worldwide, have eight singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 (including three singles in the Top 10), have five number one singles on the Mainstream Rock charts, and hold a record of eleven number one singles on the Modern Rock charts. On September 23, 2009 the band was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2010. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers were ranked #30 on VH1's "Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers (originally Tony Flow and the Majestic Masters of Mayhem) were formed by Fairfax High School alumni Anthony Kiedis, Hillel Slovak, Jack Irons and Michael "Flea" Balzary in 1983. RHCP's first performance was at the Rhythm Lounge, to a crowd of roughly thirty people, opening for Gary and Neighbor's Voices. One song had been created for the occasion, which involved the band improvising music while Kiedis rapped a poem he had written called "Out in L.A.". As Slovak and Irons were already committed to another group, What Is This?, it was intended to be a one time performance. However, the performance was so lively that the band was asked to return the following week. Due to this unexpected success, the band changed its name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, playing several more shows at various LA clubs and musical venues. Six songs from these initial shows were recorded onto the band's first demo tape.

 

Several months after their first performance, the band was signed to the record label they were noticed by EMI. Two weeks earlier, What Is This? had obtained a record deal with MCA, and as Slovak and Irons considered the Red Hot Chili Peppers a side project, they quit to focus on What Is This?. Instead of dissolving the band, Kiedis and Flea decided to recruit new members. Cliff Martinez, a friend of Flea's, was asked to join the Chili Peppers shortly thereafter. Auditions for a new guitarist produced Jack Sherman.

 

Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill was hired to produce their first album. Despite Kiedis and Flea's misgivings, he pushed the band to play with a cleaner, crisper and more radio-friendly sound. The Red Hot Chili Peppers was released on August 10, 1984. Though the album didn't set sales records, college radio and MTV airplay helped to build a growing fan base. The album ultimately sold 300,000 copies. During the ensuing tour, continuing musical and lifestyle tension between Kiedis and Sherman complicated the transition between concert and daily band life. Sherman was fired soon after, with Slovak returning to the Chili Peppers after growing tired of What is This?.

 

George Clinton was selected to produce the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Freaky Styley. The album was recorded in Detroit's famed R&B and funky United Sound Systems studios on the edge of Wayne State University's campus. Clinton combined various elements of punk and funk into the band's repertoire, allowing their music to incorporate a variety of distinct styles. However, though the band had a much better relationship with Clinton than with Gill, Freaky Styley, released on August 16, 1985, also achieved little success, failing to make an impression on any chart. The subsequent tour was also considered unproductive by the band.

 

In the song "Yertle The Turtle" on their Freaky Styley album a different voice is heard saying: "Look at that turtle go bro." It was mentioned in Kiedis book Scar Tissue that the voice is of Clinton's cocaine dealer, whom he couldn't afford to pay, and offered to put him in a song instead.

 

During this time the band also appeared in the movie Tough Guys starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, performing on stage at a nightclub in Los Angeles.

 

Cliff Martinez was dismissed from the group in the summer of 1986, with Kiedis saying that he sensed that Martinez wished to leave. Jack Irons, out of work and finally separated from other commitments, rejoined the group, to Kiedis, Flea, and Slovak's great surprise. The Chili Peppers attempted to hire Rick Rubin to produce their third album, but he turned the offer down. The band eventually hired Michael Beinhorn, who was the band's last choice. Songs began to form quickly, and the album's shape came into view, blending the same funk feel and rhythms as Freaky Styley, but also taking a harder, more immediate approach to punk rock. Reuniting all four original members renewed their creativity, enlivening the recording process.

 

On September 29, 1987, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan was released, becoming the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album to appear on any chart. Although it peaked at only #148 on the Billboard Hot 200,[ this was a significant success compared to the Chili Peppers' first two albums.

 

During this period, however, Kiedis and Slovak had both developed serious drug addictions, often abandoning the band, each other, and their significant others for days on end. Slovak's addiction led to his death on June 25, 1988, not long after the conclusion of the Uplift tour. Kiedis fled the city and did not attend Slovak's funeral, considering the situation to be surreal and dreamlike. Jack Irons subsequently left the group, saying that he did not want to be part of a group where his friends were dying. Irons went on to become a member of Seattle grunge band Pearl Jam, however in 1998 Slovak's death was still playing on him so he quit that band too.

 

In an attempt to cope with the death of Slovak and the departure of Irons, Kiedis and Flea temporarily employed Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro and former P-Funk guitarist DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight. Neither sparked any notable chemistry and they were each replaced rapidly. However, Peligro's brief tenure did have one vital, long-term consequence for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, his association with the band led to John Frusciante, an acquaintance of Peligro, to audition for the band's empty guitarist role. Frusciante was fascinated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, as a result, was particularly interested in auditioning. Following a constructive jam (which would later appear on Mother's Milk as "Pretty Little Ditty"), there was a unanimous decision to accept Frusciante into the band.

 

Three weeks prior to the beginning of recording, the band was still without a drummer, despite several auditions. Eventually, a friend of the band told them about a drummer she knew, Chad Smith, who was so proficient on the drums he "ate [them] for breakfast". Kiedis had qualms about allowing Smith to try out; however, he agreed to give him a chance. At his audition, Smith overwhelmed the band by not only matching Flea's intricate and complex rhythm, but even beginning to lead him. After this successful jam session, Kiedis, Frusciante and Flea admitted Smith into the band. Smith was told to shave his head to fit into the band's style, but was nonetheless still allowed into the band when he showed up the next day with the same bandana.

 

The recording of the band's fourth album was hindered by conflict with producer Michael Beinhorn, whose primary agenda was to give Frusciante's guitar playing a loud, overpowering sound, similar to the abrasive tones utilized in heavy metal. This modification caused Frusciante great discomfort, as it did not fit with his preferred style of playing. An example of this can be heard on the song "Stone Cold Bush".

 

The Chili Peppers' fourth album, Mother's Milk was released in August 1989, and gave them their first top modern rock hits – a tribute ballad to Slovak, "Knock Me Down", and their cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground". The album reached #52 on the American album charts and became the band's first gold record.

 

In 1990, the group switched labels to Warner Bros. Records, with Rick Rubin hired to produce their then-untitled fifth album. Rubin has produced all of the band's subsequent studio albums. The writing process for this album was far more productive than it had been during the creation of Mother's Milk, with Kiedis saying that "[every day] now, there was new music for me to lyricize".

 

The band embarked on the grueling six-month process of recording a new album the long periods of rehearsal, songwriting, and the incubating of ideas but Rubin was dissatisfied with a regular recording studio, thinking the band would work better in a less orthodox setting. He came across an "amazing, huge, empty historically landmarked Mediterranean haunted mansion a stone's throw from where we all lived." For the next month or so, Frusciante, Kiedis and Flea remained in seclusion, never once leaving the house during the entire recording process. Smith, however, decided not to live in the house, believing it to be haunted.

 

The band was unable to decide on the title of the album, but to Rubin, one particular song title stuck out: "Blood Sugar Sex Magik". Although it was not a featured song, Rubin believed it to be "clearly the best title" they had at the time.[31]

 

On September 24, 1991, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released. "Give It Away" was released as the first single; it won a Grammy award in 1992 for "Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocal" and became the band's first number one single on the Modern Rock chart. The ballad "Under the Bridge" was released as the follow up single, and went on to reach #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the highest the band has reached on that chart, and became one of the band's most recognizable songs. Other singles such as "Breaking the Girl" and "Suck My Kiss" also fared well on the charts. The album itself was an international sensation, selling over 12 million copies and greatly broadening the Chili Peppers' audience. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was listed at number 310 on the Rolling Stone magazine list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and in 1992 it rose to #3 on the U.S. album charts, almost a year after its release.

 

The band's success and drug addiction were taking their toll on Frusciante, who abruptly quit the band during the Blood Sugar Japanese tour in May 1992. The band headlined the Lollapalooza festival in 1992 with replacement guitarist Arik Marshall (who appeared with them in The Simpsons fourth season finale, "Krusty Gets Kancelled", and the videos for "Breaking the Girl" and "If You Have to Ask"), and briefly with Jesse Tobias of the Los Angeles-based band Mother Tongue. Neither lasted very long, with the rest of the band stating that "The chemistry wasn't right." They eventually settled on former Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro.

 

Dave Navarro first appeared with the band at Woodstock '94, where they wore enormous light bulb costumes attached precariously to chrome metallic suits, making it near-impossible for them to play their instruments. While externally, the band appeared to be settled, the relationship between the three established members and Navarro had begun to deteriorate. His differing musical background made performing difficult as they began playing together, and continued to be an issue over the next year as his first and only album with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, One Hot Minute, was recorded and released on September 12, 1995. The band described the album as a darker, sadder record compared to their previous material. Despite mixed reviews, the album was a commercial success. Selling five million copies worldwide, it spawned the band's third #1 single, the ballad "My Friends", and enjoyed chart success with the songs "Warped" and "Aeroplane".

 

This iteration of the band was also featured on several soundtracks. "I Found Out", a John Lennon cover, was featured on Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon. The Ohio Players cover, "Love Rollercoaster", was featured on the Beavis and Butthead Do America soundtrack, and was released as a single.

 

By this point Kiedis had resumed his heroin dependence. In April 1998 it was announced that Navarro had left the band due to creative differences; Kiedis stated that the decision was "mutual". Reports at the time, however, indicated Navarro's departure came after he attended a band practice under the influence of drugs, which at one point involved him falling backwards over his own amp. Kiedis has since said that though the event should have been comical, it was instead pitiful and was the impetus for Navarro's departure.

 

In the years following his departure from the band, it became public that John Frusciante had developed an addiction to heroin, which left him in poverty and near death. He was talked into admitting himself to Las Encinas Drug Rehabilitation Center in January 1998. He concluded the process in February of that year and began renting a small apartment in Silver Lake. He acquired many injuries/problems in the years of his addiction, some requiring surgery, including permanent scarring on his arms, a restructured nose, and new teeth to prevent fatal infection.

 

In April 1998, Flea visited his friend, and former band-mate and openly invited Frusciante to re-join the band, an invitation an emotional Frusciante readily accepted. Within the week and, for the first time in six years, the reunited foursome gathered to play, and jump-started the newly reunited Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anthony Kiedis said of the situation:

“ For me, that was the defining moment of what would become the next six years of our lives together. That was when I knew that this was the real deal, that the magic was about to happen again. Suddenly we could all hear, we could all listen, and instead of being caught up in our finite little balls of bulls***, we could all become players in that great universal orchestra again. ”

 

Despite the band's elation by Frusciante's return, he was both mentally and physically torn. Frusciante had not played with the band since his departure and having previously lost every guitar he owned in a house fire from which he barely escaped, he experienced a difficult time resuming the life he had prior to his drug usage. His talent did, however, resurface and new songs began to roll out. On June 8, 1999, after over a year of production and meticulous practice, Californication was released as the band's seventh studio album. An almost instant achievement, the album ultimately sold over 15 million copies worldwide and became the band's most successful recording to date. Californication contained fewer rap-driven songs than its predecessors, instead integrating textured, consistent, and melodic guitar riffs, vocals and bass-lines.

 

Californication peaked at #3 in the US and produced three more number one modern rock hits: "Scar Tissue", "Otherside" and "Californication". "Scar Tissue" won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Rock Song. It was also performed at the ceremony and included a brief jam with rapper Snoop Dogg at its culmination. Other singles included "Around the World", "Road Trippin'", and "Parallel Universe", which broke the Top 40 modern rock charts despite not having been commercially released as a single.

 

In July 1999, as part of the band's two-year long international world tour in support of their new album, the Red Hot Chili Peppers played at Woodstock 1999. Some 10 minutes before the show, they were asked by Jimi Hendrix's sister to play a cover of her brother's songs. After some hesitation, the band decided to play his classic "Fire", which they had covered in Mother's Milk. Coincidentally, about two thirds of the way into the band's set, the closing set of the three day concert, a small fire escalated into full-fledged vandalism and resulted in the intervention of riot control squads.

 

The band began writing their next album in early 2001, and released By the Way over a year later, on July 9, 2002. The album, at the time, was their most noteworthy chart debut, selling over a million copies in first week and emerging at #2 on the Billboard 200. It produced five hit singles; "By the Way", "The Zephyr Song", "Can't Stop", "Dosed", and "Universally Speaking", and was the most subdued album they had generated to date, focusing primarily on melodic ballads as opposed to the Chili Peppers' classic style of rap-driven funk. Frusciante also concentrated on a more layered texture on many of the songs, often adding keyboard parts (albeit, they featured very low in the mix) and also writing string arrangements for songs (such as 'Midnight' and 'Minor Thing') The album was followed by an eighteen month-long world tour.

 

The Chili Peppers recorded two new songs, "Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population" for their Greatest Hits album released in November 2003, peaking at #18 on the Billboard 200. However, "Universally Speaking" and "By the Way" were the only two songs from By the Way included in the compilation causing criticism as to why songs such as "Can't Stop" and "The Zephyr Song", which were extremely successful, were not present.

 

In 2006 the band released the Grammy Award-winning Stadium Arcadium produced by Rick Rubin. Although 38 songs were created with the intention of being released as three separate albums spaced six months apart, the band instead chose to release a 28-track double album, with the remaining ten tracks to be released later as B-sides, although only nine B-sides ended up released. It was their first album to debut at #1 on the US charts, where it stayed for two weeks, and debuted at number one in the UK and 25 other countries. In the album's first week, it sold 442,000 units in the United States alone, and over 1,100,000 worldwide, setting a personal record for one week sales. By the end of 2006, Stadium Arcadium was named the best-selling album of the year, with over seven million units sold, and also recorded the highest one week in total sales of the year.

 

The record's first single "Dani California", was the band's fastest-selling single, debuting on top of the Modern Rock chart in the US, peaking at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reaching #2 in the UK. This song was also included in the movie Death Note as the title theme song. "Tell Me Baby", released next, also topped the charts in 2006. "Snow ((Hey Oh))" was released in late 2006, breaking multiple records by 2007. The song is played during the credits of the second Death Note movie, Death Note: The Last Name. The song became their eleventh number one single, giving the band a cumulative total of 81 weeks at number one (all singles combined). It was also the first time three consecutive singles by the band made it to number one. "Desecration Smile" was released internationally in February 2007 and has reached number 27 on the UK charts. "Hump de Bump" was planned to be the next single for the US, Canada, and Australia only, but due to positive feedback from the music video, it was released as a worldwide single in May 2007.

 

The band began another international world tour in support of Stadium Arcadium in 2006, beginning with promotional concerts in Europe and culminating in a two-month long European tour from late May to mid-July. The group then toured North America from early August to early November, returning to Europe later in November for a second leg that ran until mid-December. The Chili Peppers began the year of 2007 with a second North American leg, this time including Mexico in addition to the United States, from mid-January to mid-March. This was followed by shows in various cities in Australia and New Zealand, from early-to-mid April and concerts in Japan in early June. The Chili Peppers concluded their tour with a third European leg from late June to late August. They appeared at the Live Earth concert at London's Wembley Stadium on July 7, 2007. Throughout the course of their tour, the band appeared at several festivals, including Ireland's Oxegen in July 2006, Lollapalooza in August 2006 in Grant Park, Chicago, a subsequent set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California in late April 2007 and in August 2007 they appeared as one of three headliners at the Reading and Leeds festivals. The other two being Razorlight and Smashing Pumpkins.

 

In February 2007, Stadium Arcadium won 5 Grammys: Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song ("Dani California"), Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal ("Dani California"), Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package, and Best Producer (Rick Rubin). The ceremony included a live performance of "Snow ((Hey Oh))", their single at the time, complete with confetti snow.

 

Following the last leg of the tour promoting Stadium Arcadium, the band members took an extended break. Kiedis attributed this to the band being worn out from their years of nonstop work since Californication. Kiedis explained that he was preoccupied with taking care of his new son and possibly creating a short television series called Spider and Son which is set to be a recap of his autobiography, while Flea signed up for a college course in music at USC, Frusciante continued his solo career and reached out his solo album, The Empyrean, and Chad Smith worked with Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, and Michael Anthony in the supergroup Chickenfoot, as well as on his solo project, Chad Smith's Bombastic Meatbats. The band planned to remain on hiatus for "a minimum of one year." The band's only recording during this time was in 2008 with George Clinton (who also produced 1985's Freaky Styley) on his latest album George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love. Accompanied by Kim Manning, the band recorded a new version of Shirley and Lee's classic "Let the Good Times Roll".

 

Three members of the band (Kiedis, Flea, and Smith) performed at the fifth annual MusiCares event honoring Kiedis on May 8, 2009. He was honored with the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award for his dedication and support of the MusiCares MAP Fund and for his commitment to helping other addicts with the addiction and recovery process. John Frusciante was unable to attend due to commitments in Europe at the time.

 

In September 2009 the band was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers are back in the studio as of October 12, 2009. Their next album should be released sometime in 2010, according to Chad Smith. Speaking to Clash magazine, Smith said that the album could be finished "Some time next year, maybe this time [next year]".. The band will make its live comeback with the full line-up on January 29, 2010, paying tribute to Neil Young at MusiCares., of which Anthony Kiedis was a previous recipient.

 

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers discography

 

1989 "Knock Me Down" - Modern #6

1989 "Higher Ground" - Mainstream #26 - Mod #11

1990 "Show Me Your Soul" - Mod #10

1991 "Give It Away" - Hot 100 #73 - Mod #1

1991 "Under the Bridge" - Hot #2 - Main #2 - Mod #6

1992 "Suck My Kiss" - Mod #15

1992 "Breaking the Girl" - Main #15 - Mod #19

1992 "Behind the Sun" - Mod #7

1993 "Soul to Squeeze" - #22 - #7 - #1

1995 "Warped" - Main #13 - Mod #7

1995 "My Friends" - #27 - #1 - #1

1996 "Aeroplane" - #45 - #12 - #8

1996 "Love Rollercoaster" - Mod #14

1999 "Scar Tissue" - #9 - #1 - #1

1999 "Around the World" - Main #16 - Mod #7

2000 "Otherside" - #14 - #2 - #1

2000 "Californication" - #69 - #1 - #1

2002 "By the Way" - #34 - #1 - #1

2002 "The Zephyr Song" - #49 - #14 - #6

2003 "Can't Stop" - #57 - #15 - #1

2003 "Fortune Faded" - Main #22 - Mod #8

2006 "Dani California" - #6 - #1 - #1

2006 "Tell Me Baby" - #50 - #8 - #1

2006 "Snow ((Hey Oh))" - #22 - #3 - #1

2007 "Hump de Bump" - Main #27 - Mod #8

 

Factoid: Anthony Kiedis appeared as a punk surfer in the 1991 movie, "Point Break" starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Kiedis' character gets shot in the foot.

 

"Dani California"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-dumgejta

[knightni]

9. Metallica

 

 

7 of 24 lists - 100 points - highest ranking #2 knightni

 

Metallica /məˈtælɨkə/ is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1981. Founded when drummer Lars Ulrich posted an advertisement in a local newspaper, Metallica's line-up has primarily consisted of Ulrich, rhythm guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, while going through a number of bassists. Currently, the spot is held by Robert Trujillo.

 

Metallica's early releases included fast tempos, instrumentals, and aggressive musicianship that placed them as one of the "big four" of the thrash metal subgenre alongside Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax during the genre's development into a popular style. The band earned a growing fan base in the underground music community and critical acclaim, with the 1986 release Master of Puppets described as one of the most influential and "heavy" thrash metal albums. The band achieved substantial commercial success with Metallica (1991), which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. With this release the band expanded its musical direction resulting in an album that appealed to a more mainstream audience.

 

In 2000, Metallica was among several artists who filed a lawsuit against Napster for sharing the band's copyright-protected material for free without the band members' consent. A settlement was reached, and Napster became a pay-to-use service. Despite reaching number one on the Billboard 200, the release of St. Anger alienated many fans with the exclusion of guitar solos and the "steel-sounding" snare drum. A film titled Some Kind of Monster documented the recording process of St. Anger.

 

Metallica has released nine studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, twenty-four music videos, and forty-five singles. The band has won nine Grammy Awards, and has had five consecutive albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200, making Metallica the only band, other than the Dave Matthews Band, to do so. The band's 1991 album, Metallica, has sold over 15 million copies in the United States, and 22 million copies worldwide, which makes it the 25th-highest-selling album in the country. The band has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide as of the release of their latest album, Death Magnetic. As of September 2008, Metallica is the fourth highest-selling music artist since the SoundScan era began tracking sales on May 25, 1991, selling a total of 51,136,000 albums in the United States alone.

 

Metallica was formed in Los Angeles, California, in early 1981 when drummer Lars Ulrich placed an advertisement in a Los Angeles newspaper—The Recycler—which read "Drummer looking for other metal musicians to jam with Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head and Iron Maiden." Guitarists James Hetfield and Hugh Tanner of Leather Charm answered the advertisement. Although he had not formed a band, Ulrich asked Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel if he could record a song for the label's upcoming compilation Metal Massacre. Slagel accepted, and Ulrich recruited Hetfield to sing and play rhythm guitar.

 

Ulrich talked to his friend Ron Quintana, who was brainstorming names for a fanzine. Quintana had proposed the names Metal Mania and Metallica. Ulrich used Metallica for the name of his band. A second advertisement was placed in The Recycler for a position as lead guitarist. Dave Mustaine answered, and, after seeing his expensive guitar equipment, Ulrich and Hetfield recruited him. In early 1982, Metallica recorded its first original song "Hit the Lights" for the Metal Massacre I compilation. Hetfield played bass on the song and Lloyd Grant was credited with a guitar solo. Released on June 14, 1982, early pressings of Metal Massacre I listed the band incorrectly as "Mettallica". Although angered by the error, Metallica managed to create enough "buzz" with the song and the band played its first live show on March 14, 1982, at Radio City in Anaheim, California with newly recruited bassist Ron McGovney. Metallica recorded its first demo, Power Metal, a name inspired by Quintana's early business cards in early 1982. In the fall of 1982, Ulrich and Hetfield attended a show at the nightclub Whisky a Go Go which featured bassist Cliff Burton in a band called Trauma. The two were "blown away" by Burton's use of a wah-wah pedal and asked him to join Metallica. Hetfield and Mustaine wanted McGovney out as they thought that he "didn't contribute anything, he just followed." Although Burton initially declined the offer, by the end of the year he accepted on the condition the band move to El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area. Metallica's first live performance with Burton was at the nightclub The Stone in March 1983, and the first recording to feature Burton was the 1983 Megaforce demo.

 

Metallica was ready to record its debut album, but when Metal Blade was unable to cover the additional cost, the band began looking for other options. Concert promoter Johnny "Z" Zazula, who had heard the 1982 No Life 'til Leather demo, offered to broker a record deal with Metallica and New York City-based record labels. After receiving no interest from various record labels, Zazula borrowed the money to cover the record's recording budget and signed Metallica to his own label, Megaforce Records. Band members decided to kick Mustaine out of the band due to drug and alcohol abuse and violent behavior. Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett flew in to replace Mustaine the same afternoon. Metallica's first show with Hammett was on April 16, 1983, at the nightclub The Showplace in Dover, New Jersey.

 

Mustaine, who went on to found Megadeth, has expressed his dislike for Hammett in interviews. He said Hammett "stole my job." Mustaine was "pissed off" because he believes Hammett became popular by playing the guitar leads that Mustaine wrote. In a 1985 interview with Metal Forces, Mustaine slammed Hammett saying, "it's real funny how Kirk Hammett ripped off every lead break I'd played on that No Life 'til Leather tape and got voted No. 1 guitarist in your magazine." On Megadeth's 1985 debut album Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good!, Mustaine included the song "Mechanix", which Metallica renamed as "The Four Horsemen" on Kill 'Em All. Mustaine said he did this to "straighten Metallica up", as Metallica referred to Mustaine as a drunk and said he could not play guitar.

 

In 1983, Metallica traveled to Rochester, New York to record its first album, Metal up Your Ass, with production duties handled by Paul Curcio. Due to conflicts with the band's record label and the distributors' refusal to release an album with that name, it was renamed Kill 'Em All. Released on Megaforce Records in the United States and Music for Nations in Europe, the album peaked on the Billboard 200 at number 120 in 1988, and although the album was not initially a financial success, it earned Metallica a growing fan base in the underground metal scene. The band embarked on the Kill 'Em All For One tour with Raven to support the release. In February 1984, Metallica supported Venom on the Seven Dates of Hell tour, where they performed in front of 7,000 people at the Aardschok Festival in Zwolle, Netherlands.

 

Metallica recorded its second studio album, Ride the Lightning, at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark. Released in August 1984, the album peaked at number 100 on the Billboard 200. A French printing press mistakenly printed green covers for the album, which are now considered collectors' items. Other songs on the album include "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Fade to Black", "Creeping Death" (which tells the biblical story of the Hebrews' exodus from slavery in Egypt, focusing on the various plagues that were visited on the Egyptians), and the instrumental "The Call of Ktulu". Mustaine received a writing credit for "Ride the Lightning" and "The Call of Ktulu".

 

Elektra Records A&R director Michael Alago, and co-founder of Q-Prime Management Cliff Burnstein, attended a September 1984 Metallica concert. Impressed with what they saw, they signed Metallica to Elektra Records and made the band a client of Q-Prime Management. Metallica's burgeoning success was such that the band's British label Music for Nations issued a limited edition Creeping Death EP, which sold 40,000 copies as an import in the U.S. Two of the three songs on the record (cover versions of Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?", and Blitzkrieg's "Blitzkrieg") appeared on the 1989 Elektra reissue of Kill 'Em All. Metallica embarked on its first major European tour with Tank to an average crowd of 1,300. Returning to the U.S. marked a tour co-headlining with W.A.S.P. and Armored Saint supporting. Metallica played its largest show at the Monsters of Rock festival on August 17, 1985, with Bon Jovi and Ratt at Donington Park in England, playing in front of 70,000 people. A show in Oakland, California, at the Day on the Green festival saw the band play in front of a crowd of 60,000.

 

Metallica's third studio album, Master of Puppets was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios and was released in March 1986. The album peaked at number 29 on the Billboard 200, and spent 72 weeks on the chart. The album was the band's first to be certified gold on November 4, 1986, and was certified six times platinum in 2003. Steve Huey of Allmusic considered the album "the band's greatest achievement". Following the release of the album, Metallica supported Ozzy Osbourne for a United States tour. Hetfield broke his wrist skateboarding down a hill and continued the tour performing vocals, with guitar technician John Marshall playing rhythm guitar.

 

On September 27, 1986, during the European leg of Metallica's Damage Inc. tour, members drew cards to see which bunk of the tour bus they would sleep in. Burton won and chose to sleep in Hammett's bunk. Around dawn near Dörarp, Sweden, the bus driver lost control and skidded, which caused the bus to flip several times. Ulrich, Hammett, and Hetfield sustained no serious injuries; however, bassist Burton was pinned under the bus and was killed. Hetfield recalls, "I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I freaked. The bus driver, I recall, was trying to yank the blanket out from under him to use for other people. I just went, 'Don't f***ing do that!' I already wanted to kill the guy." Burton's death left Metallica's future in doubt. The three remaining members decided that Burton would want them to carry on, and with the Burton family's blessings, the band sought a replacement.

 

Roughly 40 people tried out for auditions including Hammett's childhood friend Les Claypool of Primus, Troy Gregory of Prong, and Jason Newsted, formerly of Flotsam and Jetsam. Newsted learned Metallica's entire setlist, and after the audition Metallica invited him to Tommy's Joynt in San Francisco. Hetfield, Ulrich, and Hammett decided that Newsted was the one to replace Burton, and Newsted's first live performance with Metallica was at the Country Club in Reseda, California. The members took it on themselves to "initiate" Newsted by tricking him into eating a ball of wasabi.

 

In March 1987, Hetfield broke his wrist a second time skateboarding. Guitar technician Marshall returned playing rhythm guitar, but the injury forced the band to cancel a Saturday Night Live appearance. Metallica finished its tour in the early months of 1987, and in August 1987 an all-covers EP titled The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited was released. The EP was recorded in an effort to utilize the band's newly constructed recording studio, test out the talents of Newsted, and to relieve grief and stress following the death of Burton. A video titled Cliff 'Em All was released in 1987 commemorating Burton's three years in Metallica. Footage included bass solos, home videos, and pictures.

 

…And Justice for All, the group's first studio album since Burton's death, was released in 1988. The album was a commercial success, peaking at number six on the Billboard 200, the band's first album to enter the top 10. The album was certified platinum nine weeks after its release. Newsted's bass was purposely turned down on the album as a part of the continuous "hazing" he received, and his musical ideas were ignored (However, he did receive a writing credit on track one, "Blackened"). There were complaints with the production; namely, Steve Huey of Allmusic noted Ulrich's drums were clicking more than thudding, and the guitars "buzz thinly". The Damaged Justice tour followed to promote the album.

 

In 1989, Metallica received its first Grammy Award nomination for …And Justice for All, in the new Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrument category. Metallica was the favorite to win; however, the award was given to Jethro Tull for the album Crest of a Knave. The result generated controversy among fans and the press, as Metallica was standing off-stage waiting to receive the award after performing the song "One". Jethro Tull had been advised by its manager not to attend the ceremony as he was expecting Metallica to win. The award was named in Entertainment Weekly's "Grammy's 10 Biggest Upsets".

 

Following the release of …And Justice for All, Metallica released its debut music video for the song "One". The band performed the song in an abandoned warehouse, and footage was remixed with the film, Johnny Got His Gun. Rather than organize an ongoing licensing deal, Metallica purchased the rights to the film. The remixed video was submitted to MTV, with the alternate performance-only version held back in the event that MTV banned the remix version. MTV accepted the remix version, and the video was viewers' first exposure to Metallica. It was voted number 38 in 1999 when MTV aired its "Top 100 Videos of All Time" countdown, and was featured in the network's 25th Anniversary edition of ADD Video, which showcased the most popular videos on MTV in the last 25 years.

 

In October 1990, Metallica entered One on One studio in North Hollywood to record its next album. Bob Rock, who had worked with the bands The Cult, Bon Jovi, and Mötley Crüe, was hired as producer. Metallica (also known as "The Black Album") was remixed three times, cost $1 million, and ended three marriages. Although the release was stalled until 1991, Metallica debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 650,000 units in its first week. The album was responsible for bringing Metallica to the attention of the mainstream and has been certified 15 times platinum in the United States, which makes it the 26th highest-selling album in the country. The making of Metallica and the following tour was documented in A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. Dubbed the Wherever We May Roam Tour, it lasted 14 months and included dates in the United States, Japan, and the UK.

 

On August 8, 1992, during the co-headlining GNR-Metallica Stadium Tour with Guns N' Roses, Hetfield suffered second and third degree burns to his arms, face, hands, and legs. There was confusion with the new pyrotechnics setup, which resulted with Hetfield walking into a 12-foot (3.7 m) flame during "Fade to Black". Newsted recalls Hetfield's skin was "bubbling like on The Toxic Avenger". Guitar technician John Marshall, who had previously filled in on rhythm guitar and was now playing in Metal Church, replaced Hetfield for the remainder of the tour as Hetfield was unable to play guitar, although he was able to sing. The band's first box set was released in November 1993 called Live s***: Binge & Purge. The collection contained three live CDs, three home videos, and a book filled with riders and letters.

 

After almost three years of touring to support Metallica, including a headlining performance at Woodstock '94, Metallica returned to the studio to write and record its sixth studio album. The band took a break in the summer of 1995 and played three outdoor shows which included headlining Donington Park in the United Kingdom, supported by Slayer, Skid Row, Slash's Snakepit, Therapy?, and Corrosion of Conformity. The short tour was titled Escape From The Studio '95. The band spent roughly one year writing and recording new songs, resulting in the release of Load in 1996, which entered the Billboard 200 and ARIA Charts at number one, marking the band's second number one. The cover of Load was created by Andres Serrano, and was called Blood and Semen III. Serrano pressed a mixture of his own semen and bovine blood between sheets of plexiglass. The release marked a change in musical direction for the band and a new look with band members receiving haircuts. Metallica headlined the alternative rock festival Lollapalooza in the summer of 1996.

 

During early production of the album, the band had produced enough material for a double album. It was decided that half of the songs were to be released, and the band would continue to work on the remaining songs and release them the following year. This resulted in the follow-up album, ReLoad. The cover was created by Serrano, this time using a mixture of blood and urine. ReLoad peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, and number two on the Top Canadian Album chart. Hetfield noted in the 2004 documentary film Some Kind of Monster that the songs on these albums were initially thought by the band to be of average quality, and were "polished and reworked" until judged to be releasable. To promote ReLoad, Metallica performed on NBC's Saturday Night Live in December 1997, performing "Fuel" and "The Memory Remains" with Marianne Faithfull.

 

In 1998, Metallica compiled a double album of cover songs titled Garage Inc.. The first disc contained newly recorded covers by bands such as Diamond Head, Killing Joke, The Misfits, Thin Lizzy, Mercyful Fate, and Black Sabbath. The second disc featured the original The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited, which had become a scarce collectors' item. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number two.

 

On April 21 and April 22, 1999, Metallica recorded two performances with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen. Kamen, who had previously worked with producer Rock on "Nothing Else Matters", approached the band in 1991 with the idea of pairing Metallica's music with a symphony orchestra. Kamen and his staff of over 100 composed additional orchestral material for Metallica songs. Metallica wrote two new Kamen-scored songs for the event, "No Leaf Clover" and "-Human". The audio recording and concert footage were released in 1999 as the album and concert film S&M. It entered the Billboard 200 at number two, and the Australian ARIA charts and Top Internet Albums chart at number one.

 

As plans were being made to enter the recording studio, Newsted left the band on January 17, 2001. His statement revealed his departure was based on "private and personal reasons, and the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love." During a Playboy interview with Metallica, Newsted revealed intentions he wanted to release an album with his side project, Echobrain. Hetfield was against the idea and said, "When someone does a side project, it takes away from the strength of Metallica" and a side project is "like cheating on your wife in a way". Newsted countered his statement by saying Hetfield recorded vocals for a song in the film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and appears on two Corrosion of Conformity albums. Hetfield replied, "My name isn't on those records. And I'm not out trying to sell them", and pondered questions such as, "Where would it end? Does he start touring with it? Does he sell shirts? Is it his band?"

 

Robert Trujillo was announced as Metallica's new bassist on February 24, 2003

 

In April 2001, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky began following Metallica to document the recording process of the next studio album. Over two years, more than 1,000 hours of footage was recorded. On July 19, 2001, before preparations to enter the recording studio, Hetfield entered rehab due to "alcoholism and other addictions". All recording plans were put on hiatus and the band's future was in doubt. However, when Hetfield returned on December 4, 2001, the band returned to the recording studio and Hetfield was required to work four hours a day, noon to 4 PM, and spend the rest of his time with his family. The footage recorded by Berlinger and Sinofsky was compiled into the documentary, Some Kind of Monster, which premiered at the Sundance film festival. In the documentary, Newsted described his former bandmates' decision to hire a therapist to help solve their problems which they could have solved on their own as "really f***ing lame and weak".

 

Metallica held auditions for Newsted's permanent replacement in early 2003, after St Anger 's completion, for which Bob Rock recorded bass. Bassists that auditioned included Pepper Keenan, Jeordie White, Scott Reeder, Eric Avery, Danny Lohner, and Chris Wyse. Following three months of auditions, Robert Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne's band, was chosen as the new bassist. As Metallica moved on, Newsted joined Canadian thrash metal band Voivod in 2002, and was Trujillo's replacement in Osbourne's band during the 2003 Ozzfest tour, which included Voivod as part of the touring bill.

 

In June 2003, Metallica's eighth studio album, St. Anger, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and drew mixed reaction from critics. Ulrich's "steely" sounding snare drum, and the absence of guitar solos received particular criticism. Kevin Forest Moreau of Shakingthrough.net commented that "the guitars stumble in a monotone of mid-level, processed rattle; the drums don't propel as much as struggle to disguise an all-too-turgid pace; and the rage is both unfocused and leavened with too much narcissistic navel-gazing", and Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork Media described it as "an utter mess". However, Blender magazine called it the "grimiest and grimmest of the band's Bob Rock productions", and New York Magazine called it "utterly raw and rocking". The title track, "St. Anger", won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2004, and was used as the official theme song for WWE's SummerSlam 2003.

 

In 2006, Metallica announced on its official website that after 15 years, long-time producer Bob Rock was stepping down and would not be producing Metallica's next studio album. Metallica chose to work with producer Rick Rubin, who has produced albums for the bands Danzig, Slayer, Slipknot and System of a Down. Metallica set the release date for the album Death Magnetic as September 12, 2008, and they filmed a music video for the first single "The Day That Never Comes".

 

On September 2, 2008, a French record store began selling copies of Death Magnetic nearly two weeks ahead of its scheduled worldwide release date, which resulted in the album being made available on peer-to-peer clients. This prompted the band's United Kingdom distributor, Vertigo Records, to officially release the album two days ahead of schedule, on September 10, 2008. It is currently unconfirmed whether Metallica or Warner Bros. will be taking any action against the retailer, though drummer Lars Ulrich has made such responses to the leak as, "…We're ten days from release. I mean, from here, we're golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me," and, "By 2008 standards, that's a victory. If you'd told me six months ago that our record wouldn't leak until 10 days out, I would have signed up for that."

 

Death Magnetic debuted at number one in several countries to make it top the Australian, Canadian, Mexican and European album chart. Selling 490,000 units in the United States to debut at number one, Metallica became the first band to have five consecutive studio albums debut at number one in the history of the Billboard 200. After a week of its release, Death Magnetic remained at number one on the Billboard 200, the European album chart, and became the fastest selling album in Australia for 2008.

 

Death Magnetic stayed at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart for three consecutive weeks. Metallica became the only artist, aside from Jack Johnson with the release of the album Sleep Through the Static, to remain on the Billboard 200 for three consecutive weeks at number one in 2008. Death Magnetic had also remained at number one on Billboard's Hard Rock, Modern Rock/Alternative and Rock album charts for five consecutive weeks. Internationally, the album peaked at number one in 32 countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

 

Death Magnetic is a return by Metallica to their mid-eighties heavy/thrash metal roots. It is more similar to Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All rather than their more recent albums.

 

Since this album's success, MTV Europe nominated Metallica in two categories (Rock Out and Headliner) of their Music Awards edition and also MTV Latin America invited them to perform in their Music Awards edition. Metallica performed "The Day That Never Comes." On October 21, 2008, Metallica started their World Magnetic Tour.

 

In November 2008, Metallica came to the end of their record deal with Warner Bros., and the band is now considering their options for the future and, according to Ulrich, one of their options is to release their next album through the internet. Recently, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett were added to "Chop Shop's" list of "Top 100 Most Complete Guitar Players of All Time" at number fourteen and twenty-six, respectively.

 

On January 14, 2009, it was announced that Metallica would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4, 2009, and that former bassist Jason Newsted (who left the band in 2001), would perform with the band at the ceremony. Initially, it was announced that the matter had been discussed, and that current bassist Robert Trujillo had agreed not to play, as he "wanted to see the Black Album band". However, during the band's set of "Master of Puppets" and "Enter Sandman", both Trujillo and Newsted were on stage. Ray Burton, the father of late bassist Cliff Burton accepted the honor on his behalf. Metallica also invited Dave Mustaine to take part in the induction ceremony, but he declined, citing his touring commitments in Europe.

 

On May 27, 2009, it was announced on Metallica's website that a new live DVD will be filmed at the Mexico City, Mexico and Nimes, France shows. The Nimes concert will be released as Francais Pour Une Nuit on October 19, 2009.

 

In a June 2009 interview with Italy's Rock TV, Ulrich stated that Metallica plans to continue touring through August 2010. He also stated that there are currently no plans for a tenth album, but is sure that they are going to do one with Rick Rubin again. According to Blabbermouth.net, the band may start thinking about recording their next album in the second half of 2011.

 

Metallica discography

 

1989 "One" - Hot 100 #35 - Mainstream #46

1991 "Enter Sandman" - H #16 - Ma #10

1991 "The Unforgiven" - H #35 - Ma #10

1992 "Nothing Else Matters" - H #34 - Ma #11

1992 "Wherever I May Roam" - H #82 - Ma #25

1992 "Sad but True" - H #98 - Ma #15

1996 "Until It Sleeps" - H #10 - Ma #1 - Mo #27

1996 "Ain't My b****" - Ma #15

1996 "Hero of the Day" - H #60 - Ma #1

1997 "King Nothing" - H #90 - Ma #6

1997 "Bleeding Me" - Ma #6

1997 "The Memory Remains" - H #28 - Ma #3

1998 "The Unforgiven II" - H #59 - Ma #2

1998 "Fuel" - Ma #6

1998 "Better than You" - Ma #7

1998 "Turn the Page" - H #102 - Ma #1 - Mo #39

1999 "Whiskey in the Jar" - H #124 - Ma #4

1999 "Die, Die My Darling" - Ma #26

1999 "No Leaf Clover" - H #74 - Ma #1 - Mo #18

2000 "I Disappear" - H #76 - Ma #1 - Mo #11

2003 "St. Anger" - H #107 - Ma #2 - Mo #17

2003 "Frantic" - Ma #21

2004 "The Unnamed Feeling" - Ma #28

2004 "Some Kind of Monster" - Ma #19

2007 "The Ecstasy of Gold" - Ma #21

2008 "The Day That Never Comes" - H #31 - Ma #1 - Mo #5

2008 "My Apocalypse" - H #67 - Ma #38

2008 "Cyanide" - H #50 - Ma #1 - Mo #19

2008 "The Judas Kiss" - H #112

2008 "All Nightmare Long" - Ma #9

2009 "Broken, Beat & Scarred" - Ma #17

 

Factoid: In 1999, Metallica filed suit against women's lingerie giant Victoria's Secret seeking injunctive relief and damages. The suit alleged that Victoria's Secret used the name "Metallica" on lip pencils without authorization.

 

"Master of Puppets"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-mrzhgcez

[knightni]

8. Jimi Hendrix

 

 

8 of 24 lists - 133 points - highest ranking #2 Sox1422

 

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is often considered to be the greatest electric guitarist in the history of rock music by other musicians and commentators in the industry, and one of the most important and influential musicians of his era across a range of genres. After initial success in Europe, he achieved fame in the United States following his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Later, Hendrix headlined the iconic 1969 Woodstock Festival and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Hendrix often favored raw overdriven amplifiers with high gain and treble and helped develop the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback. Hendrix was one of the musicians who popularized the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock which he often used to deliver an exaggerated pitch in his solos, particularly with high bends and use of legato based around the pentatonic scale. He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, and Elmore James, rhythm and blues and soul guitarists Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, as well as by some modern jazz. In 1966, Hendrix, who played and recorded with Little Richard's band from 1964 to 1965, was quoted as saying, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."

 

Carlos Santana has suggested that Hendrix's music may have been influenced by his partly Native American heritage. As a record producer, Hendrix also broke new ground in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. He was one of the first to experiment with stereophonic and phasing effects for rock recording.

 

Hendrix won many of the most prestigious rock music awards in his lifetime, and has been posthumously awarded many more, including being inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected in his name on his former residence at Brook Street, London, in September 1997. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6627 Hollywood Blvd.) was dedicated in 1994. In 2006, his debut US album, Are You Experienced, was inducted into the United States National Recording Registry, and Rolling Stone named Hendrix the top guitarist on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all-time in 2003. He was also the first person inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame.

 

Hendrix played his first successful studio session on the two-part Isley Brothers single "Testify". In Nashville, he left the band to work with Gorgeous George Odell. Gorgeous George's manager, George Nash, allowed Hendrix to sit in with Little Richard's band "The Upsetters" in Atlanta. On March 1, 1964, Hendrix (then calling himself Maurice James) began recording and performing with Little Richard. Hendrix, in awe of Little Richard, adopted the rocker's flamboyant taste in clothing and grew a mustache like his. His playing also seems to have been affected by Little Richard, since he had been playing blues when he started with Little Richard, and subsequently played in a more rocking style. Hendrix would later (1966) say, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice." During a stop in Los Angeles while touring with Little Richard in 1965, Hendrix played a session for Rosa Lee Brooks on her single "My Diary". This was his first recorded involvement with Arthur Lee of the band "Love". While in L.A., he also played on the session for Little Richard's final single for Vee-Jay, "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me". He later made his first recorded TV appearance on Nashville's Channel 5 "Night Train" with "The Royal Company" backing up "Buddy and Stacy" on "Shotgun". Hendrix clashed with Richard, over tardiness, wardrobe, and, above all, Hendrix's stage antics. On tour with Richard they shared billing a couple of times with Ike and Tina Turner. It has been suggested that he left Richard and played with Ike & Tina briefly before returning to Richard, but there is no firm evidence to support this, and this is emphatically denied by Tina. Months later, he was either fired or he left after missing the tour bus in Washington, D.C. He then re-joined the Isley Brothers in the summer of 1965 and recorded a second single with them, "Move Over and Let Me Dance" backed with "Have You Ever Been Disappointed" (1965 Atlantic 45-2303).

 

Later in 1965, Hendrix joined a New York-based R&B band, Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of the Hotel America, off Times Square, where both men were living at the time. "Though the Squires were vastly inferior to other bands Jimi had played with", he performed on and off with them for eight months. In October 1965, Hendrix recorded a single with Curtis Knight, "How Would You Feel" backed with "Welcome Home" (1966 RSVP 1120) and on October 15 he signed a three-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin, receiving $1 and 1% royalty. While the relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, his contract remained in force, which caused considerable problems for Hendrix later on in his career. The legal dispute has continued to the present day. (Several songs (and demos) from the 1965-1966 Curtis Knight recording sessions, deemed not worth releasing at the time, were marketed as "Jimi Hendrix" recordings after he became famous.) Without sufficient income from Curtis Knight and the Squires, Hendrix then toured for two months with Joey Dee and the Starliters, who had a #1 Top 40 pop hit in 1962 with "Peppermint Twist" (1962 Roulette 4401).

 

In between performing with Curtis Knight in 1966, Hendrix toured and recorded with King Curtis, an established R&B saxophone player and band leader, who had a #1 R&B (and a #17 Pop) hit in 1962 with "Soul Twist" (1962 Enjoy 1000). Hendrix recorded the two-part single "Help Me (Get the Feeling)" with Ray Sharpe and the King Curtis Orchestra (1966 Atco 45-6402) (the backing track was subsequently overdubbed by other vocalists with different lyrics and released as new songs). Later in 1966, Hendrix also recorded with Lonnie Youngblood, a saxophone player who occasionally performed with Curtis Knight. The sessions produced two singles for Youngblood: "Go Go Shoes"/"Go Go Place" (Fairmount F-1002) and "Soul Food (That's What I Like)"/"Goodbye Bessie Mae" (Fairmount F-1022). Additionally, singles for other artists came out of the sessions: The Icemen's "(My Girl) She's a Fox"/ "(I Wonder) What It Takes" (1966 SAMAR S-111) and Jimmy Norman's "You're Only Hurting Yourself"/"That Little Old Groove Maker" (1966 SAMAR S-112). As with the King Curtis recordings, backing tracks and alternate takes for the Youngblood sessions would be overdubbed and otherwise manipulated to create many "new" tracks. (Many Youngblood tracks without any Hendrix involvement would later be marketed as "Jimi Hendrix" recordings). Also around this time in 1966, Hendrix got his first composer credits for two instrumentals "Hornets Nest" and "Knock Yourself Out", released as a Curtis Knight and the Squires single (1966 RSVP 1124).

 

Hendrix formed his own band, known as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, composed of Randy Palmer (bass), Danny Casey (drums), a 15-year-old guitarist who played slide and rhythm named Randy Wolfe, and the occasional stand in June 1966. (The band was billed as The Blue Flame in the only surviving advert for them and referred to by John Hammond and also Hendrix himself in his 1969 interview with Nancy Carter.) Since there were two musicians named "Randy" in the group, Hendrix dubbed Wolfe "Randy California" (as he had recently moved from there to New York City) and Palmer (a Tejano) "Randy Texas". Randy California would later co-found the band Spirit with his stepfather, drummer Ed Cassidy.

 

Hendrix and his new band played at several places in New York, but their primary venue was a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. The street runs along "Washington (Square) Park" which appeared in at least two of Hendrix's songs. Their last concerts were at the Cafe au Go Go, as John Hammond Jr.'s backing group, billed as "The Blue Flame". Singer-guitarist Ellen McIlwaine and guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter also claim to have briefly worked with Hendrix in this period.

 

Early in 1966 at the Cheetah Club on Broadway at 53rd Street, Linda Keith, then girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, befriended Hendrix and recommended him to Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein. Neither man took a liking to Hendrix's music, and they both passed. She then referred Hendrix to Chas Chandler, who was ending his tenure as bassist in The Animals and looking for talent to manage and produce. Chandler was enamored with the song "Hey Joe" and was convinced he could create a hit single with the right artist.

 

Impressed with Hendrix's version, Chandler brought him to London and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler then helped Hendrix form a new band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, both English musicians. Shortly before the Experience was formed, Chandler introduced Hendrix to Pete Townshend and to Eric Clapton, who had only recently helped put together Cream. At Chandler's request, Cream let Hendrix join them on stage for a jam on the song "Killing Floor". Hendrix and Clapton remained friends up until Hendrix's death. The first night he arrived in London, he began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham that lasted until February 1969. She later wrote a well received autobiographical book about their relationship and the sixties London scene in general.

 

Hendrix sometimes had a camp sense of humor, specifically with the song "Purple Haze". A mondegreen had appeared, in which the line "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" was misheard as "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy." In a few performances, Hendrix humorously used this, deliberately singing "kiss this guy" while pointing to Mitch or Noel, as he did at Monterey. In the Woodstock DVD he deliberately points to the sky at this point, to make it clear. A volume of misheard lyrics has been published, using this mondegreen itself as the title, with Hendrix on the cover.

 

After his enthusiastically received performance at France's No. 1 venue, the Olympia theatre in Paris on the Johnny Hallyday tour, an on-stage jam with Cream, a showcase gig at the newly-opened, pop-celebrity oriented nightclub Bag O'Nails and the all important appearances on the top UK TV pop shows "Ready Steady Go!" and the BBC's "Top of the Pops", word of Hendrix spread throughout the London music community in late 1966. His showmanship and virtuosity made instant fans of reigning guitar heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, as well as Brian Jones and members of The Beatles and The Who, whose managers signed Hendrix to their new record label, Track Records.

 

Hendrix's first single was a cover of "Hey Joe", using Tim Rose's uniquely slower arrangement of the song including his addition of a female backing chorus. Backing this first 1966 "Experience" single was Hendrix's first songwriting effort, "Stone Free". Further success came in early 1967 with "Purple Haze" which featured the "Hendrix chord" and "The Wind Cries Mary". The three singles were all UK Top 10 hits and were also popular internationally including Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (though failed to sell when released later in the US). Onstage, Hendrix was also making an impression with fiery renditions of the B.B. King hit "Rock Me Baby" and a fast version of Howlin' Wolf's hit "Killing Floor".

 

The first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, was released in the United Kingdom on May 12, 1967 and shortly thereafter internationally, outside of USA and Canada. It contained none of the previously released (outside North America) singles or their B sides ("Hey Joe/Stone Free", "Purple Haze/51st Anniversary" and "The Wind Cries Mary/Highway Chile"). Only The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band prevented Are You Experienced from reaching No. 1 on the UK charts.

 

At this time, the Experience extensively toured the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. This allowed Hendrix to develop his stage presence, which reached a high point on March 31, 1967, when, booked to appear as one of the opening acts on the Walker Brothers farewell tour, he set his guitar on fire at the end of his first performance, as a publicity stunt. This guitar has now been identified as the "Zappa guitar" (previously thought to have been from Miami), which has been partly refurbished. Later, as part of this press promotion campaign, there were articles about Rank Theatre management warning him to "tone down" his "suggestive" stage act, with Chandler stating that the group would not compromise regardless. On June 4, 1967, the Experience played their last show in England, at London's Saville Theatre, before heading off to America. The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album had just been released on June 1 and two Beatles (Paul McCartney and George Harrison) were in attendance, along with a roll call of other UK rock stardom, including: Brian Epstein, Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis, Jack Bruce, and pop singer Lulu. Hendrix chose to open the show with his own rendition of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", rehearsed only minutes before taking the stage, much to McCartney's astonishment and delight.

 

While on tour in Sweden in 1967, Hendrix jammed with the duo Hansson & Karlsson, and later opened several concerts with their song "Tax Free", also recording a cover of it during the Electric Ladyland sessions. Just one example of his strong connection with that country, he played there frequently throughout his career, and his only son James Daniel Sundquist was born there in 1969 to a Swede, Eva Sundquist, recognized as such by the Swedish courts and paid a settlement by Experience Hendrix LLC. He wrote a poem to a woman there (probably Sundquist). Sundquist had anonymously sent Hendrix roses on each of his opening nights in Stockholm, only revealing herself after his third visit in January 1969, and conceiving Daniel with him. He also had an expatriate musician friend who lived there, "King" George Clemmons, who played backup at one concert and socialized with him on at least two of his visits there. Hendrix also dedicated songs to the Swedish-based Vietnam deserters organization in 1969.

 

Months later, Reprise Records released the US and Canadian version of Are You Experienced with a new cover by Karl Ferris, removing "Red House", "Remember" and "Can You See Me" to make room for the first three single A-sides. Where the (Rest of the World) album kicked off with "Foxy Lady", the US and Canadian one started with "Purple Haze". Both versions offered a startling introduction to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the album was a blueprint for what had become possible on an electric guitar, basically recorded on four tracks, mixed into mono and only modified at this point by a "fuzz" pedal, reverb and a small bit of the experimental "Octavia" pedal on "Purple Haze", produced by Roger Meyer in consultation with Hendrix. A remix using the mostly mono backing tracks with the guitar and vocal overdubs separated and occasionally panned to create a stereo mix was also released, only in the US and Canada.

 

Although very popular internationally at this time, the Experience had yet to crack America, their first single there failed to sell. Their chance came when Paul McCartney recommended the group to the organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival. This proved to be a great opportunity for Hendrix, not only because of the large audience present at the event, but also because of the many journalists covering the event that wrote about him. The performances were filmed by D. A. Pennebaker and later shown in some movie theaters around the country in early 1969 as the concert documentary Monterey Pop, which immortalized Hendrix's iconic burning and smashing of his guitar at the finale of his performance.

 

The opening song was Hendrix's very fast arrangement of Howlin' Wolf's 1965 R&B hit "Killing Floor". He played this frequently from late 1965 through 1968, usually as the opener to his shows. The Monterey performance included an equally lively rendition of B.B. King's 1964 R&B hit "Rock Me Baby", Tim Rose's "Hey Joe" and Bob Dylan's 1965 Pop hit "Like a Rolling Stone". The set ended with The Troggs "Wild Thing" and Hendrix repeating the act that had boosted his profile in the UK (and internationally) with him burning his guitar on stage, then smashing it to bits and tossing pieces out to the audience. This show finally brought Hendrix to the notice of the US public. A large chunk of this guitar was on display at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, along with the other psychedelically painted Stratocaster that Hendrix smashed (but didn't burn) at his farewell concert in England before he left for the US and Monterey.

 

At the time Hendrix was playing sets in the Scene club in NYC in July 1967, he met Frank Zappa, whose Mothers of Invention were playing the adjacent Garrick Theater, and he was reportedly fascinated by Zappa's recently-purchased wah-wah pedal. Hendrix immediately bought one from Manny's and starting using it right away on the sessions for both sides of his new single, and slightly later, on several jams he played on at Ed Chalpin's studio.

 

Following the festival, the Experience played a series of concerts at Bill Graham's Fillmore replacing the original headliners Jefferson Airplane at the top of the bill. It was at this time that Hendrix became acquainted with future musical collaborator Stephen Stills, and re-acquainted himself with Buddy Miles who introduced Hendrix to his future partner - Devon Wilson. She had a turbulent on/off relationship with him, right up to the night of his death, and was the only one of his women to record with him. She died only six months after Hendrix under mysterious circumstances, apparently falling from an upper window in the Chelsea Hotel.

 

Following this very successful West Coast introduction, which also included two open air concerts (one of them a free concert in the "Pan handle" of Golden Gate Park) and a concert at the Whisky a Go Go, they were booked as one of the opening acts for pop group The Monkees on their first American tour. The Monkees asked for Hendrix because they were fans, but their (mostly early teens) audience sometimes did not warm to their act, and he quit the tour after a few dates. Chas Chandler later admitted that being thrown off the Monkees tour was engineered to gain maximum media impact and publicity for Hendrix, similar to that gained from the manufactured Rank Theatre's "indecency" "dispute" on the earlier UK Walker Brothers tour. At the time, a story circulated claiming that Hendrix was removed from the tour because of complaints made by the Daughters of the American Revolution that his stage conduct was "lewd and indecent". Australian journalist Lillian Roxon, accompanying the tour, concocted the story.

 

Meanwhile in Western Europe, where Hendrix was also appreciated for his authentic blues renditions as well as his hit singles there, and was often recognized for his avant-garde musical ideas, his wild-man image and musical gimmickry (such as playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his back) had faded; but they later plagued him in the US following Monterey. He became frustrated by the US media and audience when they concentrated on his stage tricks and most well known songs.

 

The Jimi Hendrix Experience's second 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love was his first recording made with a view to a stereo release and was where he first experimented with this format, using much panning and other stereo effects. It continued the style established by Are You Experienced, but showcased a profound use of melody, along with his well-known technical virtuosity, with tracks such as "Little Wing" and "If 6 Was 9". The opening track, "EXP", featured a stereo effect in which a ruckus of sound emanating from Hendrix's guitar appeared to revolve around the listener, fading out into the distance from the right channel, then returning in on the left. This album marked the first time Hendrix recorded the whole album with his guitar tuned down one half-step, to E♭, which he used exclusively thereafter and was his first to feature the wah-wah pedal and on 'Bold As Love' was probably the first record to feature the stereo phasing technique.

 

A mishap almost delayed the album's pre-Christmas release: Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a London taxi. With the release deadline looming, Hendrix, Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer had to re-mix most of side one in an overnight session, but they couldn't match the lost mix of "If 6 was 9". It was only saved by the discovery that bassist Noel Redding had a copy of it on tape, which had to be flattened as it was wrinkled. Hendrix was disappointed that the album had to be finished so quickly and felt it could have been better, given more time. He was also somewhat disappointed with Track Records British designers who created the album's cover art. He remarked that it would have been more appropriate if the cover had highlighted his American-Indian heritage. The cover art depicts Hendrix and his Experience bandmates as the various forms of Vishnu, incorporating a painting of them by Roger Law (from a photo-portrait by Karl Ferris).

 

The album was released in the UK near the end of their first headlining tour there, after which the pace briefly settled down a bit for a Christmas break. In January 1968 the group went to Sweden for a short tour, and after the first show Hendrix, reportedly after drinking and according to Hendrix his drink being spiked, went berserk and smashed up his hotel room in a rage, injuring his hand and culminating in his arrest. Then on the 6th in Denmark his famous hat was stolen. The rest of the tour was uneventful, though Hendrix had to spend some time in Sweden waiting for his trial and eventual large fine.

 

Hendrix's third recording, the double album Electric Ladyland (1968), was a departure from previous efforts. Following his third and penultimate French concert at the Paris Olympia, Hendrix flew to the US to start his first tour there, and after two months returned to his Electric Ladyland project at the newly opened Record Plant Studios with engineers Eddie Kramer and Gary Kellgren and initially Chas Chandler as producer.

 

As the album's recording progressed, Chas Chandler became so frustrated with Hendrix's perfectionism and with various friends and hangers-on milling about the studio that he decided to sever his professional relationship with Hendrix. Chandler's professional and musical education was very business-oriented, and it taught him that songs should be recorded in a matter of hours, and written with a view to releasing them as singles. His influence over the Experience's first two albums is clear in light of the facts that very few of the tracks are more than four minutes long, that both albums were recorded in a short time, and that most of the songs conformed to the structure of a typical pop song. However, as Hendrix began developing his own vision and started to assert more control over the artistic process in the studio, Chandler decided to move to other opportunities and ceded overall control to Hendrix. Chandler's departure had a clear impact on the artistic direction that the recording took.

 

Hendrix began experimenting with different combinations of musicians and instruments, and modern electronic effects. For example, Dave Mason, Chris Wood, and Steve Winwood from the band Traffic, drummer Buddy Miles and former Bob Dylan organist Al Kooper, among others, were all involved in the recording sessions. This was one of the other reasons that Chandler cited as precipitating his departure. He described how Hendrix went from a disciplined recording regimen to an erratic schedule, which often saw him beginning recording sessions in the middle of the night and with any number of hangers-on.

 

Chandler also expressed exasperation at the number of times Hendrix would insist on re-recording particular tracks; the song "Gypsy Eyes" was reportedly recorded 43 times. This was also frustrating for bassist Noel Redding, who would often leave the studio to calm himself, only to return and find that Hendrix had recorded the bass parts himself during Redding's absence. The effects of these events can clearly be identified in the album's musical style. On a purely superficial level, the tracks no longer conformed to the standard pop song format, often lacked easily identifiable patterns or sections, and would sometimes lack even a recognizable melody. More particularly, however, the themes that the songs addressed, and the music that Hendrix recorded, went far beyond anything he had previously achieved.

 

Electric Ladyland includes a number of compositions and arrangements for which Hendrix is still remembered. These include "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" as well as Hendrix's rendition of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower".

 

Throughout the four years of his fame, Hendrix often appeared at impromptu jams with various musicians, such as B.B. King. In March 1968, Jim Morrison of The Doors joined Hendrix onstage at New York's Scene Club. Albums of this Electric Ladyland-era bootleg recording were released under various titles, some falsely claiming the presence of Johnny Winter, who has denied, several times, being a participant at that jam session, and to ever having met Morrison.

 

After a year based in the US, Hendrix temporarily moved back to London and into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's rented Brook Street flat, next door to the Handel House Museum, in the West End of London. During this time The Jimi Hendrix Experience toured Scandinavia, Germany, and included a final French concert. And later performed two sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall on February 18 and February 24, 1969, which were the last European appearances of this line-up of the "Jimi Hendrix Experience". A Gold and Goldstein-produced film titled Experience was also recorded at these two shows, which, according to Experience Hendrix LLC, "Elements of these recordings are sure to be utilized when the official release of this material is finally made."

 

Noel Redding felt increasingly frustrated by the fact that he was not playing his original and favored instrument, the guitar. In 1968, he decided to form his own band Fat Mattress, which would sometimes open for the Experience (Hendrix would jokingly refer to them as "Thin Pillow"). Redding and Hendrix would begin seeing less and less of each other, which also had an effect in the studio, with Hendrix playing many of the bass parts on Electric Ladyland.

 

Fruitless recording sessions at Olympic in London; Olmstead and the Record Plant in New York that ended on April 9, which only produced a remake of Stone Free for a possible single release, were the last to feature Redding. Jimi then flew Billy Cox up to New York and started recording and rehearsing with him on April 21 as a replacement for Noel.

 

In a recorded interview by Nancy Carter on June 15 at his hotel in Los Angeles, Hendrix announced that he had been recording with Cox and that he would be replacing Noel as bass player in "The Jimi Hendrix Experience".

 

The last Experience concert took place on June 29, 1969 at Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver's Mile High Stadium that was marked by police firing tear gas into the audience as they played "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)". The band escaped from the venue in the back of a rental truck which was partly crushed by fans trying to escape the tear gas. The next day, Noel Redding announced that he had quit the Experience.

 

After the departure of Noel Redding from the group, Hendrix rented the eight-bedroom 'Ashokan House' in the hamlet of Boiceville near Woodstock in upstate New York, where he spent some time through the summer of 1969. Manager Michael Jeffery, who had a house in Woodstock, arranged the stay, with hopes that the respite would produce a new album. To replace Redding as bassist, Hendrix had been rehearsing and recording with Billy Cox, his old and trusted Army buddy, since at least April 21.

 

Mitchell was unavailable to help fulfill Hendrix's commitments at this time, which include his first appearance on US TV - on the Dick Cavett show - where he was backed by the studio orchestra, and an appearance on The Tonight Show where he appeared with his new bass player Billy Cox, and session drummer Ed Shaughnessy sitting in for Mitchell. Mitchell returned in time for the Woodstock music festival on August 18, 1969, for which—in an effort to expand his sound beyond the power trio format—Hendrix then added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee (another old friend from his R&B days), and percussionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez.

 

On the day he dubbed this hired group "Gypsy Sun And Rainbows’ they recorded some jam-based material such as "Jam Back at the House", "Shokan Sunrise" (posthumous title for untitled jam), "Villanova Junction", and early renditions of the funk-driven centerpieces of Hendrix's post-Experience sound: "Machine Gun", "Message to Love" and "Izabella".

 

Bad weather and logistical problems caused long delays, so that Hendrix did not appear on stage until Monday morning. By this time, the audience (which had peaked at over 500,000 people) had been reduced to, at most, 180,000, many of whom merely waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving. Festival MC Chip Monck introduced the band as "The Jimi Hendrix Experience", but Hendrix quickly corrected this to "Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, for short it's nothin’ but ‘A Band Of’ Gypsies" and launched into a two hour set, the longest of his career. As well as the two percussionists, the performance notably featured Larry Lee performing two songs and Lee sometimes soloing while Hendrix played rhythm in places. Most of this has been edited out of the officially released recordings, including Lee's two songs, reducing the sound to basically a three piece. The concert was relatively free of the technical difficulties that frequently plagued Hendrix's performances, although one of his guitar strings snapped while performing "Red House" (he kept playing regardless). The band, unused to playing large audiences and exhausted after being up all night, could not always keep up with Hendrix's pace, but in spite of this the guitarist managed to deliver a memorable performance, climaxing with his highly-regarded rendition of the The Star-Spangled Banner, a solo improvisation which is now regarded as a special symbol of the 1960s era.

 

This expanded band did not last long. After the Woodstock festival they appeared on only two more occasions. The first was a street benefit in Harlem where, in a scenario similar to the festival, most of the audience had left and only a fraction remained by the time Hendrix took the stage. Within seconds of Hendrix arriving at the site two youths had stolen his guitar from the back seat of his car, although it was later recovered. The band's only other appearance was at the Salvation club in Greenwich Village, New York. After some studio recordings, Hendrix disbanded the group. Some of this band's recordings can be heard on the MCA Records box set The Jimi Hendrix Experience and on South Saturn Delta. Their final work together was a session on September 6. Hendrix's September 9 appearance on TV's Dick Cavett Show, backed by Cox, Mitchell and Juma Sultan, was credited as the "Jimi Hendrix Experience"

 

After attending to the successful defense of his drug possession charges in Toronto, Hendrix, in order to free his US royalties that had been suspended by US courts, addressed his obligation to provide Ed Chalpin with an LP "of original material". Along with Billy Cox he hired another of his friends, drummer Buddy Miles (formerly with Wilson Pickett and The Electric Flag) for his Band of Gypsys project, they rehearsed for ten days at "Baggies" studio. They then performed a series of four concerts over the two nights of New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, which created the Band Of Gypsys LP, produced by Hendrix (under the name "Heaven Research"). This is the only official complete live LP released in his lifetime. This group also released a single "Stepping Stone" which was quickly withdrawn, and recorded several studio songs slated for Hendrix's future LP. Litigation involving Ed Chalpin continues until this day.

 

One month later on January 26/27, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding flew into New York and signed contracts with Jeffery for the upcoming Jimi Hendrix Experience tour. The second and final Band of Gypsys appearance occurred on January 28, 1970, at a twelve-act show in Madison Square Garden which was a benefit for the massively popular anti-Vietnam War Moratorium Committee, titled the "Winter Festival for Peace". Similar to Woodstock, set delays forced Hendrix to take the stage at an inopportune 3 a.m., only this time he was obviously in no shape to play. He played a dismal rendition of "Who Knows" before snapping a vulgar response at a woman who shouted a request for "Foxy Lady". He lasted halfway through a second song, then simply stopped playing, telling the audience: "That's what happens when earth f***s with space—never forget that". He then sat down on the drum riser for a minute and then walked off stage. Various unverifiable assertions have been proffered to explain this bizarre scene. Buddy Miles claimed that manager Michael Jeffery dosed Hendrix with LSD in an effort to sabotage the current band and bring about the return of the Experience lineup.

 

A week after the botched Band of Gypsys show Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding gave an interview to Rolling Stone for the upcoming tour dates as a reunited Jimi Hendrix Experience. But Redding never even got to rehearse, as Hendrix just continued to work with Billy Cox. Noel was only told that he wasn't going to be playing during the rehearsals before the tour began. Fans refer to this final "Jimi Hendrix Experience" lineup as the "Cry of Love" band, named after the tour to distinguish it from the original. Billy Cox has several times commented on this, to make it clear that this lineup considered themselves "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" before they even went on tour and that any other title is bogus. All billing, adverts, tickets etc. on the tour used "Jimi Hendrix Experience" or occasionally, as previously, just "Jimi Hendrix".

 

Two of Hendrix's later recordings were the lead guitar parts on "Old Times Good Times" from Stephen Stills hit eponymous album (1970), and on "The Everlasting First" from Arthur Lee's new incarnation of Love's, not so successful and aptly named LP False Start both tracks were recorded with these old friends on a fleeting and unexplained visit to London in March 1970, following Kathy Etchingham's marriage.

 

He spent the next four months of 1970 recording during the week and playing live on the weekends. "The Cry of Love" tour, designed to earn money to repay the studio loans, temper Hendrix's mounting back taxes and legal fees, and fund the production of his next album, tentatively titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The tour began in April at the LA Forum, was structured to accommodate this pattern. Performances on this tour featured Hendrix, Cox, and Mitchell playing new material alongside extended versions of older recordings. The USA leg of the tour included 30 performances and ended at Honolulu, Hawaii on August 1, 1970. A number of these shows were recorded and produced some of Hendrix's most memorable live performances.

 

Early on September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix died in London under circumstances which have never been fully explained. He had spent the later part of the previous evening at a party and was picked up by girlfriend Monika Dannemann and driven to her flat at the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill. According to the estimated time of death, from autopsy data and statements by friends about the evening of September 17, he would have died within a few hours after midnight, though no precise estimate was made at the original inquest.

 

Dannemann claimed in her original testimony that after they returned to her lodgings the evening before, Hendrix, unknown to her, had taken nine of her prescribed Vesperax sleeping pills. The normal medical dose was half a tablet, but Hendrix was unfamiliar with this very strong German brand. According to surgeon John Bannister, the doctor who initially attended to him, Hendrix had asphyxiated in his own vomit, mainly red wine which had filled his airways, as the autopsy was to show. For years, Dannemann publicly claimed that she had only discovered that her lover was unconscious and unresponsive sometime after 9.00 AM, that Hendrix was alive when placed in the back of the ambulance after half past eleven, and that she rode with him on the way to the hospital; the latter two are denied by the ambulance crew. However, Dannemann's comments about that morning were often contradictory, varying from interview to interview. Police and ambulance statements reveal that there was no one but Hendrix in the flat when they arrived at 11.27 AM, and not only was he dead when they arrived on the scene, but was fully clothed and had been dead for some time.

 

Jimi Hendrix discography

 

1967 "Purple Haze" - #65

1967 "Foxy Lady" - #67

1968 "All Along the Watchtower" - #20

1968 "Crosstown Traffic" - #52

 

Factoid: On December 4, 2006, one of Hendrix's 1968 Fender Stratocaster guitars with a sunburst design was sold at a Christie's auction for USD$168,000.

 

"Purple Haze"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-tvovwmpi

[knightni]

7. Bob Dylan

 

 

9 of 24 lists - 135 points - highest ranked #1 Soxy

 

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," became anthems for both the civil rights and the anti-war movements. Dylan's early lyrics incorporated political, social and philosophical as well as literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. While expanding and personalizing genres, he has explored many traditions of American song, from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and even jazz and swing.

 

Dylan performs with guitar, piano and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is generally considered to be his songwriting.

 

He has received numerous awards over the years including Grammy, Golden Globe and Academy Awards; he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008 a Bob Dylan Pathway was opened in the singer's honor in his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for what they called his profound impact on popular music and American culture, "marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

 

Dylan released his most recent studio album, Christmas in the Heart, on October 13, 2009. The album comprised traditional Christmas songs, including "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". All Dylan's royalties from the sale of this album will benefit the charity Feeding America in the USA, and similar charities in overseas markets.

 

Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham) was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the antisemitic pogroms of 1905. His mother's grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902. In his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul.

 

Dylan’s parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age six, when his father was stricken with polio and the family returned to his mother's home town, Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood. Robert Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll. He formed several bands in high school: The Shadow Blasters was short-lived, but his next, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers of popular songs. Their performance of Danny and the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off. In 1959 he saw Buddy Holly in the Winter Dance Party tour and later recalled how he made eye contact with him. In his 1959 school yearbook, Robert Zimmerman listed as his ambition "To join Little Richard." The same year, using the name Elston Gunnn (sic), he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.

 

Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis in September 1959 and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music. In 1985 Dylan explained the attraction that folk music had exerted on him: "The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings." He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit.

 

During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan." In a 2004 interview, Dylan explained: "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free." In his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan acknowledged that he was familiar with the poetry of Dylan Thomas.

 

Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year. In January 1961, he moved to New York City, hoping to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington's Disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and was the biggest influence on his early performances. Describing Guthrie's impact on him, Dylan later wrote: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them ... [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple." As well as visiting Guthrie in the hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie's acolyte Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles (2004).

 

From February 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village. In September, he eventually gained public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a positive review in The New York Times of a show at Gerde's Folk City. The same month Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester's eponymous third album, which brought his talents to the attention of the album's producer John Hammond. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records in October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two original compositions. The album made little impact, selling only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously, and Johnny Cash was also a powerful ally of Dylan. While working for Columbia, Dylan also recorded several songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label.

 

Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962. He legally changed his name to Robert Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable both for his sometimes confrontational personality, and for the fiercely protective loyalty he displayed towards his principal client.[33] Dylan would subsequently describe Grossman thus: "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."[23] Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond being replaced as the producer of Dylan's second album by the young African American jazz producer Tom Wilson.

 

From December 1962 to January 1963, Dylan made his first trip to the UK. He had been invited by TV director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, The Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed Blowin' in the Wind, one of the first major public performances of the song. While in London, Dylan performed at several London folk clubs, including Les Cousins, The Pinder Of Wakefield, and Bunjies. He also learned new songs from several UK performers, including Martin Carthy.

 

By the time Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs. "Oxford Town", for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.

 

His most famous song at this time, "Blowin' in the Wind", partially derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for many other artists who would have hits with Dylan's songs. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the tune of the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With its veiled references to nuclear apocalypse, it gained even more resonance when the Cuban missile crisis developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it. Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with a traditional folk form.

 

Blowin' in the Wind was, according to critic Andy Gill, "the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude."

 

While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin' also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona, and the range of material on the album impressed many listeners, including The Beatles. George Harrison said, "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful."

 

The rough edge of Dylan's singing was unsettling to some early listeners but an attraction to others. Describing the impact that Dylan had on her and her husband, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying." Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through more immediately palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him onstage during her own concerts.

 

Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, Manfred Mann, and The Turtles. Most attempted to impart a pop feel and rhythm to the songs, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces. The cover versions became so ubiquitous that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan."

 

"Mixed Up Confusion", recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as a single and then quickly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records."

 

In May 1963, Dylan's political profile was raised when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been informed by CBS Television's "head of program practices" that the song he was planning to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with the censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the program.

 

Dylan said of "The Times They Are a-Changin'": "This was definitely a song with a purpose. I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close and allied together at that time."

 

By this time, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin', reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary, real life stories, with "Only A Pawn In Their Game" addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger. On a more general theme, "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "North Country Blues" address the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings".

 

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. These tensions were publicly displayed when, accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan brashly questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself (and of every man) in Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

 

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal, humorous Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare". "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are romantic and passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe", on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role his reputation had thrust at him. His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom", which sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape in a style later characterized by Allen Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images," and "My Back Pages", which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.

 

In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan’s appearance and musical style changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary songwriter of the folk scene to folk-rock pop-music star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointy "Beatle boots". A London reporter wrote: "Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo." Dylan also began to spar in increasingly surreal ways with his interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."

 

Dylan's March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was yet another stylistic leap, featuring his first recordings made with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and was provided with an early music video courtesy of D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back. Its free association lyrics both harked back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.

 

By contrast, the B side of the album consisted of four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. "Mr. Tambourine Man" quickly became one of Dylan's best known songs when The Byrds recorded an electric guitar version which reached number one in both the U.S. and the U.K. charts. "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" would be acclaimed as two of Dylan's most important compositions.

 

In the summer of 1965, as the headliner at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since his high school days with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums) and Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano). Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set.

 

Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment. Ewan MacColl wrote in Sing Out!, "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time ... But what of Bobby Dylan? ... a youth of mediocre talent. Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel." On July 29, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording "Positively 4th Street". The lyrics teemed with images of vengeance and paranoia, and it was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community—friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.

 

In July 1965, Dylan released the single "Like a Rolling Stone", which peaked at #2 in the U.S. and at #4 in the UK charts. At over six minutes in length, the song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech during Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said that on first hearing the single, "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind". In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine listed it at #1 on its list of "The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song also opened Dylan's next album, Highway 61 Revisited, titled after the road that led from Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Al Kooper's organ riffs. "Desolation Row" offers the sole acoustic exception, with Dylan making surreal allusions to a variety of figures in Western culture during this long song. Andy Gill wrote, "'Desolation Row' is an 11-minute epic of entropy which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of iconic characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse"

 

In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, best known at the time for being part of Ronnie Hawkins's backing band The Hawks. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.

 

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions produced the double-album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound". Al Kooper described the album as "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical world of Nashville and the world of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.

 

On November 22, 1965, Dylan secretly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds. Some of Dylan’s friends (including Ramblin' Jack Elliott) claim that, in conversation immediately after the event, Dylan denied that he was married. Journalist Nora Ephron first made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”

 

Dylan undertook a world tour of Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second half, backed by the Hawks, he played high voltage electric music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped. The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England. (A recording of this concert, Bob Dylan Live 1966, was finally released in 1998.) At the climax of the evening, one fan, angry with Dylan's electric sound, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you ... You're a liar!". Dylan turned to his band and said "Play it f***ing loud!", and they launched into the final song of the night with gusto—"Like a Rolling Stone".

 

After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him continued to increase. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show they could screen. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall.

 

On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle on a road near his home in Woodstock, New York, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries were never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Dylan later expressed concern about where his career and private life were headed up until the point of the crash: "When I had that motorcycle accident ... I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't want to do that. Plus, I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids." Many biographers believe that the crash offered Dylan the much-needed chance to escape from the pressures that had built up around him. In the wake of his accident, Dylan withdrew from the public and, apart from a few select appearances, did not tour again for eight years.

 

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour for Eat the Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. A rough-cut was shown to ABC Television and was promptly rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, called "Big Pink". These songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for Julie Driscoll ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann (Quinn the Eskimo ("The Mighty Quinn"). Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more and more of the songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on various bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD bootleg set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternate takes. In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they first worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves The Band, thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.

 

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the recording studio after a 19-month break, he was accompanied only by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar. The result was John Wesley Harding, a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on both the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture. It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan himself would later acknowledge as definitive. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by The Band.

 

Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay", which had been originally written for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, but was not submitted in time to make the final cut. In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's new television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country", "I Threw It All Away" and "Living the Blues". Dylan next travelled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight rock festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival far closer to his home.

 

In the early 1970s critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus notoriously asked "What is this s***?" upon first listening to 1970's Self Portrait. In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released New Morning, which some considered a return to form. In November 1968, Dylan had co-written "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison; Harrison recorded both "I'd Have You Anytime" and Dylan's "If Not For You" for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan's surprise appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted much media coverage, reflecting that Dylan's live appearances had become rare.

 

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village. These sessions resulted in one single, "Watching The River Flow", and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece". On November 4, 1971 Dylan recorded "George Jackson" which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin Prison that summer.

 

In 1972 Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing the role of "Alias", a member of Billy's gang who had some basis in history. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has proven its durability as one of Dylan's most extensively covered songs.

 

Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new record label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired. On his next album, Planet Waves, he used The Band as backing group, while rehearsing for a major tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs. Christopher Ricks has connected the chorus of this song with John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn", which contains the line "For ever panting, and for ever young." As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan", and Dylan himself commented: "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental." Biographer Howard Sounes noted that Jakob Dylan believed the song was about him.

 

Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a haphazard collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively cover songs), which was widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label. In January 1974 Dylan and The Band embarked on their high-profile, coast-to-coast North American tour. A live double album of the tour, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records.

 

Dylan said of the opening song from Blood on the Tracks: "I was trying to deal with the concept of time, and the way the characters change from the first person to the third person, and you're never sure if the first person is talking or the third person. But as you look at the whole thing it really doesn't matter."

 

After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and quickly recorded a new album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. Dylan delayed the album's release, however, and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother David Zimmerman. During this time, Dylan returned to Columbia Records which eventually reissued his Asylum albums.

 

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practise takes." In Rolling Stone, reviewer Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." However, over the years critics have come to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements, perhaps the only serious rival to his mid-60s trilogy of albums. In Salon.com, Bill Wyman wrote: "Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-'60s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years." Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape."

 

That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in 12 years, championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who had been imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at #33 on the U.S. Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring about one hundred performers and supporters drawn from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell. David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, and violinist Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street, her violin case hanging on her back. Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. Sam Shepard was initially hired to write the film's screenplay, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.

 

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002's Live 1975.

 

The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling and improvised narrative, mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews and had a very brief theatrical run. Later in that year, Dylan allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, to be more widely released.

 

In November 1976 Dylan appeared at The Band's "farewell" concert, along with other guests including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's acclaimed cinematic chronicle of this show, The Last Waltz, was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set. In 1976, Dylan also wrote and duetted on the song "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's No Reason To Cry.

 

Dylan's 1978 album Street-Legal, recorded with a large, pop-rock band, complete with female backing vocalists, was lyrically one of his more complex and cohesive. It suffered, however, from a poor sound mix (attributed to his studio recording practices), submerging much of its instrumentation until its remastered CD release nearly a quarter century later.

 

In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian and released two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer, Jerry Wexler. Wexler recalled that when Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording, he replied: "Bob, you're dealing with a sixty-two-year old Jewish atheist. Let's just make an album." The album won Dylan a Grammy Award as "Best Male Vocalist" for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody". The second evangelical album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, although Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone declared the album was far superior, musically, to its predecessor. When touring from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1980, Dylan would not play any of his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:

 

Years ago they ... said I was a prophet. I used to say, "No I'm not a prophet" they say "Yes you are, you're a prophet." I said, "No it's not me." They used to say "You sure are a prophet." They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, "Bob Dylan's no prophet." They just can't handle it.

 

Dylan's embrace of Christianity was unpopular with some of his fans and fellow musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody". By 1981, while Dylan's Christian faith was obvious, Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that "neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament."

 

In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective", where he restored several of his popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded the next spring, featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with explicitly Christian songs. The haunting "Every Grain of Sand" reminded some critics of William Blake’s verses.

 

In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Critics such as Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums both for showing an extraordinary carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs. The Infidels recording sessions, for example, produced several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Most well regarded of these were "Blind Willie McTell" (a tribute to the dead blues singer and an evocation of African American history), "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child". These songs were later released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991.

 

Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded his next studio album, Empire Burlesque. Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker has said he felt he was hired to make Dylan's album sound "a little bit more contemporary".

 

Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief fundraising single "We Are the World". On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Dylan performed a ragged version of "Hollis Brown", his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: "I hope that some of the money ... maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe ... one or two million, maybe ... and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks." His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.

 

In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into the world of rap music when he added vocals to a verse of Kurtis Blow's "Street Rock", which appeared on Blow's album Kingdom Blow. Credited with making arrangements for Dylan's performance are veteran singer-songwriter-producer, Wayne K. Garfield, who conceived the collaboration and former Dylan back-up singer, Debra Byrd, who is now head vocal coach for American Idol. In July 1986 Dylan released Knocked Out Loaded, an album containing three cover songs (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the traditional gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), three collaborations with other writers (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. The album received mainly negative reviews; Rolling Stone called it "a depressing affair", and it was the first Dylan album since Freewheelin' (1963) to fail to make the Top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, 'Brownsville Girl', a work of genius. In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured extensively with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with The Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This album received some very negative reviews: Allmusic said, "Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead." After performing with these musical permutations, Dylan initiated what came to be called The Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a tight back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with this small but constantly evolving band for the next 20 years.

 

In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up-rock-star-turned-chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation (played by Rupert Everett). Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "I Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop. Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988. Bruce Springsteen's induction speech declared: "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual." Dylan then released the album Down in the Groove, which was even more unsuccessful in its sales than his previous studio album. The song "Silvio", however, had some success as a single. Later that spring, Dylan was a co-founder and member of the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty returning to the album charts with the multi-platinum selling Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, which they released with the unexpected title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

 

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Rolling Stone magazine called the album "both challenging and satisfying". The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.

 

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo"; this was later explained as a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four at that time. Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the stellar line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. Dylan did not make another studio album of new songs for seven years.

 

In 1991, Dylan was honored by the recording industry with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, and Dylan performed his song "Masters of War". Dylan then made a short speech which startled some of the audience.

 

The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim", penned by a 19th century teacher and sung by Dylan with a haunting reverence. An exception to this rootsy mood came in Dylan's 1991 songwriting collaboration with Michael Bolton; the resulting song "Steel Bars", was released on Bolton's album Time, Love & Tenderness. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He claimed his wish to perform a set of traditional songs for the show was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on a greatest hits package. The album produced from it, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism.

 

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension. Late that spring, before the album's release, Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon." He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a sermon based on Dylan's lyric "Blowin' in the Wind".

 

September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. Rolling Stone said "Mortality bears down hard, while shots of gallows humor ring out." This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" Grammy Award (he was one of numerous performers on The Concert for Bangladesh, the 1972 winner). The love song "Make You Feel My Love" became a number one country hit for Garth Brooks.

 

In December 1997 U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful."

 

Dylan commenced the new millennium by winning his first Oscar; his song "Things Have Changed", penned for the film Wonder Boys, won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award in March 2001. The Oscar (by some reports a facsimile) tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier.

 

"Love and Theft" was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well-received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards. Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.

 

In 2003 Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his "born again" period and participated in the CD project Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year also saw the release of the film Masked & Anonymous, a collaboration with TV producer Larry Charles that had Dylan appearing in a cast of well-knowns, including Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an “incoherent mess”; a few treated it as a serious work of art.

 

In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. The book confounded expectations. Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-'60s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.

 

Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography No Direction Home was broadcast in September 2005. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006 and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007. The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan's early career.

 

May 3, 2006, was the premiere of Dylan's DJ career, hosting a weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around a chosen theme. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1930s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and The Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics as "great radio," as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references with his sardonic humor, while achieving a thematic beauty with his musical choices. Music author Peter Guralnick commented: "With this show, Dylan is tapping into his deep love—and I would say his belief in—a musical world without borders. I feel like the commentary often reflects the same surrealistic appreciation for the human comedy that suffuses his music." In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was "Goodbye" and the final record played was Woody Guthrie's "So Long, It's Been Good To Know Yuh". This has led to speculation that Dylan's radio series may have ended.

 

On August 29, 2006, Dylan released his Modern Times album. In a Rolling Stone interview, Dylan criticized the quality of modern sound recordings and claimed that his new songs "probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em." Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle") most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft". Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire.

 

Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby". Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine, and by Uncut in the UK. On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.

 

August 2007 saw the unveiling of the award-winning film I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, bearing the tagline "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". The movie uses six distinct characters to represent different aspects of Dylan's life, played by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan's previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film's original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Eddie Vedder, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens, and Tom Verlaine.

 

On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo. As part of this campaign, Mark Ronson produced a re-mix of Dylan's 1966 tune "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", which was released as a maxi-single. This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a re-mix of one of his classic recordings.

 

The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan’s commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evidenced in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper Will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII. The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by Will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.

 

Over a decade after Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, an exhibit of his art, The Drawn Blank Series, opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. This first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made earlier in 2007 from the original drawings. The exhibition's opening also premiered the release of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.

 

In October 2008, Columbia released Volume 8 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006 as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging" from some fans and commentators. The release was widely acclaimed by critics. The plethora of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to Uncut's reviewer: "Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of (Dylan's) staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible."

 

Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan's website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, "Life Is Hard," "the record sort of took its own direction". Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.

 

The album received largely favourable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. In Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke wrote: "The album may lack the instant-classic aura of Love and Theft or Modern Times, but it is rich in striking moments, set in a willful rawness." Dylan critic Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmark tracks, it's one of the most naturally enjoyable albums you'll hear all year."

 

In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., making Bob Dylan (68 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one in the Billboard 200 chart. It also reached number one on the UK album charts, 39 years after Dylan's previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.

 

On October 13, 2009, Dylan released a Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, comprising such Christmas standards as "Little Drummer Boy", "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus". The U.S. royalties from the collection will benefit Feeding America, which has been described as the nation's leading hunger-relief charity.

 

The album received generally favourable reviews.The New Yorker commented that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to "some of his croakiest vocals in a while", and speculated that Dylan's intentions might be ironic: "Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there’s not a wink in the childish optimism of “Here Comes Santa Claus” or “Winter Wonderland” is to ignore a half-century of biting satire." In USA Today, Edna Gundersen pointed out that Dylan was "revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers." Gundersen concluded that Dylan "couldn't sound more sentimental or sincere".

 

In an interview published by Street News Service, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: "There wasn’t any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too."

 

The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988, and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and the 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s. By the end of 2008, Dylan and his band had played more than 2100 shows, anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier and filled out with talented sidemen. To the dismay of some of his audience, Dylan's performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night. Critical opinion about Dylan’s shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material. Others have criticised his vocal style as a “one-dimensional growl with which he chews up, mangles and spits out the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable”, and his lack of interest in bonding with his audience.

 

Bob Dylan's European tour of spring 2009 opened in Stockholm on March 22 and ended in Dublin on May 6. Dylan is currently touring the United States, concluding in New York in November.

 

Dylan married Sara Lownds on November 22, 1965. Their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6, 1966, and they had three more children: Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham, and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Dylan), (born October 21, 1961 now married to musician Peter Himmelman). In the 1990s his son Jakob Dylan became well known as the lead singer of the band The Wallflowers. Jesse Dylan is a film director and a successful businessman. Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977.

 

In June 1986, Dylan married his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis). Their daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, was born on January 31, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan in 2001.

 

Bob Dylan has been described as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. Dylan was included in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation". In 2004, he was ranked number two in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "Greatest Artists of All Time". Dylan biographer Howard Sounes placed him in even more exalted company when he said, "There are giant figures in art who are sublimely good—Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists."

 

Initially modelling his style on the songs of Woody Guthrie, and lessons learnt from the blues of Robert Johnson, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 60s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". Paul Simon suggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre: "[Dylan's] early songs were very rich ... with strong melodies. 'Blowin' in the Wind' has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while."

 

When Dylan made his move from acoustic music to a rock backing, the mix became more complex. For many critics, Dylan's greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis exemplified by his mid-'60s trilogy of albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In Mike Marqusee's words: "Between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."

 

One legacy of Dylan’s verbal sophistication was the increasing attention paid by literary critics to his lyrics. Professor Christopher Ricks published a 500 page analysis of Dylan’s work, placing him in the context of Eliot, Keats and Tennyson, and claiming that Dylan was a poet worthy of the same close and painstaking analysis. Former British poet laureate, Andrew Motion, argued that Bob Dylan’s lyrics should be studied in schools. Since 1996, academics have lobbied the Swedish Academy to award Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

Dylan’s voice was, in some ways, as startling as his lyrics. New York Times critic Robert Shelton described Dylan's early vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's." When the young Bobby Womack told Sam Cooke he didn’t understand Dylan’s vocal style, Cooke explained that: “from now on, it's not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It's going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.” Rolling Stone magazine ranked Dylan at number seven in their 2008 listing of “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. Bono commented that “Dylan has tried out so many personas in his singing because it is the way he inhabits his subject matter.”

 

Dylan's influence has been felt in several musical genres. As Edna Gundersen stated in USA Today: "Dylan's musical DNA has informed nearly every simple twist of pop since 1962." Many musicians have testified to Dylan's influence, such as Joe Strummer, who praised Dylan as having "laid down the template for lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, depth of rock music." Other major musicians to have acknowledged Dylan's importance include John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Syd Barrett, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, and Tom Waits.

 

There have been dissenters. Because Dylan was widely credited with imbuing pop culture with a new seriousness, the critic Nik Cohn objected: "I can't take the vision of Dylan as seer, as teenage messiah, as everything else he's been worshipped as. The way I see him, he's a minor talent with a major gift for self-hype."[309] Similarly, Australian critic Jack Marx credited Dylan with changing the persona of the rock star: "What cannot be disputed is that Dylan invented the arrogant, faux-cerebral posturing that has been the dominant style in rock since, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Eminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook."

 

If Dylan’s legacy in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music, as Dylan advances into his sixties, he is today described as a figure who has greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged. As J. Hoberman wrote in The Village Voice, "Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock 'n' roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world's first and greatest rock 'n' roll beatnik bard and then—having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning—vanish into a folk tradition of his own making."

 

Bob Dylan discography

 

1965 "Subterranean Homesick Blues" - #39

1965 "Like a Rolling Stone" - #2

1965 "Positively 4th Street" - #7

1965 "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" - #58

1966 "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" - #119

1966 "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" - #2

1966 "I Want You" - #20

1966 "Just Like a Woman" - #33

1967 "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" - #81

1969 "I Threw It All Away" - #85

1969 "Lay Lady Lay" - #7

1969 "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" - #50

1970 "Wigwam" - #41

1971 "Watching the River Flow" - #41

1971 "George Jackson" - #33

1973 "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" - #12

1973 "A Fool Such as I" - #55

1974 "On a Night Like This" - #44

1974 "Something There Is About You" - #107

1974 "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" (w/ The Band) - #66

1975 "Tangled Up in Blue" - #31

1975 "Hurricane" - #33

1976 "Mozambique" - #54

1977 "Rita May" - #110

1979 "Gotta Serve Somebody/"Trouble in Mind"" - #24

1981 "Shot of Love" - Main #38

1984 "Sweetheart Like You" - #55

1985 "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?)" - #103 - Main #19

1986 "Band of the Hand" - Main #28

1986 "Got My Mind Made Up" - Main #23

1988 "Silvio" - Main #5

1989 "Everything Is Broken" - Main #8

1989 "Slow Train" (w/The Grateful Dead) - Main #8

1990 "Unbelievable" - Main #21

1993 "My Back Pages" - Main #26

2006 "Someday Baby" - Main #98

 

Factoid: The 2009 film Watchmen used "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as a part of the opening credits. The original version was 3:15; but, Dylan extended it to 5:40 so the song would go all the way through to the end of the opening.

 

"The Times They Are a-Changin'"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-urvuradw

[knightni]

6. Pink Floyd

 

 

8 of 24 lists - 138 points - highest ranking #1 Flash Tizzle

 

Pink Floyd were an English rock band who, in the late 1960s, earned recognition for their psychedelic and space rock music, and in the 1970s, as they evolved, for their progressive rock music. Pink Floyd's work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album cover art, and elaborate live shows. One of rock music's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful acts, the group has sold over 200 million albums worldwide, including 74.5 million certified units in the United States.

 

Pink Floyd were formed in 1965, soon after Syd Barrett joined The Tea Set, a group that consisted of architecture students Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and, briefly, Bob Klose. The group were a popular fixture on London's underground music scene, and under Barrett's leadership released two charting singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", and a commercially and critically successful album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The erratic behaviour of Barrett prompted his colleagues to add guitarist and singer David Gilmour to the line-up. Following Barrett's departure, bass player and singer Roger Waters became the lyricist and dominant figure in the band, which thereafter achieved worldwide critical and commercial success with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and rock opera The Wall.

 

Wright left the band in 1979, and Waters in 1985, but Gilmour and Mason (joined by Wright) continued recording and touring under the name Pink Floyd. Waters used legal means to try to keep them from using the name, declaring Pink Floyd a spent force, but the parties reached an out-of-court settlement allowing Gilmour, Mason and Wright to continue as Pink Floyd. The band again enjoyed worldwide success with A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), and Waters continued as a solo musician, releasing three studio albums. Although for some years relations between Waters and the remaining three members were sour, the band reformed for what would be a final one-off performance at Live 8. Founder member Syd Barrett died on 7 July 2006, aged 60, at his home in Cambridgeshire; then just over two years later, on 15 September 2008, Richard Wright died of cancer, aged 65.

 

Nick Mason and Roger Waters met at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London, where both were studying architecture. The pair first played together in a band formed by Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe, along with Noble's sister Sheilagh, an occasional singer. They were joined later by fellow student Richard Wright. With the addition of Wright the band became a sextet, and took the name Sigma 6. Wright's girlfriend Juliette Gale was often a guest artist, and Waters initially played rhythm guitar, before moving to bass. Early gigs were for private functions, and the band rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of Regent Street Polytechnic. Sigma 6 played songs by The Searchers as well as material written by fellow student Ken Chapman, who became their manager and songwriter.

 

In September 1963 Mason and Waters moved into the lower flat of Stanhope Gardens, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Leonard was a designer of light machines (perforated discs spun by electric motors to cast patterns of lights on the walls, and for a time played keyboard with the band. They used the front room of the flat for rehearsals. Mason later moved out of the flat, and accomplished guitar player Bob Klose moved in. The band's name was changed several times, from the Megadeaths, to the Architectural Abdabs, and the Tea Set. Metcalfe and Noble left the band shortly thereafter, to form their own band.

 

Syd Barrett, then aged 17, arrived in London in the autumn of 1963, to study at Camberwell College of Art. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends; the bassist had often visited Barrett as he played music at his mother's house. Barrett joined the Tea Set in 1964 and moved into Stanhope Gardens alongside Klose and Waters.

 

With the Tea Set lacking the vocals of Noble and Metcalfe, Klose introduced them to Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force. During Dennis' tenure, the Tea Set acquired an alternative name—the Pink Floyd Sound.[nb 2] Derived from the given names of two blues musicians that Barrett had in his record collection—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, Barrett created it on the spur of the moment, when he discovered that another band, also named Tea Set, were to perform at one of their gigs.

 

Dennis was posted to Bahrain, thrusting Barrett into the spotlight as frontman. Minus Wright—who had taken a break from studying—they acquired studio time between 1964–1965, and recorded promotional material which included a cover version of "I'm a King Bee" as well as several songs written by Barrett. The Pink Floyd Sound later became the resident band at the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street in London, and played three sets of 90 minutes, from late at night until early the following morning. According to Mason, this period "… was the beginning of a realisation that songs could be extended with lengthy solos." The band auditioned for the ITV programme Ready Steady Go! (whose producers expressed enough interest to invite them back into the studio audience the following week), and also for another club, and two rock contests. Bob Klose left in 1965, at the behest of his father and college tutors, and Barrett took over on lead guitar.

 

The Pink Floyd Sound began to receive paid bookings playing mostly rhythm and blues songs, including one performance at the Marquee Club in March 1966 where they were watched by Peter Jenner. Jenner, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, was impressed by the acoustic effects that Barrett and Wright created during their performances, and with his business partner and friend Andrew King became their manager. Although the pair had little experience of the music industry, they used inherited money to set up Blackhill Enterprises and purchased new instruments and equipment for the band, including a Selmer PA system. Under their guidance, the band began performing on London's underground music scene at venues including All Saints Hall and The Marquee.

 

The band felt encouraged to work on the instrumental excursions they had experimented with at the Countdown Club, and rudimentary light shows projected by coloured slides and domestic lights were used to powerful effect. To celebrate the launch of the Free School's magazine International Times, they performed at the opening of The Roundhouse, attended by a 2,000-strong crowd which included such celebrities as Alexander Trocchi, Paul McCartney, and Marianne Faithfull. Jenner and King's diverse array of social connections were meritorious, gaining the band important coverage in The Financial Times and The Sunday Times.

 

The band's relationship with Blackhill Enterprises was strengthened when they became full partners, each holding an unprecedented one-sixth share. By October 1966 their set included more of their own material, and they were performing at venues such as the Commonwealth Institute. Their music was not to everyone's taste, however; following a performance at a Catholic youth club, the owner refused to pay. At the magistrates' court the judge agreed with the owner, who claimed that the band's performance "wasn't music". Although this was not the only occasion on which they encountered such opinions, they were better received at the UFO Club in London, where they used the in-house lighting to good effect. Barrett's performances were reportedly exuberant, "… leaping around and the madness, and the kind of improvisation he was doing … he was inspired. He would constantly manage to get past his limitations and into areas that were very, very interesting. Which none of the others could do." The often drug-addled audience was receptive to the music they played, but the band remained conspicuously drug-free —"We were out of it, not on acid, but out of the loop, stuck in the dressing room at UFO."

 

Although in 1967 Mason admitted that the psychedelic movement had "taken place around us—not within us", the Pink Floyd Sound were present at the head of a wave of interest in psychedelic music, so attracted attention from record companies. While negotiating with the record companies, Joe Boyd and their booking agent Bryan Morrison arranged and paid for the band to record several songs at Sound Techniques in West Hampstead, including "Arnold Layne", and a version of "Interstellar Overdrive"; and to record a short music film for "Arnold Layne" in Sussex. Despite early interest from Polydor, the band signed with EMI, with a £5,000 advance. Boyd was not included in the deal.

 

"Arnold Layne" became Pink Floyd's (the definite article was dropped at some point in 1967) first single, released on 11 March 1967. It was banned by several radio stations for its vague references to sexual perversions, but due to some creative manipulation at the shops which supplied sales figures to the music industry, it peaked at number 20 in the UK charts. Each member of the band had by now either abandoned their studies, or left their job. The band upgraded their ageing Bedford van to a Ford Transit, and used it to travel to over 200 gigs in 1967 (a ten-fold increase on the previous year). They were joined by road manager Peter Wynne Willson, with whom Barrett had previously shared a flat. Willson updated the band's lighting rig with innovative ideas such as the use of polarisers, mirrors, and stretched condoms.

 

"See Emily Play", recorded in London, was their second release, on 16 June 1967. It premièred at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in May 1967, where the band also used a device called an Azimuth co-ordinator. They performed on the BBC's Look of the Week, where an erudite and engaging Waters and Barrett faced rigorous questioning from Hans Keller. The single fared slightly better than "Arnold Layne", and after two weeks was at number 17 in the charts. The band mimed the single on the BBC's Top Of The Pops, and returned for another performance after the single climbed to number five, however a scheduled third appearance was cancelled when Barrett refused to perform. At about this time the other band members began to notice changes in Barrett's behaviour—by early 1967 he was regularly using lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a psychedelic drug—and at an earlier show in Holland Mason observed him to be "completely distanced from everything going on, whether simply tripping or suffering from a more organic neural disturbance I still have no idea."

 

The band's agent, Bryan Morrison, had been instrumental in negotiating their contract with EMI through producer Norman Smith, and the band were obliged to record their first album at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. Although in his 2005 autobiography Mason recalled the sessions as relatively trouble-free, Smith disagreed, and claimed that Barrett was unresponsive to his suggestions and constructive criticism. They experimented with musique concrète, and were at one point invited to watch The Beatles record "Lovely Rita".

 

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was released in August 1967. Pink Floyd continued to perform at the UFO Club drawing huge crowds, but Barrett's deterioration caused them serious concern. The band initially hoped that his erratic behaviour was a phase that would pass, but others, including Jenner and June Child, were more realistic:

 

… I found him in the dressing room and he was so … gone. Roger Waters and I got him on his feet, we got him out to the stage … and of course the audience went spare because they loved him. The band started to play and Syd just stood there. He had his guitar around his neck and his arms just hanging down.

—June Child,

 

To the band's consternation, they cancelled a performance at the Windsor Jazz Festival, and informed the music press that Barrett was suffering from 'nervous exhaustion'. Jenner and Waters arranged for Barrett to see a psychiatrist—a meeting he did not attend. He was sent to Formentera with Sam Hutt (a doctor well-established in the underground music scene) but later showed no signs of improvement. A few dates in September were followed by the band's first tour of the United States, and in his capacity as tour manager Andrew King travelled to New York to begin preparations. The tour suffered serious problems. Visas had not arrived, prompting the cancellation of the first six dates. Elektra Records had turned Pink Floyd down, and so the band were by default handled by EMI's sister company, Capitol, which assigned them to their subsidiary, Tower Records. Tower released a truncated version of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn on the same date as the band's American première at The Fillmore in California, on 26 October 1967. Communication between company and band was almost non-existent, and Pink Floyd's relationship with Tower and Capitol was therefore poor. Barrett's mental condition mirrored the problems that King encountered; when the band performed at the Winterland Ballroom, he detuned his guitar during "Interstellar Overdrive" until the strings fell off. His odd behaviour grew worse during further performances, and during a recording for The Pat Boone Show he confounded the director by miming the song perfectly during the rehearsal, and then standing motionless during the take. King quickly curtailed their visit to the US, sending them home on the next flight.

 

Shortly after their return from the US, beginning 14 November the band supported Jimi Hendrix on a tour of England, but on one occasion when Barrett failed to turn up they were forced to replace him with David O'List. Barrett's depression worsened the longer the tour continued. Wynne Willson left his role as lighting manager at the end of the Hendrix tour, and allied himself with Barrett, whose position as frontman was now becoming insecure. He was replaced by John Marsh. Pink Floyd released "Apples and Oranges", but for the rest of the band Barrett's condition had reached a crisis point, and they responded by adding a new member to their line-up.

 

David Gilmour was already acquainted with Barrett, having studied modern language in the early 1960s at Cambridge Tech while Barrett studied art. Gilmour had started playing guitar aged thirteen, and the two played together at lunchtimes, with guitars and harmonicas. They later hitch-hiked and busked their way around the south of France. Gilmour had also seen the Tea Set perform in 1965, while playing in Jokers Wild. At an event near the end of 1967 the band asked him to become the fifth member of Pink Floyd. By coincidence Barrett had already suggested adding four new members, in the words of Roger Waters, "… two freaks he'd met somewhere. One of them played the banjo, the other the saxophone … [and] a couple of chick singers". Steve O'Rourke, one of Bryan Morrison's assistants, gave Gilmour a room at his house, and he was promised a salary of £30 per week. One of Gilmour's first steps as a member of Pink Floyd was to purchase a custom-made yellow Fender Stratocaster from an oft-frequented music shop in Cambridge (the instrument became one of Gilmour's favourite guitars throughout his career with Pink Floyd), and in January 1968 he was announced him as the fifth member of Pink Floyd. To the general public he was now the second guitarist, but as the Barrett's performances continued to ebb, privately the rest of the band saw him as a replacement. One of Gilmour's first duties was to pretend to play a guitar on an "Apples and Oranges" promotional film.

 

In a demonstration of his frustration at being effectively sidelined, Barrett tried to teach the band a new song "Have You Got It Yet?", but changed the structure on each performance—making it impossible for them to learn. Matters came to a head on the day they were due to perform in Southampton. When somebody in the van asked if they should collect Barrett, the response was "No, f*** it, let's not bother".

 

Waters later admitted "He was our friend, but most of the time we now wanted to strangle him". For a while Barrett still turned up to the occasional gig, apparently confused as to what was happening. As a result of his de facto removal Pink Floyd's partnership with Peter Jenner and Andrew King was dissolved in March 1968. Barrett's departure was officially announced on 6 April 1968. Jenner and King, who believed that the creative spirit of Pink Floyd derived almost entirely from Barrett, decided to represent him and ended their relationship with Pink Floyd. Bryan Morrison then agreed that Steve O'Rourke should become Pink Floyd's manager. Although the changeover between Barrett and Gilmour was something of a relief, it was also a difficult time for Gilmour, who was forced to mime to Barrett's voice on the group's European television appearances. Barrett had been their main songwriter, however Waters and Wright created new material such as "It Would Be So Nice", and "Careful With That Axe, Eugene". They developed their new material while playing on the University circuit, and were joined by road manager Peter Watts, before touring across Europe in 1968.

 

In 1968 the band returned to Abbey Road Studios with Smith, to record their second studio album. They already had several songs recorded with Barrett, including "Jugband Blues" (his final contribution to their discography). Waters wrote three songs, "Let There Be More Light", "Corporal Clegg", and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". Wright contributed "See-Saw" and "Remember a Day". The band continued the experimentation seen on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, recording some material at their homes—a process that Smith encouraged. He was unconvinced by their music, but played drums on "Remember a Day" when Mason struggled with the song.

 

Neither Waters nor Mason could read music, and both created the album's title track "A Saucerful of Secrets" by inventing their own system of notation—something which Gilmour later would comment looked "… like an architectural diagram". A Saucerful of Secrets was released in June 1968 to mixed reviews; Record Mirror wrote positively, urging listeners to "forget it as background music to a party", and John Peel claimed that the album was "… like a religious experience …". However, NME viewed the title track as "… long and boring, and has little to warrant its monotonous direction". The album cover was designed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis. On the same day the album was released the band performed at the first free Hyde Park concert (organised by Blackhill Enterprises), with Roy Harper and Jethro Tull. Bryan Morrison later sold his business to NEMS Enterprises, and Steve O'Rourke became Pink Floyd's personal manager. O'Rourke was considered by the band as a "great deal-maker", whose business acumen overshadowed his lack of interest in aesthetic matters. Thus the band were able to take complete control of their artistic outlook. The band returned to the US for their first major tour, accompanied by Soft Machine and The Who.

 

In 1968 the group worked on the score for The Committee, and just before Christmas that year released "Point Me At The Sky". It was no more successful than the two singles they had released since "See Emily Play", and it was to become the band's only single for several more years ("Apples and Oranges" was not released in the US). In 1969 the band composed the soundtrack for More, directed by Barbet Schroeder. The work proved important; not only did it pay well, but along with A Saucerful of Secrets the material they created would become part of their live shows for some time thereafter. A tour of the UK followed through the spring 1969, ending at the Royal Festival Hall in July 1969. It was memorable for the band, but more so for Gilmour who was thrown across the stage by an electric shock caused by poor earthing. The performances, built around two long pieces called The Man and The Journey, were enhanced with performance art created by artist Peter Dockley, and some of the sound effects were later used on 1970's "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast".

 

While composing the soundtrack for Zabriskie Point (directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni) the band spent almost a month in a luxury hotel in Rome. Waters has since claimed that the work could have been completed in less than a week, but for Antonioni's continuous changes to the music. Eventually he used recordings by the Grateful Dead, The Youngbloods, Patti Page, and the Rolling Stones, but three of Pink Floyd's contributions remained. One of the pieces turned down by Antonioni would eventually become "Us and Them" on Pink Floyd's 1973 The Dark Side of the Moon. The band also did some work on the soundtrack for a proposed cartoon series called Rollo, but a lack of funds meant that the series was never produced, and away from Pink Floyd, Waters scored the soundtrack to the 1970 film The Body (directed by Ron Geesin).

 

Pink Floyd's next album was something of a departure from their previous work. Ummagumma, a double-LP released on EMI's Harvest label, contained barely any new compositions. The first two sides of the album were live acts, recorded at Manchester College of Commerce and at Mother's Club in Birmingham. For the second LP, each member was given one half of each side on which to experiment. The album was released to positive reviews in October 1969.

 

Ummagumma was quickly followed by 1970's Atom Heart Mother. The album apes the work produced at the time by groups such as Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The band's previous LPs had been recorded using a four-track system, but Atom Heart Mother was their first to use eight tracks of audio. An early version was premièred in France in January 1970, but disagreements over its direction prompted the arrival of Ron Geesin, who worked for about a month to improve the score. Production was troublesome, with little creative input from the band, but with the aid of John Aldiss the album was eventually completed. Gilmour has since dismissed Atom Heart Mother as "a load of rubbish", and Waters is similarly dismissive, claiming that he wouldn't mind if it were "thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again." Norman Smith was given only an executive producer credit, his final contribution to the band's discography. Atom Heart Mother was massively successful in the UK, and was premièred at the Bath Festival on 27 June 1970.

 

In 1971 they took second place in a poll of readers by Melody Maker (behind Emerson, Lake and Palmer), and for the first time in their history were making a profit. However, the theft in New Orleans of equipment worth about $40,000 almost crippled the band's finances. The local police were unhelpful, but within hours of notifying the FBI the equipment was returned. Mason and Wright were now fathers and bought homes in London. Gilmour, not married, moved to a 19th-century farm in Essex. Waters installed a home recording studio at his house in Islington, in a converted tool-shed at the bottom of his garden.

 

Meddle is sometimes considered to be a transitional album between the Barrett-influenced band and the modern Pink Floyd. The group's other releases during this period, More and Zabriski Point, were soundtracks, and Atom Heart Mother was influenced as much by Ron Geesin and the session artists as it was by the band. Returning from touring Atom Heart Mother, at the start of 1971 the band began work on new material. While they lacked a central theme, in a divergent attempt to spur the creative process they tried several largely unproductive experiments. Engineer John Leckie described Pink Floyd's sessions as often beginning in the afternoon, and ending early the next morning, "during which time nothing would get done. There was no record company contact whatsoever, except when their label manager would show up now and again with a couple of bottles of wine and a couple of joints." The band would apparently spend long periods of time working on simple sounds, or a particular guitar riff. They also spent several days at Air Studios, attempting to create music using a variety of household objects, a project which would be revisited between The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

 

The production of Meddle was spread over a considerable period of time; the band recorded in the first half of April, but in the latter half played at Doncaster and Norwich before returning to record at the end of the month. In May they split their time between sessions at Abbey Road, and rehearsals and concerts in London, Lancaster, Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Nottingham. June and July were spent mainly performing at venues across Europe. August was spent in the far east and Australia, September in Europe, and October to November in the US. In the same period the band also produced the compilation album Relics. The band again worked with Barbet Schroeder on the film La Vallée, for which a soundtrack album was released, called Obscured by Clouds. The material was composed in about a week, at the Château d'Hérouville near Paris, and upon its release was their first to break into the top 50 on the US Billboard chart.

 

Following the release of Meddle, Waters proposed that their next album should deal with things that "make people mad", and that it could also form part of an upcoming international tour. Their new material was given the provisional title of The Dark Side of the Moon (an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy), but on discovering that that title had already been used by the blues rock group Medicine Head, it was temporarily changed to Eclipse. Medicine Head's album was a commercial failure, and so the title changed back to the band's original preference. The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, between May 1972 and January 1973, with staff engineer Alan Parsons. They spent much of 1972 touring the new material, and returned in January 1973 to complete recording. The band also filmed studio footage for Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, and once the recording sessions were complete, began a tour of Europe.

 

Late in the album's production, producer Chris Thomas was hired to provide "a fresh pair of ears". Thomas was responsible for significant changes to the album, including the perfect timing of the echo used on "Us and Them". He was also present for the recording of "The Great Gig in the Sky". Packaging was designed by Hipgnosis, and bore George Hardie's iconic refracting prism on the cover. Since Barrett's departure the burden of lyrical composition had fallen mostly on Waters' shoulders. He is therefore credited as the author of the album's lyrics. Generally, the press were enthusiastic; Melody Maker's Roy Hollingworth described side one as: "… so utterly confused with itself it was difficult to follow", but went on to praise side two, writing "The songs, the sounds, the rhythms were solid and sound, Saxophone hit the air, the band rocked and rolled, and then gushed and tripped away into the night." In his 1973 album review for Rolling Stone magazine, Lloyd Grossman wrote: "a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement".

 

The Dark Side of the Moon was released in March 1973, and became an instant chart success in Britain and throughout Western Europe. Throughout March 1973 it featured as part of their US tour, including a midnight performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on 17 March. The success of the album brought previously unknown wealth to all four members of the band; Richard Wright and Roger Waters bought large country houses, and Nick Mason became a collector of upmarket cars. Much of the album's early stateside success has been attributed to the efforts of Pink Floyd's US record company, Capitol Records. Newly appointed chairman Bhaskar Menon reversed the relatively poor performance of the band's previous US releases, but, disenchanted with Capitol, the band and manager O'Rourke negotiated a new contract with Columbia Records. The Dark Side of the Moon was the last album that Pink Floyd were obliged to release before formally signing a new contract. Menon's efforts to secure a contract renewal with Pink Floyd were in vain, and the band signed for Columbia with a reported advance fee of $1M ($4,794,891 today), while in Britain and Europe they continued to be represented by Harvest Records.

 

Pink Floyd returned to the studio in the first week of 1975. Alan Parsons had declined the band's offer to continue working with them (instead becoming successful in his own right with The Alan Parsons Project), and so the band turned to Brian Humphries, with whom they had already worked on More. The group initially found it difficult to devise any new material, especially as the success of Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. Richard Wright later described these early sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Waters found them "torturous". Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material, and Mason's marriage was failing, bringing on in him a general malaise and sense of apathy, which interfered with his drumming.

 

"It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams had been sort of realized and we had the biggest selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for. The girls and the money and the fame and all that stuff it was all ... everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while ..."

—David Gilmour

 

After several weeks, however, Waters began to visualise another concept. During 1974, they had sketched out three new compositions, "Raving and Drooling", "Gotta Be Crazy", and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and had performed them at a series of concerts in France and England. These new compositions became the starting point for a new album, with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" forming a centrepiece for the new work. The opening four note guitar phrase, composed entirely by accident by Gilmour, reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett. "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" were barely-veiled attacks on the music business, their lyrics working neatly with "Shine On" to provide an apt summary of the rise and fall of the former bandmate; "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "Gotta Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside.

An overweight white male with shaved head and eyebrows, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and black trousers, looks at the camera with a neutral expression. The room behind him appears dark, and several unidentifiable pieces of equipment are visible.

 

On 5 June 1975 Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger, and it was also the eve of Pink Floyd's second tour of the US that year. The band were in the process of mixing one of the album's tracks when an overweight man entered the room. Initially, nobody recognised him, but it soon became apparent that the stranger was Barrett. Mason thought that Barrett was "desultory and not entirely sensible". Storm Thorgerson later said: "Two or three people cried. He sat round and talked for a bit but he wasn't really there." Waters was reportedly deeply upset by the experience. Barrett also mentioned that he was ready to avail the band of his services, but on listening to the mix of "Shine On", showed no sign of understanding its relevance to his plight. He joined the guests at Gilmour's wedding reception in the EMI canteen, but later left without saying goodbye. None of the band members ever saw him again.

 

Storm Thorgerson concealed the album artwork with a dark-coloured shrink-wrap. Inside, the cover image was inspired by the idea that people tend to conceal their true feelings, for fear of "getting burned", and thus two businessmen were pictured shaking hands, one man on fire. Much of Wish You Were Here was premièred on 5 July 1975 at an open-air music festival at Knebworth, before being released in September that year. It reached number one in Britain and the US, along with positive reviews; Robert Christgau wrote: "... the music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously."

 

Following the Knebworth concert, the band bought a three-storey block of church halls at 35 Britannia Row in Islington. Their deal with EMI for unlimited studio time in return for a reduced percentage of sales had expired, and they set about converting the building into a recording studio, and storage facility. The studio would be on the ground floor, with the storage facility above, necessitating the installation of a hoist to move the band's equipment in and out of the building. The top floor became an office, equipped with a pool table. The band also envisaged hiring their equipment out, but the hire business was unsuccessful and would later be taken over by Brian Grant and Robbie Williams. The studio, however, was more successful. Its construction took up most of 1975, and in 1976 the band recorded their eighth studio album, Animals at the new facility.

 

Animals was born from another Waters concept, where the human race was reduced to dogs, pigs, and sheep. The idea was borrowed from George Orwell's Animal Farm, but in Waters' version the sheep eventually rise up to overpower their oppressors. Brian Humphries was again called upon to engineer the album. Two tracks previously considered for Wish You Were Here—"Raving and Drooling" and "Gotta Be Crazy"—reappeared as "Sheep" and "Dogs" respectively. The album was completed in December 1976, and work began on its cover. Hipgnosis took responsibility and offered three ideas, but unusually the final concept was designed by Waters. At the time he lived near Clapham Common, and regularly passed Battersea Power Station, by then approaching the end of its useful life. The building was chosen as the subject of the cover image, and the band commissioned a 30 feet (9.1 m) porcine balloon (known as Algie). Photography began on 2 December, with a trained marksman ready to fire if it escaped. Unfortunately inclement weather delayed shooting, and O'Rourke had neglected to book the marksman for a second day. The balloon broke free of its moorings and ascended into the sky, eventually landing in Kent where it was recovered by a local farmer, reportedly furious that it had "apparently scared his cows." Shooting continued for a third day, but the image of the pig was later superimposed onto the cover photograph as the early photographs of the power station were considered to be better.

 

The division of royalties became a sore topic, during production of the album. Royalties were accorded on a per-song basis, and although Gilmour was largely responsible for "Dogs"—which took up almost the entire first side of the album—he received far less than Waters, who also contributed the two-part "Pigs on the Wing". The song contains references to Waters' private life—his new romantic interest was Carolyne Anne Christie. Gilmour was also distracted by the birth of his first child, and contributed little else toward the album. Similarly, neither Mason nor Wright contributed much toward Animals (the first Pink Floyd album not to contain a writing credit for Wright); Wright had marital problems, but his relationship with Waters was also suffering:

 

"Animals was a slog. It wasn't a fun record to make, but this was when Roger really started to believe that he was the sole writer for the band. He believed that it was only because of him that the band was still going, and obviously, when he started to develop his ego trips, the person he would have his conflicts with would be me."

—Richard Wright,

 

 

Animals was released on 23 January 1977, and entered the UK charts at number two, and number three in the US. NME called the album "… one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunks of music to have been made available this side of the sun …", and Melody Maker's Karl Dallas wrote "… [an] uncomfortable taste of reality in a medium that has become in recent years, increasingly soporific …" The album became the subject material for the band's In the Flesh tour, during which early signs of discord became apparent. Waters began arriving at each venue alone, and departing immediately after the performance was complete, and Gilmour's wife Ginger did not get along with Waters' new girlfriend. On one occasion, Wright flew back to England threatening to leave the band. The size of the venues was also an issue, and the end of the tour was a low point for Gilmour, who felt that the band had by now achieved the success they sought, and that there was nothing else to look forward to.

 

The In the Flesh tour was Pink Floyd's first playing in large stadiums, and at one venue a small group of noisy and excited fans in the front row of the audience irritated Waters so much that he spat at one of them. Waters was not the only person who felt depressed about playing in such large venues, as that same night Gilmour refused to perform the band's usual twelve-bar blues encore. About this time, Gilmour and Wright released their début solo albums, David Gilmour, and Wet Dream. Both albums sold poorly, a situation only exacerbated by the loss much of the band's accumulated wealth. In 1976 the band had become involved with financial advisers Norton Warburg Group (NWG). NWG became the band's collecting agents and handled all financial planning, for an annual fee of about £300,000. Between £1.6M and £3.3M of the band's money was invested in high-risk venture capital schemes, primarily to reduce the band's exposure to high UK taxes. It soon became obvious that the band were still losing money. Not only did NWG invest in failing businesses, they also left the band liable for tax bills as high as 83% of their income. They eventually terminated their relationship with NWG, demanding the return of any cash not yet invested, which at that time amounted to £860,000 (they received £740,000).

 

In the midst of this, in July 1977 Waters presented the band with two new ideas. The first was a ninety-minute demo given the provisional title Bricks in the Wall, and the other what would later become his first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Although both Mason and Gilmour were initially cautious, the former (inspired by the recent spitting incident) was chosen to be their next album. Bob Ezrin was brought in as co-producer, and he wrote a forty-page script for the new album. The story was based on the central character of Pink—a character inspired by Waters' childhood experiences—the most notable of which was the death of his father in World War II. This first 'brick in the wall' led to more problems, each serving to isolate Pink further. Pink would later become so drug-addled and worn down by the music industry that he would transform into a megalomaniac, a development inspired partly by the decline of Syd Barrett. At the end of the album, the increasingly fascist audience would watch as Pink 'tore down the wall', once again becoming a normal caring person.

 

At Britannia Row, Brian Humphries was emotionally drained by his five years with the band, and was replaced by James Guthrie. Early sessions were difficult, as Ezrin, Guthrie and Waters each had strong ideas about the direction the album would take; however, Ezrin's role expanded to that of an intermediary between Waters and the rest of the band. Work continued up to March 1979, at which point the band's critical financial situation demanded that they leave the UK for a year or more, to continue recording at the Super Bear Studios near Nice. Waters planned the recording sessions on a tight schedule. His relationship with Ezrin had soured, but his relationship with Wright had broken down completely. The band were rarely in the studio together, and Wright, worried about the effect that the introduction of Ezrin would have on the band's internal relationships, was keen to have a producer's credit on the album (their albums up to that point had always stated "Produced by Pink Floyd"). Waters had agreed to a trial period, after which Wright was to be given a producer's credit, but after a few weeks Waters and Ezrin expressed dissatisfaction with his methods. The keyboardist eventually stopped coming into the studio during the day, and worked only at nights. Gilmour also expressed his annoyance, complaining that Wright's lack of input was "driving us all mad". Wright had his own problems, with a failing marriage, and depression. Columbia offered the band a better deal in exchange for a Christmas release of the album, and Waters increased their workload accordingly; however, Wright refused to cut short his family holiday in Rhodes.

 

What exactly happened next remains unclear. In Inside Out (2005) Mason says that Waters called O'Rourke, who was travelling to the US on the QE2, and told him to have Wright out of the band by the time Waters arrived in LA to mix the album. In Comfortably Numb (2008), however, the author states that Waters called O'Rourke and asked him to tell Wright about the new recording arrangements and that Wright's response was apparently "Tell Roger to f*** off …". Wright disagreed with this recollection, stating that the band had agreed to record only through the spring and early summer and that he had no idea they were so far behind schedule. Waters was stunned and felt that Wright was not doing enough to help complete the album. Gilmour was on holiday in Dublin when he learned what was happening, and tried to calm the situation. He later spoke with Wright and gave him his support, but he reminded him about his lack of input on the album. Waters was insisting that Wright leave, else he would refuse to release The Wall. Several days later, worried about their financial situation and the failing interpersonal relationships within the band, Wright quit.

 

Rumours persisted that Wright had a cocaine addiction (something he always disputed), and although his name did not appear anywhere on the finished album, he was employed as a paid musician on the band's subsequent The Wall tour. Production of the album continued and by August 1979 the running order was largely complete. Wright completed his duties, aided by session musicians. Toward the end of The Wall sessions, Mason left the final mix to Waters, Gilmour, Ezrin and Guthrie, and travelled to New York to record his début solo album, Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports.

 

The album was promoted by the a rare Pink Floyd single—"Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)", peaked at number one in the US and the UK. The Wall was released on 30 November 1979, and topped the Billboard charts for fifteen weeks. It remains one of the band's best-selling albums. The cover is one of their most minimal designs, with a simple white brick wall, and no logo or band name. It was also their first album cover since The Piper at the Gates of Dawn not designed by Hipgnosis. Gerald Scarfe was employed to produce a series of animations for the subsequent The Wall Tour, including a series of nightmarish visions of the future such as a dove of peace exploding to reveal an eagle. Large inflatable puppets were also created for the live shows.

 

Meanwhile relationships within the band were now at an all-time low. On tour, their four Winnebagos were parked in a circle, with the doors facing away from the centre. Waters remained isolated, using his own vehicle to arrive at the venue, and staying in separate hotels from the rest of the band. Wright, who had returned as a paid musician, and was the only 'member' of the band to profit from the venture, which lost about $600,000. They were asked to play at Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Stadium, but Waters refused. The band returned to the UK following their year as tax exiles.

 

The album also spawned a film. The original plan was for the film to be a mixture of live concert footage and animated scenes. However, the concert footage proved impractical to film. Alan Parker agreed to direct, and took a different approach. The animated sequences would remain, but scenes would be acted by professional actors, with no dialogue. Waters was screen tested but quickly discarded, and Bob Geldof was asked to take the role of Pink. Geldof was initially disdainful, condemning The Wall's storyline as "bollocks". He was eventually won over by the prospect of being involved in a major film and receiving a large payment for his work. Waters took a six-week holiday during filming and returned to find that Parker had used his creative licence to change parts of the film to his liking. Waters was irate, the two fought, and Parker threatened to walk out. Gilmour pleaded with Waters to reconsider his stance, reminding the bassist that he and the other band members were shareholders and directors and could out-vote him on such decisions. A modified soundtrack was also created for some of the film's songs. The Wall was released in July 1982.

 

Spare Bricks was to have been the soundtrack album for The Wall film, but with the onset of the Falklands Conflict Waters changed direction, and began writing new material. A socialist at heart, Waters saw Margaret Thatcher's response to the invasion of the islands as jingoistic and unnecessary, and he dedicated the new album—then provisionally titled Requiem for a Post-War Dream—to his dead father. Immediately, there were arguments between Waters and Gilmour, who felt that the album should contain new material, rather than songs not considered good enough for The Wall. Waters felt that, lately, Gilmour had contributed little to the band's lyrical repertoire.

 

Michael Kamen (a contributor to the orchestral sections of The Wall) mediated between the two, and also performed the role traditionally occupied by the now absent Richard Wright. James Guthrie was the studio engineer, and surprisingly, Mason was aided by two session drummers. Recording took place in an unprecedented eight studios, including Gilmour's home studio at Hookend Manor and Waters' home studio at East Sheen. Still, the tension within the band grew worse. Waters and Gilmour worked separately (itself not unusual) but Gilmour began to feel the strain, sometimes barely maintaining his composure. Waters lost his temper, ranting at Kamen, who in boredom during one recording session, had started writing "I Must Not f*** Sheep" repeatedly on a notepad in the studio's control room. After a final confrontation, Gilmour's name as producer was removed from the credit list, reflecting what Waters felt was his lack of song writing contributions. Mason's contributions were minimal, as he busied himself recording sound effects for an experimental new Holophonic system to be used on the album. With marital problems of his own, he remained a distant figure.

 

Hipgnosis had by this time disbanded, but again Thorgerson was passed over for the cover design, Waters choosing to design it himself. His brother-in-law, Willie Christie, was commissioned to take pictures for the album. The Final Cut was released in March 1983, going straight to #1 in the UK, and #6 in the US. "Not Now John" was released as a single, with its chorus of "f*** all that" bowdlerised to "Stuff all that". Despite its success, the album again received mixed reviews. Melody Maker declared it to be "… a milestone in the history of awfulness …", but Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder viewed it as "… essentially a Roger Waters solo album … a superlative achievement on several levels …"

 

Gilmour recorded his second solo album About Face in 1984, and used it to express his feelings about a range of topics, from the murder of musician John Lennon, to his relationship with Waters. He has since admitted that he also used the album to distance himself from Pink Floyd. Soon after, Waters began touring his new solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Richard Wright meanwhile formed Zee with Dave Harris, and recorded Identity, which went almost unnoticed upon its release. Wright was also in the midst of a difficult divorce, and has since admitted that it was "… made at a time in my life when I was lost." Mason released his second solo album Profiles in August 1985, which featured a contribution from Gilmour on "Lie for a Lie".

 

Waters now believed that Pink Floyd was a spent force, and contacted O'Rourke with a view to settling future royalty payments. O'Rourke felt obliged to inform Mason and Gilmour, and as a result Waters tried to dismiss him. Waters then went to the High Court to prevent the Pink Floyd name from ever being used again. His lawyers discovered that the partnership had never been formally confirmed, and Waters returned to the High Court in an attempt to gain a veto over further use of the band's name. Gilmour's team responded by issuing a carefully-worded press release affirming that Pink Floyd would continue to exist. However, Gilmour later told a Sunday Times reporter that "Roger is a dog in the manger and I'm going to fight him …".

 

Waters wrote to EMI and Columbia and declared his intention to leave the group, and asked them to release him from his contractual obligations. Gilmour believed that Waters left to hasten the demise of Pink Floyd, however, Waters later stated that by not making new albums, Pink Floyd would be in breach of contract—which would mean that royalty payments would be suspended—and that he was effectively forced from the band as the other members threatened to sue him. With the case still pending, Waters dispensed with O'Rourke's services and employed Peter Rudge to manage his affairs. He went on to record for the soundtrack for When the Wind Blows, as well as a second solo album, Radio K.A.O.S.

 

Radio K.A.O.S. was released in June 1987, just as Gilmour was recruiting musicians for what would become Pink Floyd's first album without Waters at the helm—A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Artists such as Jon Carin and Phil Manzanera worked on the album, but they were also joined by Bob Ezrin. Gilmour was also contacted by Wright's new wife. She had heard that he was working on new material and asked if Wright could contribute. Gilmour considered the request; there were several legal obstacles to Wright's re-admittance to the band, but after a meeting in Hampstead he was brought back in. Gilmour later admitted in an interview with Karl Dallas that Wright's presence "… would make us stronger legally and musically".

 

The album was recorded along the River Thames, on Gilmour's houseboat Astoria. Andy Jackson (a colleague of Guthrie) was brought in as engineer. Gilmour experimented with various songwriters such as Eric Stewart and Roger McGough, but eventually settled on Anthony Moore as a lyricist. Gilmour would later admit that Waters' absence was a problem, and that the new project was difficult without his presence. Nick Mason was concerned that he was too out of practice to perform on the album, and was replaced on occasion by session musicians. He instead busied himself with the album's sound effects. In a marked change from previous Floyd albums, A Momentary Lapse was recorded onto a 32-channel Mitsubishi digital recorder, and used MIDI synchronisation with the aid of an Apple Macintosh computer.

 

Waters on one occasion visited Astoria to see Ezrin, along with Christie, by then his wife. As he was still a shareholder and director of Pink Floyd music, he was able to block any decisions made by his former bandmates. Recording moved to Mayfair and Audio International Studios, and then to Los Angeles—"It was fantastic because … the lawyers couldn't call in the middle of recording unless they were calling in the middle of the night." Waters tried to block a proposed Pink Floyd tour, by contacting every promoter in the US, threatening to sue if they used the Pink Floyd name. Gilmour and Mason funded the startup costs (Mason, separated from his wife, used his Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral). Some promoters were offended by Waters' threat, and several months later, tickets went on sale in Toronto (and were sold out within hours).

 

Storm Thorgerson, whose creative input was absent from The Wall and The Final Cut, was employed to design the cover. The album was released in September 1987, and in order to drive home the message that Waters had left the band, a group photograph was, for the first time since Meddle, included on the inside of the cover. The album went straight to number three in the UK and US—held from the top spot by Michael Jackson's Bad, and Whitesnake's 1987. Although Gilmour initially viewed the album as a return to the band's best form, Wright would later disagree, admitting "Roger's criticisms are fair. It's not a band album at all." Q Magazine's view was that the album was primarily a Gilmour solo effort.

 

Early rehearsals for the upcoming tour were chaotic, with Mason and Wright completely out of practice, and realising he'd taken on too much work Gilmour asked Bob Ezrin to take charge. As the new band toured throughout North America, Waters' Radio K.A.O.S. tour was, on occasion, close by. The bassist had forbidden any members of Pink Floyd from attending his concerts, which were generally in smaller venues than those housing his former band's performances. Waters issued a writ for copyright fees for the band's use of the flying pig, and Pink Floyd responded by attaching a huge set of male genitalia to its underside to distinguish it from his design. However, by November 1987 Waters appeared to admit defeat, and on 23 December a legal settlement was finally reached. Mason and Gilmour were allowed use of the Pink Floyd name in perpetuity, and Waters would be granted, amongst other things, The Wall. The bickering continued, however, with Waters issuing the occasional slight against his former friends, and Gilmour and Mason responding by making light of Waters claims that they would fail without him. The Sun printed a story about Waters, who it claimed had paid an artist to create 150 toilet rolls with Gilmour's face on every sheet. Waters later rubbished this story, but it serves to illustrate how deeply divided the two parties had now become.

 

For several years thereafter the three members of Pink Floyd busied themselves with personal pursuits, such as filming and competing in the Carrera Panamericana (where Gilmour and O'Rourke crashed), and later recording a soundtrack for the film. Gilmour divorced Ginger, and Mason married actress Annette Lynton. In January 1993 the band began working on a new album. They returned to a now remodelled Britannia Row Studios, where for several days Gilmour, Mason and Wright worked collaboratively, ad-libbing new material. After about two weeks the band had enough ideas to start creating new songs. Bob Ezrin returned to work on the album, and production moved to Astoria where from February to May 1993 the band worked on about twenty-five ideas. Contractually, Wright was still not a full member of the band: "It came very close to a point where I wasn't going to do the album", a situation which clearly upset the keyboardist. However, he was given his first songwriting credit on a Pink Floyd album since 1975's Wish You Were Here. Another songwriter credited on the album was Gilmour's new girlfriend, Polly Samson. She helped write "High Hopes" with Gilmour—along with several other tracks—a situation which although initially was tense, according to Ezrin "pulled the whole album together". She also helped Gilmour, who, following his divorce, had developed a cocaine habit. Michael Kamen was brought in work on the album's various string arrangements, and Dick Parry and Chris Thomas also returned.

 

Keen to avoid competing against other album releases (as had happened with A Momentary Lapse) the band set a deadline of April 1994, at which point they would begin touring again. The album title was chosen by writer Douglas Adams, and Storm Thorgerson once again provided the cover artwork. Thorgerson also provided six new pieces of film for the upcoming tour. The band spent three weeks rehearsing at a US airforce base in North Carolina, before opening on 29 March 1994 in Miami with an almost identical crew to that used for their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. They played a mixture of Pink Floyd favourites, but later changed their setlist to include The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. The band also renewed their acquaintance with Peter Wynne Willson.

 

Waters was invited to join the band as the tour reached Europe, but declined, later expressing his annoyance that some Floyd songs were being performed again in large venues. On the first night of the European leg, a 1,200 capacity stand collapsed, but there were no serious injuries and the performance was rescheduled. The tour ended at Earls Court on 20 October 1994, and was the group's final concert performance until Live 8, apart from performing "Fat Old Sun" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" in Chichester Cathedral at the funeral of their manager Steve O'Rourke who died on 30 October 2003. A live album of the tour Pulse, and a concert video Pulse, were released in 1995.

 

On Saturday 2 July 2005 at the Live 8 concert, at about eleven o'clock in the evening, the classic lineup of Pink Floyd performed together on stage—for the first time in almost 25 years. The reunion had been arranged by Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof who had called Mason earlier in the year to discuss the band reuniting for Live 8. Geldof had already asked Gilmour, who had turned down the offer, and asked Mason to intercede on his behalf. Mason declined, but contacted Waters, who was immediately enthusiastic. Waters then called Geldof to discuss the event, which was at that time only a month away. About two weeks later, Waters called Gilmour—their first conversation for about two years—and the next day the latter agreed. Wright was contacted, and immediately agreed. Statements were issued to the press which stressed the lack of import of the band's problems, compared to the context of the Live 8 event. The setlist was planned at the Connaught Hotel in London, followed by three days of rehearsals at Black Island Studios. The sessions were troublesome, with minor disagreements over the style and pace of the songs they were practising. Waters wanted to use the occasion to expand the concepts he had designed, whereas Gilmour wanted to perform the songs in exactly the way the audience would expect. The final setlist and running order was decided on the eve of the concert.

 

The band performed a four-song set beginning with "Speak to Me/Breathe/Breathe (Reprise)", "Money", "Wish You Were Here", and ending with "Comfortably Numb". Gilmour and Waters shared lead vocals. Onstage, at the start of "Wish You Were Here" Waters told the audience that the event was "quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years". At the end of their performance Gilmour thanked the audience, and started to walk off the stage, but Waters called him back and the band shared a group hug that became one of the more notable images from Live 8.

 

I don't think any of us came out of the years from 1985 with any credit … It was a bad, negative time. And I regret my part in that negativity.

—Roger Waters (2007)

 

In the week following their performance there was a revival of interest in Pink Floyd. According to HMV, in the week following sales of Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd rose by 1343%, while Amazon.com reported a significant increase in sales of The Wall. Gilmour subsequently declared that he would donate his share of profits from this sales boom to charity, and urged other artists and record companies profiting from Live 8 to do the same.

 

After the show Gilmour confirmed that he and Waters were on "pretty amicable terms". A £136 million (then about $250 million) deal for a final tour was offered, but turned down. Waters did not rule out further performances, but only for a special occasion. In a 2006 interview with La Republica, Gilmour stated that he wished to focus on solo projects, and his family, and that his appearance at Live 8 was to help reconcile his differences with Waters. However, in a 2006 interview Mason stated that Pink Floyd would be willing to perform for a concert that would support peace between Israel and Palestine. Speaking in 2006, speaking of Pink Floyd's future, Gilmour stated "who knows".

 

David Gilmour released his third solo record, On an Island, on 6 March 2006. He began a tour of small concert venues in Europe, Canada and the US, with contributions from Wright and other musicians from the post-Waters Pink Floyd tours. Mason joined Gilmour and Wright for the final night of the tour, but was otherwise engaged in playing for Waters 2006 Europe/U.S. tour. Gilmour, Wright, and Mason's encore performances of "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb" marked the first performance by Pink Floyd since Live 8.

 

Syd Barrett died on 7 July 2006, aged 60, at his home in Cambridgeshire. He was interred at Cambridge Crematorium on 18 July 2006. No Pink Floyd members attended. Although Barrett had faded into obscurity over the previous 35 years, he was lauded in the national press for his contributions to music. He left over £1.25M in his will, to be divided between his immediate family, and some of his possessions and artwork were auctioned.

 

The band are very naturally upset and sad to hear of Syd Barrett's death. Syd was the guiding light of the early band line-up and leaves a legacy which continues to inspire.

—Richard Wright

 

In September 2006 Waters released his long-awaited Ça Ira, an opera in three acts to a French libretto, based on the historical subject of the French Revolution. Reviews were complimentary, Rolling Stone wrote "the opera does reflect some of the man's long-term obsessions with war and peace, love and loss". 2007 saw the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's signing to EMI, and the 40th anniversary of the release of their début album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This was marked by the release of a limited edition set containing mono and stereo mixes of the albums, plus tracks from the singles and other rare recordings.

 

On 10 May 2007 Waters and Pink Floyd performed separately at the Syd Barrett tribute concert at the Barbican Centre in London. The event, organised by Joe Boyd and Nick Laird-Clowes, saw the band perform some of Barrett's hits, such as "Bike", and "Arnold Layne". In a January 2007 interview Waters suggested he had become more open to a Pink Floyd reunion: “I would have no problem if the rest of them wanted to get together. It wouldn’t even have to be to save the world. It could be just because it would be fun. And people would love it.” Later that year Gilmour stated: "I can’t see why I would want to be going back to that old thing. It’s very retrogressive. I want to look forward, and looking back isn’t my joy." In a May 2008 interview for BBC 6Music, David Gilmour hinted that he would be in favour of another one-off show, but ruled out a full tour. Speaking to Associated Press to promote the release of his new live album, David Gilmour stated that a reunion would not happen. Gilmour said: "The rehearsals were less enjoyable. The rehearsals convinced me it wasn't something I wanted to be doing a lot of … There have been all sorts of farewell moments in people's lives and careers which they have then rescinded, but I think I can fairly categorically say that there won't be a tour or an album again that I take part in. It isn't to do with animosity or anything like that. It's just that I've done that. I've been there, I've done it."

 

Just over two years after the death of Barrett, on 15 September 2008 Richard Wright died of cancer, aged 65. He was lauded by his surviving bandmates, Gilmour in particular, for his influence on the overall sound of Pink Floyd.

 

In April 2009 it was revealed that the band had initiated legal action against EMI for an alleged failure to pay royalties. The dispute is reportedly connected to an ongoing disagreement with Terra Firma Capital Partners, the private equity firm who took ownership of EMI in 2007.

 

Pink Floyd are one of history's most successful and influential rock bands, with over 200 million album sales worldwide. They have been nominated for and won several awards, including a Grammy in 1995 for "Rock Instrumental Performance" on "Marooned"; inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (17 January 1996) and UK Music Hall of Fame (16 November 2005), and the Polar Music Prize for their contribution to contemporary music in 2008 when Waters and Mason received the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Technical awards include a "Best Engineered Non-Classical Album" Grammy in 1980 for The Wall; and a BAFTA for sound in 1982 for the film.

 

The group has sold over 200 million albums worldwide, including 74.5 million certified units in the United States.

 

 

Pink Floyd discography

 

1967 "See Emily Play" - #134

1973 "Money" - #13

1973 "Us and Them"/"Time" (double A-side) - #101

1979 "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" - #1

1980 "Run Like Hell" - #53

1983 "Not Now John" - Main #7

1983 "Your Possible Pasts" - Main #8

1987 "Learning to Fly" - #70 - Main #1

1987 "On the Turning Away" - Main #1

1987 "One Slip" - Main #5

1994 "Keep Talking" - Main #1

1994 "Take It Back" - #73 - Main #4

1994 "High Hopes" - Main #7

 

Factoid: The Chicago Bulls use Pink Floyd's "On The Run" when they do the opponent's starting lineup.

 

 

"Time"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-jhihmczs

[knightni]

5. Nirvana

 

 

13 of 24 lists - 169 points - highest ranking #2 farmteam

 

Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987. Nirvana went through a succession of drummers, the longest-lasting being Dave Grohl, who joined the band in 1990.

 

With the lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the band's second album Nevermind (1991), Nirvana entered into the mainstream, bringing along with it a subgenre of alternative rock called grunge. Other Seattle grunge bands such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden had also gained popularity, and as a result, alternative rock in general became a dominant genre on radio and music television in the United States during the early-to-mid-1990s. As Nirvana's frontman, Kurt Cobain found himself referred to in the media as the "spokesman of a generation," with Nirvana being considered the "flagship band" of Generation X. Cobain was uncomfortable with the attention and placed his focus on the band's music, believing the band's message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, challenging the band's audience with its third studio album In Utero (1993).

 

Nirvana's brief run ended with Cobain's death in April 1994, but the band's popularity continued in the years that followed. In 2002, "You Know You're Right," an unfinished demo from the band's final recording session, topped radio playlists around the world. Since their debut, the band has sold over twenty-five million albums in the US alone, and over fifty million worldwide.

 

Cobain and Novoselic met in 1985. Both were fans of the Melvins, and frequented the band's practice space. After a couple of false starts at forming their own band, the duo recruited drummer Aaron Burckhard, creating the first incarnation of what would eventually become Nirvana. Cobain later described the sound of the band when they first started as "a Gang of Four and Scratch Acid ripoff." Within a few months, Burckhard was fired from the band. He was temporarily replaced by Dale Crover of the Melvins, who played on the band's first demos. Dave Foster then began a brief tenure as the band's drummer.

 

During its initial months, the band went through a series of names, including Skid Row, Pen Cap Chew, and Ted Ed Fred. The band finally settled on Nirvana in early 1988, which Cobain said was chosen because "I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty instead of a mean, raunchy punk rock name like the Angry Samoans." Nirvana played their first show under the name that March. A couple of months later, the band finally settled on a drummer, Chad Channing.

 

Nirvana's first release was the single "Love Buzz/Big Cheese" in 1988 on Seattle independent record label Sub Pop. The following year, the band released its first album, Bleach. To record Bleach, the band turned to noted local producer Jack Endino, who had recorded the band's first studio demos. Bleach was highly influenced by the Melvins, by the heavy dirge-rock of Mudhoney, 1980s punk rock, the Pixies, and by the 1970s heavy metal of Black Sabbath. Novoselic noted in a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone that the band had played a tape in their van while on tour that had an album by The Smithereens on one side and an album by the black metal band Celtic Frost on the other, and noted that the combination probably played an influence as well. Bleach became a favorite of college radio stations nationally, but gave few hints of where the band would find itself two years later.

 

The money for the recording sessions for Bleach, listed as $606.17 on the album sleeve, was supplied by Jason Everman. Everman was introduced to Cobain by Dylan Carlson, but had known Channing since the fifth grade. Everman began hanging out with the band, and offered to lend the money to them for the recording. Though Everman did not actually play on the album, he was credited for playing guitar on Bleach because, according to Novoselic, they "wanted to make him feel more at home in the band." After the album was completed, Everman had a brief stay with the band as a second guitar player, but was fired following their first US tour.

 

In a late 1989 interview, Cobain noted that the band's music was changing. He said, "The early songs were really angry ... But as time goes on the songs are getting poppier and poppier as I get happier and happier. The songs are now about conflicts in relationships, emotional things with other human beings." In April 1990, the band began working with producer Butch Vig at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin on recordings for the follow-up to Bleach. During the sessions, Cobain and Novoselic became disenchanted with Channing's drumming, and Channing expressed frustration at not being actively involved in songwriting. Not long after the sessions were complete, Channing left the band. After a few weeks with Dale Crover of the Melvins filling in, Nirvana hired Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters, with whom they recorded the song "Sliver". A few weeks later, Buzz Osborne of the Melvins introduced them to Dave Grohl, who was looking for a new band following the sudden break-up of D.C. hardcore punks Scream. A few days after arriving in Seattle, Novoselic and Cobain auditioned Grohl, with Novoselic later stating, "We knew in two minutes that he was the right drummer."

 

Disenchanted with Sub Pop and with the Smart Studios sessions generating interest, Nirvana decided to look for a deal with a major record label. Following repeated recommendations by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Nirvana signed to DGC Records in 1990. The band subsequently began recording its first major label album, Nevermind. They were offered a number of producers to choose from, but ultimately held out for Butch Vig. Rather than recording at Vig's Madison studio as they had in 1990, they shifted to Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California. For two months, the band worked through a variety of songs in their catalog. Some of the songs, including "In Bloom" and "Breed," had been in the band's repertoire for years, while others, including "On a Plain" and "Stay Away," lacked finished lyrics until mid-way through the recording process. After the recording sessions were completed, Vig and the band set out to mix the album. However, the recording sessions had run behind schedule and the resulting mixes were deemed unsatisfactory. Slayer mixer Andy Wallace was brought in to create the final mix. After the album's release, members of Nirvana expressed dissatisfaction with the polished sound the mixer had given Nevermind.

 

Initially, DGC Records was hoping to sell 250,000 copies of Nevermind, which was the same level they had achieved with Sonic Youth's Goo. However, the album's first single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" quickly gained momentum, thanks in part to significant airplay of the song's music video on MTV. As they toured Europe during late 1991, the band found that the shows were dangerously oversold, that television crews were becoming a constant presence onstage, and that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was almost omnipresent on radio and music television. By Christmas 1991, Nevermind was selling 400,000 copies a week in the US. On January 11, 1992, the album reached number one on the Billboard album charts, displacing Michael Jackson's album Dangerous. The album also topped the charts in numerous countries worldwide. The month Nevermind reached number one, Billboard proclaimed, "Nirvana is that rare band that has everything: critical acclaim, industry respect, pop radio appeal, and a rock-solid college/alternative base."

 

In February 1992, following the band's Pacific Rim tour, Cobain married Hole frontwoman Courtney Love in Hawaii. Love gave birth to a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, the following August. Citing exhaustion, the band decided not to undertake another U.S. tour in support of Nevermind, instead opting to make only a handful of performances later that year. Just days after Frances Bean's birth, Nirvana performed one of its best-known concerts, headlining at the Reading Festival in England. Amid rumors about Cobain's health and the possibility the band might break up, Cobain entered the stage in a wheelchair as a practical joke, then proceeded to get up and join the rest of the band in tearing through an assortment of old and new material. Dave Grohl related in 2005 on the radio program Loveline that the band was genuinely concerned beforehand that the show would be a complete disaster, given all that had happened in the months leading up to the show. Instead, the performance ended up being one of the most memorable of their career.

 

Less than two weeks later, Nirvana performed at the MTV Video Music Awards. During the first rehearsal for the show, Cobain announced that they were going to play a new song during the broadcast, and the band rehearsed "Rape Me". MTV's executives were appalled by the song, and, according to show producer Amy Finnerty, the executives believed that the song was about them. They insisted that the band could not play "Rape Me," even threatening to throw Nirvana off the show and stop airing their videos entirely. After a series of intense discussions, MTV and Nirvana agreed that the band would play "Lithium," their latest single. When the band began their performance, Cobain strummed and sang the first few bars of "Rape Me," one last jab at MTV's executives, before breaking into "Lithium". Near the end of the song, frustrated that his amp had stopped functioning, Novoselic decided to toss his bass into the air for dramatic effect. He misjudged the landing, and the bass ended up bouncing off his forehead, causing him to stumble off the stage in a daze. As Cobain trashed their equipment, Grohl ran to the mic and began yelling "Hi, Axl!" repeatedly, referring to Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose, with whom the band and Courtney had had a bizarre and bellicose encounter before the show.

 

Nirvana released Incesticide, a collection of rarities and B-sides, in December 1992. Many of Nirvana's radio sessions and unreleased early recordings were starting to circulate via trading circles and illegal bootlegs, so the album served to circumvent the bootleggers. The album contained songs from previously released singles and EPs, including "Sliver" and "Dive," as well as material from the band's sessions for the BBC, including "Been a Son," "Aneurysm," and covers of songs by The Vaselines and Devo.

 

For 1993's In Utero, the band brought in producer Steve Albini, well-known for his work on the Pixies album Surfer Rosa. As Nevermind had brought in a new audience of listeners who had little or no experience with the alternative, obscure, or experimental bands Nirvana saw as their forebears, bringing in Albini appeared to be a deliberate move on Nirvana's part to give the album a raw, less-polished sound. For example, one song on In Utero featuring long periods of shrill feedback noise was titled, ironically, "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" (in the industry, a "radio-friendly unit shifter" describes an "ideal" album: one capable of heavy radio play and ultimately selling many copies, or "units"). However, Cobain insisted that Albini's sound was simply the one he had always wanted Nirvana to have: a "natural" recording without layers of studio trickery. The sessions with Albini were productive and notably quick, and the album was recorded and mixed in two weeks for a cost of $25,000 at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.

 

Several weeks after the completion of the recording sessions, stories ran in the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek that quoted sources claiming DGC considered the album "unreleasable". As a result, fans began to believe that the band's creative vision might be compromised by their label. While the stories about DGC shelving the album were untrue, the band actually was unhappy with certain aspects of Albini's mixes. Specifically, they thought the bass levels were too low, and Cobain felt that "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" did not sound "perfect". Longtime R.E.M. producer Scott Litt was called in to help remix those two songs, with Cobain adding additional instrumentation and backing vocals.

 

In Utero debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart in September 1993. Time's Christopher John Farley wrote in his review of the album, "Despite the fears of some alternative-music fans, Nirvana hasn't gone mainstream, though this potent new album may once again force the mainstream to go Nirvana." Although commercially successful, the album did not achieve the same success as Nevermind. That fall, Nirvana embarked on its first major tour of the United States in two years. For the tour, the band added Pat Smear of the punk rock band Germs as a second guitarist.

 

In November 1993, Nirvana performed for MTV Unplugged, adding Germs guitarist Pat Smear. The band opted to stay away from their most recognizable songs, playing only two of their hits, "All Apologies" and "Come as You Are". Grohl later related, "We knew we didn't want to do an acoustic version of Teen Spirit. ... That would've been horrendously stupid." The setlist also included a few relatively obscure covers, with members of the Meat Puppets joining the band for covers of three of their songs. While rehearsals for the show had been problematic, MTV Unplugged producer Alex Coletti noted that the actual taping went exceedingly well, with every song performed in one take and with the complete set lasting under an hour, which were both unusual for Unplugged sessions. Following the band's set-ending performance of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", Coletti tried to convince the band to perform an encore. "Kurt said, 'I can't top that last song.' And when he said that, I backed off. 'Cause I knew he was right." The band's performance debuted on MTV on December 14, 1993.

 

In early 1994, the band embarked on a European tour. Following a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany, on March 1, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. The next night's show, at the same venue, was canceled. In Rome, on the morning of March 4, Love found Cobain unconscious in their hotel room and he was rushed to the hospital. A doctor from the hospital told a press conference that Cobain had reacted to a combination of prescription Rohypnol and alcohol. The rest of the tour was canceled, including a planned leg in the UK.

 

In the ensuing weeks, Cobain's heroin addiction resurfaced. An intervention was organized, and Cobain was convinced to admit himself into drug rehabilitation. After less than a week in rehabilitation, Cobain climbed over the wall of the facility and took a plane back to Seattle. A week later, on Friday, April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head at his Seattle home, dissolving Nirvana.

 

In the years following Nirvana's disbanding, both surviving members remained musically active. Not long after Cobain's death, Grohl recorded a series of demos that eventually became the debut album for Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters became Grohl's main project, releasing several commercially successful records over the next decade. Beyond Foo Fighters, Grohl also drummed for numerous bands, including Paul McCartney, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Mike Watt, Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D, Nine Inch Nails, and Killing Joke. He also recorded an album of metal songs featuring many of his favorite early-80s metal singers under the name Probot.

 

After the end of Nirvana, Novoselic formed Sweet 75. Later, he founded Eyes Adrift with Curt Kirkwood (formerly of the Meat Puppets) and Bud Gaugh (formerly of Sublime). He also performed in a one-off band called the No WTO Combo with Kim Thayil of Soundgarden and Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys that coincided with the WTO Meeting of 1999. In December 2006, Novoselic replaced bass player Bruno DeSmartas in the band Flipper for a UK/Ireland tour and several US shows. Novoselic also became a political activist, founding the political action committee JAMPAC to support musicians' rights. In 2004, he released a book titled Of Grunge and Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy, which covered his musical past as well as his political endeavors.

 

Several Nirvana albums have been released since Cobain's death. The first came in November 1994 with the release of the band's performance for MTV Unplugged, MTV Unplugged in New York. Two weeks after the release of Unplugged in New York, a video compilation of Nirvana performances, titled Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!, was released. Cobain himself had compiled a significant part of the video, which documented much of the Nevermind tour. The original intention was to release the MTV Unplugged set in a double-disc package, along with a second disc of live electric material to balance the acoustic set. However, for the two surviving band members, sorting through Nirvana recordings so soon after Cobain's passing became too emotionally overwhelming. The live disc, a compilation of Nirvana concert recordings, finally saw release in October 1996, titled From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah.

 

In August 1997, online music news website Wall of Sound reported that Grohl and Novoselic were organizing a box set of Nirvana rarities. Four years later, the band's label announced that the box set was complete and would see release in September to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the release of Nevermind. However, shortly before the release date, Love filed an injunction to stop the box set's release and sued Grohl and Novoselic, claiming that Cobain's former band mates were hijacking Nirvana's legacy for their own personal interests. What followed was a protracted legal battle over the ownership of Nirvana's music that lasted for more than a year.

 

Much of the legal wrangling centered on a single unreleased song, "You Know You're Right", the band's final studio recording. Grohl and Novoselic wanted to include the song on the box set, essentially releasing all of the rarities at one time. Love, however, argued that the song was more important than just a generic "rarity", and should be included on a single-disc greatest hits compilation. After more than a year of often public and sometimes bizarre legal maneuvering, the parties settled, agreeing on the immediate release of the greatest hits package including "You Know You're Right", titled simply Nirvana. In turn, Love agreed to donate cassette demos recorded by Cobain for use on the box set.

 

The compilation album, Nirvana, was released on October 29, 2002. On top of "You Know You're Right", the album contained hit singles from their three studio albums as well as several alternate mixes and recordings of familiar Nirvana songs. The box set, With the Lights Out, was finally released in November 2004. The release contained a vast array of early Cobain demos, rough rehearsal recordings, and live tracks recorded throughout the band's history. A best-of-the-box compilation titled Sliver: The Best of the Box was released in late 2005. The CD compiled nineteen tracks from the box set plus three previously unreleased tracks, including a version of the song "Spank Thru" from the 1985 Fecal Matter demo tape. In a 2002 interview with Jim DeRogatis, Love described the countless rehearsal tapes, demos, and bedroom recordings that were left behind after Cobain's death.

 

In April 2006, Love announced that she had arranged to sell twenty-five percent of her stake in the Nirvana song catalog in a deal estimated at $50 million. The share of Nirvana's publishing was purchased by Primary Wave Music, which was founded by Larry Mestel, a former CEO of Virgin Records. In an accompanying statement, Love sought to assure Nirvana's fanbase that the music would not simply be licensed to the highest bidder, noting, "We are going to remain very tasteful and true to the spirit of Nirvana while taking the music to places it has never been before."

 

Further releases have since been made. This includes releasing Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! on DVD in 2006; which was a personal project of Cobain's. Furthermore, a full uncut DVD version of MTV Unplugged in New York was released in 2007. Live at Reading, the band's 1992 performance at Reading Festival, was released on both CD and DVD in November 2009. Bleach was also reissued as a 20th anniversary deluxe edition on both CD and double 12-inch vinyl. This deluxe edition includes a previously unreleased live concert from February 9th, 1990, at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

 

Nirvana discography

 

1990 "Sliver" - Mod #19

1991 "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - Hot #6 - Main #7 - Mod #1

1991 "On a Plain" - Main #25

1992 "Come as You Are" - #32 - #3 - #3

1992 "Lithium" - #64 - #16 - #25

1992 "In Bloom" - Main #5

1993 "Heart-Shaped Box" - Main #4 - Mod #1

1993 "All Apologies"/"Rape Me" - Main #4 - Mod #1

1994 "About a Girl" - Main #3 - Mod #1

1994 "The Man Who Sold the World" - Main #12 - Mod #6

1994 "Lake of Fire" - Main #22

1996 "Aneurysm" - Main #11 - Mod #13

2002 "You Know You're Right" - #45 - #1 - #1

 

Factoid: As he was cremated, there is no grave site for Cobain/Nirvana fans to visit; fans write on a bench in Viretta Park as a memorial to Cobain. The town of Aberdeen Washington, where Cobain is from, created a sign entering town, it reads: "Welcome to Aberdeen — Come As You Are."

 

"In Bloom"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-apikgdyk

 

 

[knightni]

4. The Rolling Stones

 

 

12 of 24 lists - 178 points - highest ranking #1 PlaySumFnJurny

 

The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in 1962 in London when multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were joined by vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup. Stewart, deemed unsuitable as a teen idol, was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but continued to work with the band as road manager and keyboardist until his death in 1985.

 

Early in the band's history Jagger and Richards formed a songwriting partnership and gradually took over leadership of the band from the increasingly troubled and erratic Jones. At first the group recorded mainly covers of American blues and R&B songs, but since the 1966 album Aftermath, their releases have mainly featured Jagger/Richards songs. Mick Taylor replaced an incapacitated Jones shortly before Jones's death in 1969. Taylor quit in 1974, and was replaced in 1975 by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood, who has remained with the band ever since. Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1992; bassist Darryl Jones, who is not an official band member, has worked with the group since 1994.

 

First popular in the UK and Europe, The Rolling Stones came to the US during the early 1960s "British Invasion". The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; and have album sales estimated at more than 200 million worldwide. Sticky Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio albums that charted at number one in the United States. Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, was released in 2005. In 1989 The Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they were ranked number 4 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

 

In the early 1950s Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. They met again in 1960 while Richards was attending Sidcup Art College. Richards recalled, "I was still going to school, and he was going up to the London School of Economics... So I get on this train one morning, and there's Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums... He's got Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters". With mutual friend Dick Taylor (later of Pretty Things), they formed the band Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Stones founders Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were active in the nascent London R&B scene fostered by Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner. Jagger and Richards met Jones while he was playing slide guitar sitting in with Korner's Blues Incorporated. Korner also had hired Jagger periodically and frequently future Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Richards credits Stewart with instigating and finding a space for rehearsals. The early rehearsals included Stewart, Jones, Jagger and Richards, as well as guitarist Geoff Bradford and vocalist Brian Knight. The latter two objected to the Chuck Berry material that Richards favoured, and ended their involvement with as-yet-unnamed band. In June 1962 the lineup was: Jagger, Richards, Stewart, Jones, Taylor, and drummer Tony Chapman. Taylor then left the group. According to Richards, Jones christened the band in a "panic" while phoning Jazz News to place an advertisement. When asked what the band's name was, Jones glanced at a Muddy Waters LP lying on the floor; one of the tracks was "Rollin' Stone".

 

On 12 July 1962 the group played their first formal gig at the Marquee Club, billed as "The Rollin' Stones". The line-up was Jagger, Richards, Jones, Stewart on piano, Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. Jones intended for the band to play primarily Chicago blues, but Jagger and Richards brought the rock & roll of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley to the band. Bassist Bill Wyman joined in December and drummer Charlie Watts the following January to form the band's long-standing rhythm section.

 

The Rolling Stones' first manager Giorgio Gomelsky booked the band to a Sunday residency at The Crawdaddy Club, initially inside the Station Hotel in Richmond, and later at the larger Richmond Athletic Association. In Gomelsky's mind, the Rolling Stones' eight-month residency at the club, along with the emergence of The Beatles, helped herald "Swinging London", in which "a whole new generation of creative people came to the fore" and "lues enjoyed a worldwide renaissance." The Crawdaddy Club was named after Bo Diddley's "Doin' the Crawdad", since the Rolling Stones often closed their sets with an extended version of that number.

 

The growing Crawdaddy crowds of a "rather chic, well-dressed audience" drew the attention of Record Mirror journalist Peter Jones, who mentioned the band to a former Beatles publicist named Andrew Loog Oldham. In April 1963 Oldham saw the band at The Crawdaddy and approached them about management. Being 19 years old (younger than any of the band members) and therefore ineligible for an agent's license, Oldham partnered in early May 1963 with veteran booker Eric Easton to sign the band to a management deal. Gomelsky, who had no written agreement with the band, was not consulted.

 

George Harrison, who with the rest of The Beatles had attended a Rolling Stones gig at The Crawdaddy, encouraged Decca Records' Dick Rowe – who had rejected The Beatles – to take an interest in The Rolling Stones. An existing contract the band had signed in place of paying for a recording session was disposed of when the owner of I.B.C. studios accepted Jones's explanation that the band was breaking up and agreed to a buy-out for 100 pounds cash (which Oldham and Easton had given Jones). In May 1963, the Rolling Stones signed a tape-lease contract with Decca, which allowed the band artistic control over their recordings and ownership of the recording masters, which they leased to Decca – conditions that were quite unusual for the time. Because of the tape-lease agreement, the Rolling Stones could avoid Decca studios with their rigid, limited time recording schedules as well as possible interference from the A&R department. They instead recorded at Regent Sound studios in Denmark Street, with Oldham taking the role of record producer (though he had no previous recording studio experience). Oldham has noted that the greater freedom and time they had at Regent allowed them to "stretch out a bit, experiment and learn from our mistakes."

 

Wyman disagrees with the theory that it was Oldham who conceived of The Rolling Stones' image as "wild rebels" who would be "battling against traditional show-business values." Oldham had initially tried to make the band more presentable by having them wear identical suits, but they soon returned to wearing their own attire on stage. Wyman notes that "Our reputation and image as the Bad Boys came later, completely accidentally. Andrew never did engineer it. He simply exploited it exhaustively." Oldham thought Stewart did not fit the image of "pretty, thin, long-haired boys", and had Stewart removed from the official lineup Oldham proposed that Stewart could remain with the band as road manager and occasional studio pianist, and Stewart accepted the offer. "That takes a big heart," Richards has said, "but Stu had one of the largest hearts around."

 

Their first single (released 7 June 1963) was a cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On"; it reached number 21 in the UK. The band played their first gig outside of greater London at the Outlook Club in Middlesbrough on 13 July. Later Oldham and Easton booked the band on their first big UK concert tour in the autumn of 1963. They were billed as a supporting act for American stars including Bo Diddley, Little Richard and The Everly Brothers, and the tour became a "training ground" for the young band's stagecraft.

 

During this tour the Rolling Stones recorded their second single, a Lennon/McCartney-penned number entitled "I Wanna Be Your Man; it reached number 12 in the UK charts. Their third single featured Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and reached number 3.

 

The band's first album The Rolling Stones, (issued in the US as England's Newest Hit Makers) was composed primarily of covers, but also included a Jagger/Richards original – "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)" – and two numbers credited to Nanker Phelge, the name used for songs composed by the entire group. It was Oldham who had encouraged Jagger and Richards to write songs together; he also had Richards adopt "Keith Richard" as a professional name, because it "looked more pop".

 

The Rolling Stones' first US tour in June 1964 was, in Bill Wyman's words, "a disaster. When we arrived, we didn't have a hit record [there] or anything going for us." When the band appeared on Dean Martin's TV variety show The Hollywood Palace, Martin mocked both their hair and their performance. During the tour, however, they did a two-day recording session at Chess Studios in Chicago, where many of their musical heroes recorded. These sessions included what would become The Rolling Stones' first number 1 in the UK: their cover of Bobby and Shirley Womack's "It's All Over Now".

 

On their second US tour in the autumn of 1964, the band immediately followed James Brown in the filmed theatrical release of The TAMI Show, which showcased American acts with British Invasion artists. According to Jagger in 2003, "We weren't actually following James Brown because there were hours in between the filming of each section. Nevertheless, he was still very annoyed about it..." On 25 October the band also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan, reacting to the pandemonium the Stones caused, promised to never book them again, though he later did book them repeatedly. Their second LP – the US-only 12 X 5 – was released during this tour; it again contained mainly cover tunes, augmented by Jagger/Richards and Nanker Phelge tracks.

 

The Rolling Stones' fifth UK single – a cover of Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" backed by "Off the Hook" (Nanker Phelge) – was released in November 1964 and became their second number-1 hit in the UK – an unprecedented achievement for a blues number. The band's US distributors (London Records) declined to release "Little Red Rooster" as a single there. In December 1964 London Records released the band's first single with Jagger/Richards originals on both sides: "Heart of Stone" backed with "What a Shame"; "Heart of Stone" went to number 19 in the US.

 

The band's second UK LP - The Rolling Stones No. 2, released in January 1965 - was another number 1 on the album charts; the US version, released in February as The Rolling Stones, Now!, went to number 5. Most of the material had been recorded at Chess Studios in Chicago and RCA Studios in Los Angeles. In January/February 1965 the band also toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time, playing 34 shows for about 100,000 fans.

 

The first Jagger/Richards composition to reach number 1 on the UK singles charts was "The Last Time" (released in February 1965); it went to number 9 in the US. It was also later identified by Richards as the "the bridge to into thinking about writing for The Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it." Their first international number-1 hit was "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", recorded in May 1965 during the band's third North American tour. Richards had recorded the fuzz guitar riff that drives the song as a scratch track to guide the horn section that he envisioned overdubbing. Oldham disagreed and, forgoing horn overdubs, released "Satisfaction" as a US single in June 1965. It spent four weeks at the top of the charts there, and established the Stones as a worldwide premier act.

 

The US version of the LP Out of Our Heads (released in July 1965) also went to number 1; it included seven original songs (three Jagger/Richards numbers and four credited to Nanker Phelge). Their second international number-1 single, "Get Off of My Cloud" was released in the autumn of 1965, followed by another US-only LP: December's Children.

 

The release Aftermath (UK number 1; US 2) in the late spring of 1966 was the first Rolling Stones album to be composed entirely of Jagger/Richards songs. On this album Jones's contributions expanded beyond guitar and harmonica. Exploiting his adeptness at quickly learning different instruments and became a colorist for the band. To the Middle Eastern-influenced "Paint It Black" he added sitar, to the ballad "Lady Jane" he added delicate dulcimer, and to "Under My Thumb" he added marimbas. "Aftermath was also remarkable for the almost 12-minute long "Going Home", the first extended jam on a top-selling rock & roll album.

 

The Stones' success on the British and American singles charts peaked during 1966. "19th Nervous Breakdown" (Feb. 1966, UK number 2, US number 2) was followed by their first trans-Atlantic number-1 hit "Paint It Black" (May 1966). "Mother's Little Helper" (June 1966) was only released as a single in the USA, where it reached number 8; it was one of the first pop songs to address the issue of prescription drug abuse, and is also notable for the fact that Jagger sang the lyric in his natural London accent, rather than his usual affected southern American accent.

 

The September 1966 single "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?" (UK number 5, US number 9) was notable in several respects—it was the first Stones recording to feature brass horns, the (now-famous) back-cover photo on the original US picture sleeve depicted the group satirically dressed in drag, and the song was accompanied by one of the first purpose-made promotional film clips (music videos), directed by Peter Whitehead.

 

January 1967 saw the release of Between the Buttons (UK number 3; US 2); the album was Andrew Oldham's last venture as The Rolling Stones' producer (his role as the band's manager had been taken over by Allen Klein in 1965). The US version included the double A-side single "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday", which went to number 1 in America and number 3 in the UK. When the band went to New York to perform the numbers on The Ed Sullivan Show, they were ordered to change the lyrics of the refrain to "let's spend some time together".

 

Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their recreational drug use. In early 1967 when News of the World ran a three-part feature entitled "Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You". The series alleged LSD parties hosted by The Moody Blues and attended by top stars including The Who's Pete Townshend and Cream's Ginger Baker, and alleged admissions of drug use by leading pop musicians. The first article targeted Donovan (who was raided and charged soon after); the second installment (published on 5 February) targeted the Rolling Stones. A reporter who contributed to the story spent an evening at the exclusive London club Blaise's, where a member of the Stones allegedly took several Benzedrine tablets, displayed a piece of hashish and invited his companions back to his flat for a "smoke". The article claimed that this was Mick Jagger, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity—the reporter had in fact been eavesdropping on Brian Jones. On the night the article was published Jagger appeared on the Eammon Andrews chat show and announced that he was filing a writ of libel against the paper.

 

A week later on Sunday 12 February Sussex police (tipped off by the News of the World) raided a party at Keith Richards's home, Redlands. No arrests were made at the time but Jagger, Richards and their friend Robert Fraser (an art dealer) were subsequently charged with drug offences. Richards said in 2003, "When we got busted at Redlands, it suddenly made us realise that this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun stopped. Up until then it had been as though London existed in a beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted."

 

In March, while awaiting the consequences of the police raid, Jagger, Richards and Jones took a short trip to Morocco, accompanied by Marianne Faithfull, Jones's girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and other friends. During this trip the stormy relations between Jones and Pallenberg deteriorated to the point that Pallenberg left Morocco with Richards. Richards said later: "That was the final nail in the coffin with me and Brian. He'd never forgive me for that and I don't blame him, but hell, s*** happens." Richards and Pallenberg would remain a couple for twelve years. Despite these complications, The Rolling Stones toured Europe in March and April 1967. The tour included the band's first performances in Poland, Greece and Italy.

 

On 10 May 1967—the same day Jagger, Richards and Fraser were arraigned in connection with the Redlands charges—Brian Jones's house was raided by police and he was arrested and charged with possession of cannabis. With three out of five Rolling Stones now facing criminal charges, Jagger and Richards were tried at the end of June. On 29 June Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four amphetamine tablets; Richards was found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and sentenced to one year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were imprisoned at that point, but were released on bail the next day pending appeal. The Times ran the famous editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" in which editor William Rees-Mogg was strongly critical of the sentencing, pointing out that Jagger had been treated far more harshly for a minor first offence than "any purely anonymous young man".

 

While awaiting the appeal hearings, the band recorded a new single, "We Love You", as a thank-you for the loyalty shown by their fans. It began with the sound of prison doors closing, and the accompanying music video included allusions to the trial of Oscar Wilde. On 31 July, the appeals court overturned Richards's conviction, and Jagger's sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge. Brian Jones's trial took place in November 1967; in December, after appealing the original prison sentence, Jones was fined £1000, put on three years' probation and ordered to seek professional help.

 

December 1967 also saw the release of Their Satanic Majesties Request (UK number 3; US 2), released shortly after The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Satanic Majesties had been recorded in difficult circumstances while Jagger, Richards and Jones were dealing with their court cases. The band parted ways with producer Andrew Oldham during the sessions. The split was amicable, at least publicly; but in 2003 Jagger said: "The reason Andrew left was because he thought that we weren't concentrating and that we were being childish. It was not a great moment really - and I would have thought it wasn't a great moment for Andrew either. There were a lot of distractions and you always need someone to focus you at that point, that was Andrew's job."

 

Satanic Majesties thus became the first album The Rolling Stones produced on their own. It was also the first of their albums released in identical versions on both sides of the Atlantic. Its psychedelic sound was complemented by the cover art, which featured a 3D photo by Michael Cooper, who had also photographed the cover of Sgt. Pepper. Bill Wyman wrote and sang a track on the album: "In Another Land", which was also released as the first The Rolling Stones single featuring lead vocals other than Jagger's.

 

The band spent the first few months of 1968 working on material for their next album. Those sessions resulted in the song "Jumpin' Jack Flash", released as a single in May. The song, and later that year the resulting album, Beggars Banquet (UK number 3; US 5), marked the band's return to their blues roots, and the beginning of their collaboration with producer Jimmy Miller. Featuring the album's lead single, "Street Fighting Man" (which addressed the political upheavals of May 1968), and the opening track "Sympathy for the Devil", Beggars Banquet was another eclectic mix of country and blues-inspired tunes, and was hailed as an achievement for the Stones at the time of release. On the musical evolution between albums, Richards said, "There is a change between material on Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru s*** and the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come from, but I guess [the music] was a reaction to what we'd done in our time off and also that severe dose of reality. A spell in prison... will certainly give you room for thought... I was f***ing pissed with being busted. So it was, 'Right we'll go and strip this thing down.' There's a lot of anger in the music from that period." Richards(1968) started using open tunings (often in conjunction with a capo), most prominently an open-E or open-D tuning, then in 1969, 5-string open-G tuning (with the lower 6th string removed), as heard on the 1969 single "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar" (Sticky Fingers, 1971), "Tumbling Dice"(capo IV), "Happy"(capo IV) (Exile on Main St., 1972), and "Start Me Up" (Tattoo You, 1981). Open tunings became part of the Rolling Stones' (and Richards's) trademark guitar sound.

 

The end of 1968 saw the filming of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. It featured John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Dirty Mac, The Who, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull and Taj Mahal. The footage was shelved for twenty-eight years (the Rolling Stones were reportedly dissatisfied with their own performance) but was finally released officially in 1996.

 

By the release of Beggars Banquet, Brian Jones was troubled and contributed sporadically to the band. Jagger said that Jones was "not psychologically suited to this way of life". His drug use had become a hindrance, and he was unable to obtain a US visa. Richards reported that, in a June meeting with Jagger, Richards, and Watts at Jones's house, Jones admitted that he was unable to "go on the road again". According to Richards, all agreed to let Jones "...say I've left, and if I want to I can come back". His replacement was the 20-year-old guitarist Mick Taylor, of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who started recording with the band immediately. On 3 July 1969, less than a month later, Jones drowned in the swimming pool at his Cotchford Farm home in Sussex.

 

The Rolling Stones were scheduled to play at a free concert in London's Hyde Park two days after Brian Jones's death; they decided to proceed with the show as a tribute to Jones. Their first concert with Mick Taylor was performed in front of an estimated 250,000 fans. The performance was filmed by a Granada Television production team, to be shown on British television as Stones in the Park. Jagger read an excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy Adonais and released thousands of butterflies in memory of Jones. The show included the concert debut of "Honky Tonk Women", which the band had just released. Their stage manager Sam Cutler introduced them as "the greatest rock & roll band in the world" - a description he repeated throughout their 1969 US tour, and which has stuck to this day.

 

The release of Let It Bleed (UK number 1; US 3) came in December. Their last album of the sixties, Let It Bleed featured "Gimmie Shelter" (with backing vocals by female vocalist Merry Clayton), "You Can't Always Get What You Want", "Midnight Rambler", as well as a cover of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain". Jones and Taylor are featured on two tracks each. Many of these numbers were played during the band's US tour in November 1969, their first in three years. Just after the tour the band also staged the Altamont Free Concert, at the Altamont Speedway, about 60 km east of San Francisco. The biker gang Hells Angels provided security, which resulted in a fan, Meredith Hunter, being stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels. Part of the tour and the Altamont concert were documented in Albert and David Maysles' film Gimme Shelter. As a response to the growing popularity of bootleg recordings, the album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! (UK 1; US 6) was released in 1970; it was declared by critic Lester Bangs to be the best live album ever.

 

In 1970 the band's contracts with both Allen Klein and Decca Records ended, and amid contractual disputes with Klein, they formed their own record company, Rolling Stones Records. Sticky Fingers (UK number 1; US 1), released in March 1971, the band's first album on their own label, featured an elaborate cover design by Andy Warhol. The album contains one of their best known hits, "Brown Sugar", and the country-influenced "Wild Horses". Both were recorded at Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound Studio during the 1969 American tour. The album continued the band's immersion into heavily blues-influenced compositions. The album is noted for its "loose, ramshackle ambience" and marked Mick Taylor's first full release with the band.

 

Following the release of Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones left England on the advice of financial advisors. The band moved to the South of France where Richards rented the Villa Nellcôte, and sublet rooms to band members and entourage. Using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they held recording sessions in the basement; they completed the resulting tracks, along with material dating as far back as 1969, at Sunset Studios in Los Angeles. The resulting double album, Exile on Main St. (UK number 1; US 1), was released in May 1972. Given an A+ grade by critic Robert Christgau and disparaged by Lester Bangs—who reversed his opinion within months -- Exile is now accepted as one of the Stones' best albums. The films Cocksucker Blues (never officially released) and Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (released in 1974) document the subsequent highly publicised 1972 North American ("STP") Tour, with its retinue of jet-set hangers-on, including writer Terry Southern.

 

In November 1972, the band began sessions in Kingston, Jamaica, for their follow-up to Exile, Goats Head Soup (UK 1; US 1) (1973). The album spawned the worldwide hit "Angie", but proved the first in a string of commercially successful but tepidly received studio albums. The sessions for Goats Head Soup led to a number of outtakes, most notably an early version of the popular ballad "Waiting on a Friend", not released until Tattoo You eight years later.

 

The making of the record was interrupted by another legal battle over drugs, dating back to their stay in France; a warrant for Richards's arrest had been issued, and the other band members had to return briefly to France for questioning. This, along with Jagger's convictions on drug charges (in 1967 and 1970), also complicated the band's plans for their Pacific tour in early 1973: they were denied permission to play in Japan and almost banned from Australia. This was followed by a European tour (bypassing France) in September/October 1973 - prior to which Richards had been arrested once more on drug charges, this time in England.

 

The band went to Musicland studios in Munich to record their next album, 1974's It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (UK 2; US 1), but Jimmy Miller, who had drug abuse issues, was no longer producer. Instead, Jagger and Richards assumed production duties and were credited as "the Glimmer Twins". Both the album and the single of the same name were hits.

 

Nearing the end of 1974, Taylor began to get impatient. The band's situation made normal functioning complicated, with band members living in different countries and legal barriers restricting where they could tour. At the same time, Richards's drug use was affecting his creativity and productivity, while Taylor felt some of his own creative contributions were going unrecognized. At the end of 1974, with a recording session already booked in Munich to record another album, Taylor quit The Rolling Stones. Taylor said in 1980, "I was getting a bit fed up. I wanted to broaden my scope as a guitarist and do something else... I wasn't really composing songs or writing at that time. I was just beginning to write, and that influenced my decision... There are some people who can just ride along from crest to crest; they can ride along somebody else's success. And there are some people for whom that's not enough. It really wasn't enough for me."

 

The Stones used the recording sessions in Munich to audition replacements for Taylor. Guitarists as stylistically far-flung as Humble Pie lead Peter Frampton and ex-Yardbirds virtuoso Jeff Beck were auditioned. Rory Gallagher and Shuggie Otis also dropped by the Munich sessions. American session players Wayne Perkins and Harvey Mandel also appeared on much of the next album. Yet Richards and Jagger also wanted the Stones to remain purely a British band. When Ronnie Wood auditioned, everyone agreed that he was the right choice. Wood had already recorded and played live with Richards, and had contributed to the recording and writing of the track "It's Only Rock 'n Roll". The album, Black and Blue (UK 2; US 1) (1976), featured all their contributions. Though he had earlier declined Jagger's offer to join the Stones, because of his ties to the The Faces, Wood committed to the Stones in 1975 for their upcoming Tour of the Americas. He joined officially the following year, as the Faces dissolved; however, Wood remained on salary until Wyman's departure nearly two decades later, when he finally became a full member of the Rolling Stones' partnership.

 

The 1975 Tour of the Americas kicked off with the band performing on a flatbed trailer being pulled down Broadway in New York City. The tour featured stage props including a giant phallus and a rope on which Jagger swung out over the audience.

 

Jagger had booked a live recording session at the El Mocambo club in Toronto to balance a long-overdue live album, 1977's Love You Live (UK 3; US 5), the first Stones live album since 1970's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!. Richards's addiction to heroin delayed his arrival in Toronto; the other members had already assembled, awaiting Richards, and sent him a telegram asking him where he was. On 24 February 1977, Richards and his family flew in from London and were detained by Canada Customs after Richards was found in possession of a burnt spoon and hash residue. On 4 March, Richards's partner Anita Pallenberg pleaded guilty to drug possession and was fined for the original airport incident. On Sunday, 27 February, after two days of Stones rehearsals, armed with an arrest warrant for Pallenberg, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police discovered "22 grams of heroin" in Richards's room. Richards was charged with importing narcotics into Canada, which carried a minimum seven-year sentence upon conviction. Later the Crown prosecutor conceded that Richards had procured the drugs after arrival.[80] Despite the arrest, the band played two shows in Toronto, only to raise more controversy when Margaret Trudeau, then-wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was seen partying with the band after the show. These two shows were kept secret from the public and the El Mocambo had been booked for the entire week by April Wine for a recording session. 1050 CHUM, a local radio station, ran a contest for free tickets to see April Wine and the winners were allowed to pick a night to see the band. The winners that picked tickets for the Friday or Saturday night were surprised to find that the Stones were playing.

 

The drug case dragged on for over a year until Richards received a suspended sentence and was ordered to play two free concerts for the CNIB in Oshawa; both shows were played by the Rolling Stones and The New Barbarians, a group that Wood had put together to promote his latest solo album, and which Richards also joined. This episode strengthened Richards's resolve to get off heroin. It also contributed to the end of his relationship with Pallenberg, which had become strained since the death of their third child (an infant son named Tara); her inability to curb her heroin addiction while Keith struggled to get clean. While Richards was settling his legal and personal problems, Jagger continued his jet-set lifestyle. He was a regular at New York's Studio 54 disco club, often in the company of model Jerry Hall. His marriage to Bianca Jagger ended in 1979.

 

Although The Rolling Stones remained popular through the first half of the 1970s, music critics had grown increasingly dismissive of the band's output, and record sales failed to meet expectations. By the late 70s, punk rock had become influential, and the Stones were criticised as decadent, aging millionaires, and their music considered by many to be stagnant or irrelevant. This changed in 1978, when the band released Some Girls (UK #2; US #1), which included the hit single "Miss You", the country ballad "Far Away Eyes", "Beast of Burden", and "Shattered". In part a response to punk, many songs were fast, basic, guitar-driven rock and roll, and the album's success re-established the Rolling Stones' immense popularity among young people. Following the US Tour 1978, the band guested on the first show of the fourth season of the TV series "Saturday Night Live". The group did not tour Europe the following year, breaking the routine of touring Europe every three years that the band had followed since 1967.

 

Following the success of Some Girls, the band released their next album Emotional Rescue (UK 1; US 1) in mid-1980. The recording of the album was reportedly plagued by turmoil, with Jagger and Richards' relationship reaching a new low. Richards, though still using heroin according to keyboardist Ian Mclagan began to assert more control in the studio — more than Jagger had become used to — and a struggle ensued as Richards felt he was fighting for "his half of the Glimmer Twins." Emotional Rescue hit the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the title track reached #3 in the US.

 

In early 1981, the group reconvened and decided to tour the US that year, leaving little time to write and record a new album, as well as rehearse for the tour. That year's resulting album, Tattoo You (UK 2; US 1) featured a number of outtakes, including lead single "Start Me Up", which reached #2 in the US and ranked #22 on Billboard's Hot 100 year-end chart. Two songs ("Waiting on a Friend" (US #13) and "Tops") featured Mick Taylor's guitar playing, while jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins played on "Slave" and dubbed a part on "Waiting on a Friend". The Rolling Stones scored one more Top Twenty hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, the #20 hit "Hang Fire". The Stones' American Tour 1981 was their biggest, longest and most colourful production to date, with the band playing from 25 September through 19 December. It was the highest grossing tour of that year. Some shows were recorded, resulting in the 1982 live album Still Life (American Concert 1981) (UK 4; US 5), and the 1983 Hal Ashby concert film Let's Spend the Night Together, which was filmed at Sun Devil Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona and the Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands, New Jersey.

 

In mid-1982, to commemorate their 20th anniversary, the Stones took their American stage show to Europe. The European Tour 1982 was their first European tour in six years. The tour was essentially a carbon copy of the 1981 American tour. For the tour, the band were joined by former Allman Brothers Band piano player Chuck Leavell, who continues to play and record with the Stones. By the end of the year, the band had signed a new four-album, 28 million dollar recording deal with a new label, CBS Records.

 

Before leaving Atlantic, the Stones released Undercover (UK 3; US 4) in late 1983. Despite good reviews and the Top Ten peak position of the title track, the record sold below expectations and there was no tour to support it. Subsequently the Stones' new marketer/distributor CBS Records took over distributing the Stones' Atlantic catalogue.

 

By this time, the Jagger/Richards split was growing. Much to the consternation of Richards, Jagger had signed a solo deal with CBS Records, and he spent much of 1984 writing songs for this first solo effort. He has also stated that he was feeling stultified within the framework of the Rolling Stones.[citation needed] By 1985, Jagger was spending more time on solo recordings, and much of the material on 1986's Dirty Work (UK #4; US #4) was generated by Keith Richards, with more contributions by Ron Wood than on previous Rolling Stones albums. Rumours surfaced that Jagger and Richards were rarely, if ever, in the studio at the same time, leaving Richards to keep the recording sessions moving forward.[citation needed]

 

In December 1985, the band's co-founder, pianist, road manager and long-time friend Ian Stewart died of a heart attack. The Rolling Stones played a private tribute concert for him at London's 100 Club in February 1986, two days before they were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

Dirty Work came out in March 1986 to mixed reviews despite the presence of the US Top Five hit "Harlem Shuffle"; Jagger refused to tour to promote the album, stating later that several band members were in no condition to tour. Richards was infuriated when Jagger instead undertook his own solo tour; he has referred to this period in his relations with Jagger as "World War III". Jagger's solo records, She's The Boss (UK 6; US 13) (1985) and Primitive Cool (UK 26; US 41) (1987), met with moderate success, although Richards disparaged both. In 1988, with the Rolling Stones inactive, Richards released his first solo album, Talk Is Cheap (UK 37; US 24). It was well received by fans and critics, going gold in the US.

 

In early 1989, the Rolling Stones, including Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood and Ian Stewart (posthumously), were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jagger and Richards appeared to have set animosities aside, and The Rolling Stones went to work on the album that would be called Steel Wheels (UK 2; US 3). Heralded as a return to form, it included the singles "Mixed Emotions" (US #5), "Rock and a Hard Place" (US #23) and "Almost Hear You Sigh". It also included "Continental Drift", which was recorded in Tangier in 1989 with Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka, whom Brian Jones had recorded in 1968.

 

The subsequent Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tours, encompassing North America, Japan and Europe, saw the Rolling Stones touring for the first time in seven years (since Europe 1982), and it was their biggest stage production to date. Opening acts included Living Colour and Guns N' Roses; the onstage personnel included a horn section and backup singers Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler, both of whom continue to tour regularly with the Rolling Stones. Recordings from the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours produced the 1991 concert album Flashpoint (UK 6; US 16), which also included two studio tracks recorded in 1991: the single "Highwire" and "Sex Drive".

 

These were the last Rolling Stones tours for Bill Wyman, who left the band after years of deliberation, although his retirement was not made official until December 1992. He then published Stone Alone, an autobiography based on scrapbooks and diaries he had been keeping since the band's early days. A few years later he formed Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings and began recording and touring again.

 

After the successes of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours, the band took a break. Charlie Watts released two jazz albums; Ronnie Wood made his fifth solo album, the first in 11 years, called Slide On This; Keith Richards released his second solo album in late 1992, Main Offender (UK 45; US 99), and did a small tour including big concerts in Spain and Argentina. Mick Jagger got good reviews and sales with his third solo album, Wandering Spirit (UK 12; US 11). The album sold more than two million copies worldwide, going gold in the US.

 

After Wyman's departure, the Rolling Stones' new distributor/record label, Virgin Records, remastered and repackaged the band's back catalogue from Sticky Fingers to Steel Wheels, except for the three live albums, and issued another hits compilation in 1993 entitled Jump Back (UK 16; US 30). By 1993 the Stones set upon their next studio album. Darryl Jones, former sideman of Miles Davis and Sting, was chosen by Charlie Watts as Wyman's replacement for 1994's Voodoo Lounge (UK 1; US 2). The album met strong reviews and sales, going double platinum in the US. Reviewers took note of the album's "traditionalist" sounds, which were credited to the Rolling Stones' new producer Don Was. It would go on to win the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.

 

1994 also brought the accompanying Voodoo Lounge Tour, which lasted into 1995. Numbers from various concerts and rehearsals (mostly acoustic) made up Stripped (UK 9; US 9), which featured a cover of Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", as well as infrequently played songs like "Shine a Light", "Sweet Virginia" and "The Spider and the Fly".

 

The Rolling Stones ended the 1990s with the album Bridges To Babylon (UK 6; US 3), released in 1997 to mixed reviews. The video of the single "Anybody Seen My Baby?" featured Angelina Jolie as guest and met steady rotation on both MTV and VH1. Sales were reasonably equivalent to those of previous records (about 1.2 million copies sold in the US), and the subsequent Bridges to Babylon Tour, which crossed Europe, North America and other destinations, proved the band to be a strong live attraction. Once again, a live album was culled from the tour, No Security (UK 67; US 34), only this time all but two songs ("Live With Me" and "The Last Time") were previously unreleased on live albums. In 1999, the Stones staged the No Security Tour in the US and continued the Bridges to Babylon tour in Europe. The No Security Tour offered a stripped-down production in contrast to the pyrotechnics and mammoth stages of other recent tours.

 

In late 2001, Mick Jagger released his fourth solo album, Goddess in the Doorway (UK 44; US 39) which met with mixed reviews. Jagger and Richards took part in "The Concert for New York City", performing "Salt of the Earth" and "Miss You" with a backing band.

 

In 2002, the band released Forty Licks (UK 2; US 2), a greatest hits double album, to mark their forty years as a band. The collection contained four new songs recorded with the latter-day core band of Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood, Leavell and Jones. The album has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. The same year, Q magazine named The Rolling Stones as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die", and the 2002-2003 Licks Tour gave people that chance. The tour included shows in small theatres, arenas and stadiums. The band headlined the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to help the city — which they have used for rehearsals since the Steel Wheels tour — recover from the 2003 SARS epidemic. The concert was attended by an estimated 490,000 people.

 

On 9 November 2003, the band played their first concert in Hong Kong as part of the Harbour Fest celebration, also in support of the SARS-affected economy. In November 2003, the band exclusively licensed the right to sell their new four-DVD boxed set, Four Flicks, recorded on the band's most recent world tour, to the US Best Buy chain of stores. In response, some Canadian and US music retail chains (including HMV Canada and Circuit City) pulled Rolling Stones CDs and related merchandise from their shelves and replaced them with signs explaining the situation. In 2004, a double live album of the Licks Tour, Live Licks (UK 38; US 50), was released, going gold in the US.

 

On 26 July 2005, Jagger's birthday, the band announced the name of their new album, A Bigger Bang (UK 2; US 3), their first album in almost eight years. A Bigger Bang was released on 6 September to strong reviews, including a glowing write-up in Rolling Stone magazine. The single "Streets of Love" reached the Top 15 in UK and Europe.

 

The album included the most controversial song from the Stones in years, "Sweet Neo Con", a criticism of American Neoconservatism from Jagger. The song was reportedly almost dropped from the album because of objections from Richards. When asked if he was afraid of political backlash such as the Dixie Chicks had endured for criticism of American involvement in the war in Iraq, Richards responded that the album came first, and that, "I don't want to be sidetracked by some little political 'storm in a teacup'."

 

The subsequent A Bigger Bang Tour began in August 2005, and visited North America, South America and East Asia. In February 2006, the group played the half-time show of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan. By the end of 2005, the Bigger Bang tour set a record of $162 million in gross receipts, breaking the North American mark also set by the Stones in 1994. On 18 February 2006 the band played a free concert with a claimed 1.5 million attendance at the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.

 

After performances in Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand in March/April 2006, the Rolling Stones tour took a scheduled break before proceeding to Europe; during this break Keith Richards was hospitalized in New Zealand for cranial surgery after a fall from a tree on Fiji, where he had been on holiday. The incident led to a six-week delay in launching the European leg of the tour. In June 2006 it was reported that Ronnie Wood was continuing his programme of rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, but this did not affect the rearranged European tour schedule. Two out of the 21 shows scheduled for July-September 2006 were later cancelled due to Mick Jagger's throat problems.

 

The Stones returned to North America for concerts in September 2006, and returned to Europe on 5 June 2007. By November 2006, the Bigger Bang tour had been declared the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $437 million. The North American leg brought in the third-highest receipts ever ($138.5 million), trailing their own 2005 tour ($162 million) and the U2 tour of that same year ($138.9 million).

 

On 29 October and 1 November 2006, director Martin Scorsese filmed the Rolling Stones performing at New York City's Beacon Theatre, in front of an audience that included Bill and Hillary Clinton, released as the 2008 film Shine a Light; the film also features guest appearances by Buddy Guy, Jack White and Christina Aguilera. An accompanying soundtrack, also titled Shine a Light (UK 2; US 11), was released in April 2008. The album's debut at number 2 in the UK charts was the highest position for a Rolling Stones concert album since Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! in 1970.

 

On 24 March 2007, the band announced a tour of Europe called the "Bigger Bang 2007" tour. 12 June 2007 saw the release of the band's second four-disc DVD set: The Biggest Bang, a seven-hour document featuring their shows in Austin, Rio de Janeiro, Saitama, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, along with extras. On 10 June 2007, the band performed their first gig at a festival in 30 years, at the Isle of Wight Festival, to a crowd of 65,000. On 26 August 2007, they played their last concert of the A Bigger Bang Tour at the O2 Arena in London, England. On 26 September 2007, it was announced The Rolling Stones had made $437 million on the A Bigger Bang Tour to list them in the latest edition of Guinness World Records.

 

Mick Jagger released a compilation of his solo work called The Very Best of Mick Jagger (UK 57; US 77), including three unreleased songs, on 2 October 2007. On 12 November 2007, ABKCO released Rolled Gold+: The Very Best of the Rolling Stones, a double-CD remake of the 1975 compilation Rolled Gold; the reissue went to number 26 in the UK charts.

 

In a 2007 interview with Mick Jagger after nearly two years of touring, Jagger refused to say when the band are going to retire: "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things, more records and more tours, we've got no plans to stop any of that really. As far as I'm concerned, I'm sure we'll continue." In March 2008 Keith Richards sparked rumours that a new Rolling Stones studio album may be forthcoming, saying during an interview following the premiere of Shine a Light, "I think we might make another album. Once we get over doing promotion on this film". Drummer Charlie Watts remarked that he got ill whenever he stopped working. In July 2008 it was announced that the Rolling Stones were leaving EMI and signing with Vivendi's Universal Music, taking with them their catalogue stretching back to Sticky Fingers. New music released by the band while under this contract will be issued through Universal's Polydor label. Universal Records will hold the US rights to the pre-1994 material, while the post-1994 material will be handled by Interscope Records (once a subsidiary of Atlantic). Coincidentally, Universal Music is also the distributor for ABKCO, owners of the band's pre-Sticky Fingers releases.

 

 

The Rolling Stones discography

 

1964 "Not Fade Away" - #48

1964 "It's All Over Now" - #26

1964 "Tell Me" - #24

1964 "Time Is on My Side" - #6

1964 "Heart of Stone" - #19

1965 "What a Shame" - #124

1965 "The Last Time" - #9

1965 "Play With Fire" - #96

1965 "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - #1

1965 "Get Off of My Cloud" - #1

1965 "As Tears Go By" - #6

1966 "19th Nervous Breakdown"- #2

1966 "Paint It, Black" - #1

1966 "Mother's Little Helper" - #8

1966 "Lady Jane" - #24

1966 "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" - #9

1967 "Let's Spend the Night Together" - #55

1967 "Ruby Tuesday" - #1

1967 "We Love You" - #50

1967 "Dandelion"- #14

1967 "In Another Land"- #87

1967 "She's a Rainbow" - #25

1968 "Jumpin' Jack Flash"- #3

1968 "Street Fighting Man" - #48

1969 "Honky Tonk Women" - #1

1971 "Brown Sugar"- #1

1971 "Wild Horses"- #28

1972 "Tumbling Dice"- #7

1972 "Happy"- #22

1973 "Angie"- #1

1973 "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)"- #15

1974 "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" - #16

1974 "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" - #17

1975 "I Don't Know Why" - #42

1975 "Out of Time" - #81

1976 "Fool to Cry" - #10

1976 "Hot Stuff"- #49

1978 "Miss You" - #1

1978 "Beast of Burden" - #8

1978 "Shattered" - #31

1980 "Emotional Rescue" - #3

1980 "She's So Cold" - #26

1981 "If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt. 2)" - Main #26

1981 "Start Me Up" - #2 - M #1

1981 "Waiting On A Friend" - #13 - M #8

1981 "Little T&A" - M #5

1982 "Hang Fire" - #20 - #2

1982 "Going To A Go-Go (Live)" - #25 - #5

1983 "Undercover of the Night" - #9 - #2

1984 "She Was Hot" - #44 - #4

1984 "Think I'm Going Mad" - M #50

1984 "Too Tough" - M #14

1984 "Too Much Blood" - M #38

1986 "Harlem Shuffle" - #5 - #2

1986 "Winning Ugly" - M #10

1986 "One Hit (to the Body)" - #28 - #3

1989 "Mixed Emotions" - #5 - #1

1989 "Sad Sad Sad" - M #14

1989 "Rock and a Hard Place"- #23 - #1

1990 "Almost Hear You Sigh" - #50 - #1

1990 "Terrifying" - M #8

1991 "Highwire" - #57 - #1

1991 "Sex Drive" - M #40

1994 "Love Is Strong" - #91 - #2

1994 "You Got Me Rocking"- #113 - #2

1994 "Out of Tears" - #60 - #14

1995 "Sparks Will Fly" - M #30

1995 "I Go Wild" - M #20

1995 "Like a Rolling Stone"- #109 - #16

1997 "Anybody Seen My Baby?" - M #3

1997 "Flip The Switch" - M #14

1998 "Saint of Me" - #94 - #13

1998 "Gimme Shelter" (live) - M #29

2002 "Don't Stop" (Jagger/Richards) - M #21

2003 "Sympathy for the Devil (remix)" - H #97

2005 "Streets of Love" - M #25

2005 "Oh No Not You Again" - M #34

 

Factoid: In a career that has spanned nearly half a century, the band has released over 90 singles, more than two dozen studio albums, and numerous compilation and live albums. Ten of their studio albums are among Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, with their 1972 double album Exile on Main St. placing seventh.

 

"Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo - (Heartbreaker)"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-pfjhpdbv

[knightni]

3. Led Zeppelin

 

 

14 of 24 lists - 198 points - Highest ranking # 3 TheGooch, Sox1422

 

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in 1968 by Robert Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards, mandolin) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands, helping to pioneer the genre. However, the band's individualistic style drew from many sources and transcends any one genre. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of "album-oriented rock".

 

Close to 30 years after disbanding following Bonham's death in 1980, the band continues to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success, and broad influence. The band has sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million certified units in the United States and they have had all of their original studio albums reach the top 10 of the Billboard album chart in the U.S., with six reaching the number one spot. Led Zeppelin are ranked #1 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the '70s" and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history".Similarly, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes Led Zeppelin being "as influential in that decade (70s) as the Beatles were in the prior one".

 

On 10 December 2007 the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited (along with deceased drummer John Bonham's son, Jason) for the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert at The O2 Arena in London.

 

The beginning of Led Zeppelin can be traced back to the English blues-influenced rock band The Yardbirds. Jimmy Page joined The Yardbirds in 1966 to play bass guitar after the original bassist, Paul Samwell-Smith, left the group. Shortly after, Page switched from bass to lead guitar, creating a dual-lead guitar line up with Jeff Beck. Following the departure of Beck from the group in October 1966, The Yardbirds, tired from constant touring and recording, were beginning to wind down. Page wanted to form a supergroup with himself and Beck on guitars, and The Who's rhythm section—drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle. Vocalists Donovan, Steve Winwood and Steve Marriott were also considered for the project. The group never formed, although Page, Beck and Moon did record a song together in 1966, "Beck's Bolero", which is featured on Beck's 1968 album, Truth. The recording session also included bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones, who told Page that he would be interested in collaborating with him on future projects.

 

The Yardbirds played their final gig in July 1968. However, they were still committed to performing several concerts in Scandinavia, so drummer Jim McCarty and vocalist Keith Relf authorised Page and bassist Chris Dreja to use the Yardbirds name to fulfil the band's obligations. Page and Dreja began putting a new line-up together. Page's first choice for lead singer, Terry Reid, declined the offer, but suggested Robert Plant, a West Bromwich singer. Plant eventually accepted the position, recommending a drummer, John Bonham from nearby Redditch. When Dreja dropped out of the project to become a photographer (he would later take the photograph that appeared on the back of Led Zeppelin's debut album), John Paul Jones, at the suggestion of his wife, contacted Page about the vacant position.[26] Being familiar with Jones' credentials, Page agreed to bring in Jones as the final piece.

 

The group came together for the first time in a room below a record store on Gerrard Street in London. Page suggested that they try playing "Train Kept A-Rollin'", a rockabilly song popularised by Johnny Burnette that had been given new life by the Yardbirds. "As soon as I heard John Bonham play," recalled Jones, "I knew this was going to be great... We locked together as a team immediately." Shortly afterwards, the group played together on the final day of sessions for the P. J. Proby album, Three Week Hero. The album's song "Jim's Blues" was the first studio track to feature all four members of the future Led Zeppelin. Proby recalled, "Come the last day we found we had some studio time, so I just asked the band to play while I just came up with the words. ... They weren't Led Zeppelin at the time, they were the New Yardbirds and they were going to be my band."

 

The band completed the Scandinavian tour as The New Yardbirds, playing together for the first time in front of a live audience at Gladsaxe Teen Clubs in Gladsaxe, Denmark on 7 September 1968. However, it was clear to the band that performing under the old Yardbirds tag was akin to working under false pretences, and upon returning from Scandinavia they decided to change their name. One account of the band's naming, which has become almost legendary, has it that Keith Moon and John Entwistle, drummer and bassist for The Who, respectively, suggested that a possible supergroup containing themselves, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck would go down like a lead zeppelin, a term Entwistle used to describe a bad gig. The group deliberately dropped the 'a' in Lead at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant, to prevent "thick Americans" from pronouncing it "leed".

 

Grant also secured for the new band an advance deal of $200,000 from Atlantic Records in November 1968, then the biggest deal of its kind for a new band. Atlantic was a label known for a catalogue of blues, soul and jazz artists, but in the late 1960s it began to take an interest in progressive British rock acts, and signed Led Zeppelin without having ever seen them, largely on the recommendation of singer Dusty Springfield. Under the terms of the contract secured by Grant, the band alone would decide when they would release albums and tour, and had final say over the contents and design of each album. They also would decide how to promote each release and which (if any) tracks to release as singles, and formed their own company, Superhype, to handle all publishing rights.

 

With their first album not yet released, the band made their live debut under the name "Led Zeppelin" at the University of Surrey, Guildford on 25 October 1968. This was followed by a US concert debut on 26 December 1968 (when promoter Barry Fey added them to a bill in Denver, Colorado) before moving on to the west coast for dates in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities. Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album was released on 12 January 1969, during their first US tour. The album's blend of blues, folk and eastern influences with distorted amplification made it one of the pivotal records in the creation of heavy metal music. However, Plant has commented that it is unfair for people to typecast the band as heavy metal, since about a third of their music was acoustic. On their first album Plant receives no credit for his contributions to the songwriting, a result of his previous association with CBS Records.

 

In an interview for the Led Zeppelin Profiled radio promo CD (1990) Page said that the album took about 36 hours of studio time to create (including mixing), and stated that he knows this because of the amount charged on the studio bill. Peter Grant claimed the album cost £1,750 to produce (including artwork). By 1975, the album had grossed $7,000,000. Led Zeppelin's album cover met an interesting protest when, at a 28 February 1970 gig in Copenhagen, the band were billed as "The Nobs" as the result of a threat of legal action from Countess Eva von Zeppelin (granddaughter of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the creator of the Zeppelin airships), who, upon seeing the logo of the Hindenburg crashing in flames, threatened to have the show pulled off the air. She is reported to have said: "They may be world famous, but a couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a privileged family name without permission".

 

In their first year, Led Zeppelin managed to complete four US and four UK concert tours, and also released their second album, entitled Led Zeppelin II. Recorded almost entirely on the road at various North American recording studios, the second album was an even greater success than the first and reached the number one chart position in the US and the UK. Here the band further developed ideas established on their debut album, creating a work which became even more widely acclaimed and arguably more influential. It has been suggested that Led Zeppelin II largely wrote the blueprint for heavy metal bands that followed it.

 

Following the album's release, Led Zeppelin completed several more tours of the United States. They played often, initially in clubs and ballrooms, then in larger auditoriums and eventually stadiums as their popularity grew. Led Zeppelin concerts could last more than four hours, with expanded, improvised live versions of their song repertoire. Many of these shows have been preserved as Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings. It was also during this period of intensive concert touring that the band developed a reputation for off-stage excess. One alleged example of such extravagance was the shark episode, or red snapper incident, which is said to have taken place at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle, Washington, on 28 July 1969.

 

Led Zeppelin's popularity in the early years was dwarfed by their triumphant mid-seventies successes and it is this period that continues to define the band. The band's image also changed as members began to wear elaborate, flamboyant clothing. Led Zeppelin began travelling in a private jet airliner (nicknamed The Starship), rented out entire sections of hotels (most notably the Continental Hyatt House in Los Angeles, known colloquially as the "Riot House"), and became the subject of many of rock's most famous stories of debauchery. One escapade involved John Bonham riding a motorcycle through a rented floor of the Riot House, while another involved the destruction of a room in the Tokyo Hilton, leading to the band being banned from that establishment for life. However, although Led Zeppelin developed a reputation for trashing their hotel suites and throwing television sets out of the windows, some suggest that these tales have been somewhat exaggerated. Music journalist Chris Welch argues that "[Led Zeppelin's] travels spawned many stories, but it was a myth that [they] were constantly engaged in acts of wanton destruction and lewd behaviour."

 

For the composition of their third album, Led Zeppelin III, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant retired to Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in Wales, in 1970. The result was a more acoustic sound (and a song, "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp", misspelled as "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" on the album cover), which was strongly influenced by folk and Celtic music, and revealed the band's versatility.

 

The album's rich acoustic sound initially received mixed reactions, with many critics and fans surprised at the turn taken away from the primarily electric compositions of the first two albums. Over time, however, its reputation has improved and Led Zeppelin III is now generally praised. It has a unique album cover featuring a wheel which, when rotated, displays various images through cut outs in the main jacket sleeve. The album's opening track, "Immigrant Song", was released in November 1970 by Atlantic Records as a single against the band's wishes. It included their only non-album b-side, "Hey Hey What Can I Do". Even though the band saw their albums as indivisible, whole listening experiences—and their manager, Peter Grant, maintained an aggressive pro-album stance—some singles were released without their consent. The group also increasingly resisted television appearances, enforcing their preference that their fans hear and see them in live concerts.

 

Led Zeppelin's fourth album was released on 8 November 1971. There was no indication of a title or a band name on the original cover, as the band disdained being labeled as "hyped" and "overrated" by the music press, and in response wanted to prove that the music could sell itself by giving no indication of who they were. The album remained officially untitled and is most commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, though it is variously referred to by the four symbols appearing on the record label, as Four Symbols and The Fourth Album (both titles were used in the Atlantic Records catalogue), as Untitled, Zoso, Runes, or IV.

 

Led Zeppelin IV further refined the band's unique formula of combining earthy, acoustic elements with heavy metal and blues emphases. The album included examples of hard rock, such as "Black Dog" and an acoustic track, "Going to California" (a tribute to Joni Mitchell). "Rock and Roll" is a tribute to the early rock music of the 1950s. In 2007, the song was used prominently in Cadillac automobile commercials—one of the few instances of Led Zeppelin's surviving members licensing songs.

 

The album is one of the best-selling albums in history and its massive popularity cemented Led Zeppelin's superstardom in the 1970s. To date it has sold 23 million copies in the United States. The track "Stairway to Heaven", although never released as a single, is sometimes quoted as being the most requested, and most played album-oriented rock FM radio song. In 2005, the magazine Guitar World held a poll of readers in which "Stairway to Heaven" was voted as having the greatest guitar solo of all time.

 

Led Zeppelin's next album, Houses of the Holy, was released in 1973. It featured further experimentation, with longer tracks and expanded use of synthesisers and mellotron orchestration. The song "Houses of the Holy" does not appear on its namesake album, even though it was recorded at the same time as other songs on the album; it eventually made its way onto the 1975 album Physical Graffiti. The orange album cover of Houses of the Holy depicts images of nude children climbing up the Giant's Causeway (in County Antrim, Northern Ireland). Although the children are not depicted from the front, this was controversial at the time of the album's release, and in some areas, such as the "Bible Belt" and Spain, the record was banned.

 

The album topped the charts, and Led Zeppelin's subsequent concert tour of the United States in 1973 broke records for attendance, as they consistently filled large auditoriums and stadiums. At Tampa Stadium, Florida, they played to 56,800 fans (breaking the record set by The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965), and grossed $309,000. Three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York were filmed for a motion picture, but the theatrical release of this project (The Song Remains the Same) would be delayed until 1976. Before the final night's performance, $180,000 of the band's money from gate receipts was stolen from a safety deposit box at the Drake Hotel. It was never recovered.

 

In 1974, Led Zeppelin took a break from touring and launched their own record label, Swan Song, named after one of only five Led Zeppelin songs which the band never released commercially (Page later re-worked the song with his band, The Firm, and it appears as "Midnight Moonlight" on their first album). The record label's logo, based on a drawing called Evening: Fall of Day (1869) by William Rimmer, features a picture of Apollo. The logo can be found on much Led Zeppelin memorabilia, especially t-shirts. In addition to using Swan Song as a vehicle to promote their own albums, the band expanded the label's roster, signing artists such as Bad Company, Pretty Things, Maggie Bell, Detective, Dave Edmunds, Midnight Flyer, Sad Café and Wildlife. The label was successful while Led Zeppelin existed, but folded less than three years after they disbanded.

 

24 February 1975 saw the release of Led Zeppelin's first double album, Physical Graffiti, which was their first release on the Swan Song Records label. It consisted of fifteen songs, eight of which were recorded at Headley Grange in 1974, and the remainder being tracks previously recorded but not released on earlier albums. A review in Rolling Stone magazine referred to Physical Graffiti as Led Zeppelin's "bid for artistic respectability," adding that the only competition the band had for the title of 'World's Best Rock Band' were The Rolling Stones and The Who. The album was a massive fiscal and critical success. Shortly after the release of Physical Graffiti, all previous Led Zeppelin albums simultaneously re-entered the top-200 album chart, and the band embarked on another U.S. tour, again playing to record-breaking crowds. In May 1975, Led Zeppelin played five highly successful, sold-out nights at the Earls Court Arena in London, footage of which was released in 2003, on the Led Zeppelin DVD.

 

Following these triumphant Earls Court appearances Led Zeppelin took a holiday and planned a series of outdoor summer concerts in America, scheduled to open with two dates in San Francisco. These plans were thwarted in August 1975 when Robert Plant and his wife Maureen were involved in a serious car crash while on holiday in Rhodes, Greece. Robert suffered a broken ankle and Maureen was badly injured; a blood transfusion saved her life. Unable to tour, Plant headed to the channel island of Jersey to spend August and September recuperating, with Bonham and Page in tow. The band then reconvened in Malibu, California. It was during this forced hiatus that much of the material for their next album, Presence, was written.

 

By this time, Led Zeppelin were the world's number one rock attraction, having outsold most bands of the time, including the Rolling Stones. Presence, released in March 1976, marked a change in the Led Zeppelin sound towards more straightforward, guitar-based jams, departing from the acoustic ballads and intricate arrangements featured on their previous albums. Though it was a platinum seller, Presence received mixed responses from critics and fans and some speculated the band's legendary excesses may have caught up with them. The recording of Presence coincided with the beginning of Page's heroin use, which may have interfered with Led Zeppelin's later live shows and studio recordings, although Page has denied this. Despite the original criticisms, Jimmy Page has called Presence his favourite album, and its opening track "Achilles Last Stand" his favourite Led Zeppelin song. In an interview with a Swedish TV program, Plant stated that Presence is the album that sounds the most "Led Zeppelin" of all their LPs.

 

Plant's injuries prevented Led Zeppelin from touring in 1976. Instead, the band finally completed the concert film The Song Remains The Same, and the soundtrack album of the film. The recording had taken place during three nights of concerts at Madison Square Garden in July 1973, during the band's concert tour of the United States. The film premiered in New York on 20 October 1976, but was given a lukewarm reception by critics and fans. The film was particularly unsuccessful in the UK, where, after being unwilling to tour since 1975 due to a taxation exile, Led Zeppelin were facing an uphill battle to recapture the public spotlight at home.

 

In 1977, Led Zeppelin embarked on another major concert tour of North America. Here the band set another attendance record, with 76,229 people attending their Pontiac Silverdome concert on 30 April. It was, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest attendance to date for a single act show. However, though the tour was financially profitable it was beset with off-stage problems. On 3 June a concert at Tampa Stadium was cut short because of a severe thunderstorm, despite tickets printed with "Rain or Shine". A riot broke out amongst the audience, resulting in several arrests and injuries.

 

After a 23 July show at the "Day on the Green" festival at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California, John Bonham and members of the band's support staff (including manager Peter Grant and security coordinator John Bindon) were arrested after a member of promoter Bill Graham's staff was badly beaten during the performance. A member of the staff had allegedly slapped Grant's son when he was taking down a dressing room sign. This was seen by John Bonham, who came over and kicked the man. Then, when Grant heard about this, he went into the trailer, along with Bindon and assaulted the man while tour manager Richard Cole stood outside and guarded the trailer. The following day's second Oakland concert would prove to be the band's final live appearance in the United States. Two days later, as the band checked in at a French Quarter hotel for their 30 July performance at the Louisiana Superdome, news came that Plant's five year old son, Karac, had died from a stomach virus. The rest of the tour was immediately cancelled, prompting widespread speculation about the band's future.

 

November 1978 saw the group recording again, this time at Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. The resultant album was In Through the Out Door, which exhibited a degree of sonic experimentation that again drew mixed reactions from critics. Nevertheless, the band still commanded legions of loyal fans, and the album easily reached #1 in the UK and the U.S. in just its second week on the Billboard album chart. As a result of this album's release, Led Zeppelin's entire catalogue made the Billboard Top 200 between the weeks of 27 October and 3 November 1979.

 

In August 1979, after two warm-up shows in Copenhagen, Denmark, Led Zeppelin headlined two concerts at the Knebworth Music Festival, where crowds of close to 120,000 witnessed the return of the band. However, Plant was not eager to tour full-time again, and even considered leaving Led Zeppelin. He was persuaded to stay by Peter Grant. A brief, low-key European tour was undertaken in June and July 1980, featuring a stripped-down set without the usual lengthy jams and solos. At one show on 27 June, in Nuremberg, Germany, the concert came to an abrupt end in the middle of the third song when John Bonham collapsed on stage and was rushed to a hospital. Press speculation arose that Bonham's problem was caused by an excess of alcohol and drugs, but the band claimed that he had simply overeaten, and they completed the European tour on 7 July, at Berlin.

 

On 24 September 1980, Bonham was picked up by Led Zeppelin assistant Rex King to attend rehearsals at Bray Studios for the upcoming tour of the United States, the band's first since 1977, scheduled to commence on 17 October. During the journey Bonham had asked to stop for breakfast, where he downed four quadruple vodkas (450 ml), with a ham roll. After taking a bite of the ham roll he said to his assistant, "Breakfast". He continued to drink heavily when he arrived at the studio. A halt was called to the rehearsals late in the evening and the band retired to Page's house — The Old Mill House in Clewer, Windsor. After midnight, Bonham had fallen asleep and was taken to bed and placed on his side. At 1:45 pm the next day Benji LeFevre (who had replaced Richard Cole as Led Zeppelin's tour manager) and John Paul Jones found him dead. Bonham was 32 years old. The cause of death was asphyxiation from vomit, and a verdict of accidental death was returned at an inquest held on 27 October. An autopsy found no other drugs in Bonham's body. Bonham was cremated on 10 October 1980, and his ashes buried at Rushock parish church in Droitwich, Worcestershire, England.

 

Despite rumours that Cozy Powell, Carmine Appice, Barriemore Barlow, Simon Kirke or Bev Bevan would join the group as his replacement, the remaining members decided to disband after Bonham's death. They issued a press statement on 4 December 1980 confirming that the band would not continue without Bonham. "We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend, and the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were."

 

In 1982, the surviving members of the group released a collection of out-takes from various sessions during Led Zeppelin's career, entitled Coda. It included two tracks taken from the band's performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970, one each from the Led Zeppelin III and Houses of the Holy sessions, and three from the In Through the Out Door sessions. It also featured a 1976 John Bonham drum instrumental with electronic effects added by Jimmy Page, called "Bonzo's Montreux".

 

On 13 July 1985, Page, Plant and Jones reunited for the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, playing a short set featuring drummers Tony Thompson and Phil Collins and bassist Paul Martinez. Collins had contributed to Plant's first two solo albums while Martinez was a member of Plant's current solo band. However, the performance was marred by the lack of rehearsal with the two drummers, Page's struggles with an out-of-tune Les Paul and poorly-functioning monitors, and by Plant's hoarse voice. Page himself has described the performance as "pretty shambolic", while Plant was even less charitable, characterising it as an "atrocity". When Live Aid footage was released on a four-DVD set in late 2004 to raise money for Sudan, the group unanimously agreed not to allow footage from their performance to be used, asserting that it was not up to their standard. However, to demonstrate their ongoing support for the campaign Page and Plant pledged proceeds from their forthcoming Page and Plant DVD release and John Paul Jones pledged the proceeds of his then-current US tour with Mutual Admiration Society to the project.

 

The three members reunited again in May 1988, for the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert, with Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, on drums. However, the reunion was again compromised by a disjointed performance, particularly by Plant and Page (the two having argued immediately prior to coming on stage about whether to play "Stairway to Heaven"), and by the complete loss of Jones' keyboards on the live television feed. Page later described the performance as "one big disappointment", and Plant said unambiguously that "the gig was foul".

 

The first Led Zeppelin box set, featuring tracks remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page, introduced the band's music to many new fans, stimulating a renaissance for Led Zeppelin. This set included four previously unreleased tracks, including the Robert Johnson tribute "Travelling Riverside Blues". The song peaked at number seven on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart, with the video in heavy rotation on MTV. 1992 saw the release of the "Immigrant Song"/"Hey Hey What Can I Do" (the original b-side) as a CD single in the US. Led Zeppelin Boxed Set 2 was released in 1993; the two box sets together containing all known studio recordings, as well as some rare live tracks.

 

In 1994, Page and Plant reunited in the form of a 90 minute "UnLedded" MTV project. They later released an album called No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded, which featured some reworked Led Zeppelin songs, and embarked on a world tour the following year. This is said to be the beginning of the inner rift between the band members, as Jones was not even told of the reunion. When asked where Jones was, Plant had replied that he was out "parking the car".

 

On 12 January 1995, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the United States Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Aerosmith's vocalist, Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. Jason and Zoe Bonham also attended, representing their late father. At the induction ceremony, the band's inner rift became apparent when Jones joked upon accepting his award, "Thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number", causing consternation and awkward looks from Page and Plant. Afterwards, they played a brief set with Tyler and Perry (featuring Jason Bonham on drums), and with Neil Young and Michael Lee replacing Bonham.

 

On 29 August 1997, Atlantic released a single edit of "Whole Lotta Love" in the U.S. and the UK, making it the only Led Zeppelin UK CD single. Additional tracks on this CD-single are "Baby Come On Home" and "Travelling Riverside Blues". It is the only single the band ever released in the UK. It peaked at #21. 11 November 1997 saw the release of Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions, the first Led Zeppelin album in fifteen years. The two-disc set included almost all of the band's recordings for the BBC. Page and Plant released another album called Walking into Clarksdale in 1998, featuring all new material. However, the album wasn't as successful as No Quarter, and the band slowly dissolved.

 

On 29 November 1999 the RIAA announced that the band were only the third act in music history to achieve four or more Diamond albums. In 2002, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones reconciled after years of strife that kept the band apart. This was followed by rumours of reunion, quickly quashed by individual members' representatives. 2003 saw the release of a triple live album, How the West Was Won, and a video collection, Led Zeppelin DVD, both featuring material from the band's heyday. By the end of the year, the DVD had sold more than 520,000 copies.

 

Led Zeppelin were ranked #14 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and the following year the band received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2005, it was announced that Led Zeppelin and Russian conductor Valery Gergiev were the winners of the 2006 Polar Music Prize. The King of Sweden presented the prize to Plant, Page, and Jones, along with John Bonham's daughter, in Stockholm in May 2006. In November 2006, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. The television broadcasting of the event consisted of an introduction to the band by various famous admirers, a presentation of an award to Jimmy Page and then a short speech by the guitarist. After this, rock group Wolfmother played a tribute to Led Zeppelin, performing the song "Communication Breakdown". Despite having gained a reputation with the band for "raising hell" in the 1970s, Robert Plant was awarded a CBE by Prince Charles for "Services to Music" in July 2009, which followed Jimmy Page's OBE four years previously.

 

On 27 July 2007, Atlantic/Rhino, & Warner Home Video announced three new Led Zeppelin titles to be released in November, 2007. Released first was Mothership on 13 November, a 24-track best-of spanning the band's career, followed by a reissue of the soundtrack to The Song Remains the Same on 20 November which includes previously unreleased material, and a new DVD. On 15 October 2007, it was reported that Led Zeppelin were expected to announce a new series of agreements that make the band's songs available as legal digital downloads, first as ringtones through Verizon Wireless then as digital downloads of the band's eight studio albums and other recordings on 13 November. The offerings will be available through both Verizon Wireless and iTunes. On 3 November 2007, a UK newspaper the Daily Mirror announced that it had world exclusive rights to stream six previously unreleased tracks via its website. On 8 November 2007, XM Satellite Radio launched XM LED, the network's first artist-exclusive channel dedicated to Led Zeppelin. On 13 November 2007, Led Zeppelin's complete works were published on iTunes.

 

On 10 December 2007 the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited for a one-off benefit concert held in memory of music executive Ahmet Ertegün, with Jason Bonham taking up his late father's place on drums. It was announced on 12 September 2007 by promoter Harvey Goldsmith in a press conference. The concert was to help raise money for the Ahmet Ertegün Education Fund, which pays for university scholarships in the UK, US and Turkey. Music critics praised the band's performance. Hamish MacBain of NME proclaimed, "What they have done here tonight is proof they can still perform to the level that originally earned them their legendary reputation...We can only hope this isn't the last we see of them." Page suggested the band may start work on new material, and stated that a world tour may be in the works. Meanwhile, Plant made his reluctance regarding a reunion tour known to The Sunday Times, stating: "having to live up to something is terribly serious." However, he also made it known that he could be in favour of more one-off shows in the near future: "It wouldn't be such a bad idea to play together from time to time."

 

Following the reunion concert and the press coverage it generated, speculation on the future of the band and the possibility of a tour with Jason Bonham on drums increased to a level not seen in several years. In an interview promoting the release of the Mothership compilation in Tokyo early in 2008, Jimmy Page revealed that he was prepared to embark upon a world tour with Led Zeppelin, but due to Robert Plant's tour commitments with Alison Krauss, such plans will not be announced until at least September. Showing enthusiasm for continued performing, in late spring Page and Jones joined Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins onstage at Wembley Stadium to perform Led Zeppelin tracks "Rock and Roll" (Hawkins on vocals and Grohl on drums), followed by "Ramble On" (Grohl on vocals and Hawkins on drums).

 

Plant however continued to remain focused on his recent work and tour with Krauss. Their duet album Raising Sand became certified platinum in March, and their recordings received awards including a Grammy for the song "Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)" and Album of the Year from the Americana Music Association. Along with concentrating on the duo's American tour, Plant remained evasive on the subject of a Led Zeppelin reunion tour, and expressed displeasure at the process leading up to the 2007 reunion show during an interview with GQ Magazine, saying "The endless paperwork was like nothing I've experienced before. I've kept every one of the emails that were exchanged before the concert and I'm thinking of compiling them for a book, which I feel sure would be hailed as a sort of literary version of Spinal Tap."

 

After the BBC reported in late August that Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Jason Bonham had been recording material which could become a new Led Zeppelin project, the rumours of a reunion began to accumulate through the remaining summer. On 29 September Plant released a statement in which he called reports of a Led Zeppelin reunion "frustrating and ridiculous". He said he would not be recording or touring with the band, before adding, "I wish Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham nothing but success with any future projects."

 

Following Plant's statement, authoritative but divergent views of the possibility of a Led Zeppelin reunion tour the next year were offered by John Paul Jones and promoter Harvey Goldsmith. In late October, Jones confirmed to BBC Radio Devon in Exeter that he, Page, and Bonham were seeking a replacement for Plant. The bassist remarked: "We are trying out a couple of singers. We want to do it. It's sounding great and we want to get on and get out there." The next day, Goldsmith commented on the prospect of a Led Zeppelin reunion, casting doubt on the possibility or wisdom of such a venture. In an interview with BBC News, Goldsmith stated "I think that there is an opportunity for them to go out and present themselves. I don't think a long rambling tour is the answer as Led Zeppelin." The Ertegün Concert promoter felt the result of the ongoing plans of Jones, Page, and Bonham would not be "called Led Zeppelin". A spokesman for guitarist Jimmy Page later confirmed this, telling RollingStone.com that a new band featuring Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham would not go by the name Led Zeppelin due to the absence of singer Robert Plant.

 

On January 7, 2009, MusicRadar reported that Jimmy Page's manager Robert Mensch said that the band had "tried out a few singers, but no one worked out, that was it. The whole thing is completely over now. There are absolutely no plans for them to continue." In a radio interview, Plant cited a fear of disappointment as a major factor for not continuing a reunited Zeppelin. "The disappointment that could be there once you commit to that and the comparisons to something that was basically fired by youth and a different kind of exuberance to now, it's very hard to go back and meet that head on and do it justice."

 

On 28 October 2009 it was reported by NME that Robert Plant had revealed that he is in talks with Michael Eavis to perform at the 2010 Glastonbury festival in England. Plant said he did not know who he would perform with, thus sparking rumours that Led Zeppelin may perform.

 

 

 

Led Zeppelin discography

 

1969 "Good Times Bad Times" - #80

1969 "Whole Lotta Love" - #4

1970 "Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)" - #65

1970 "Immigrant Song" - #16

1971 "Black Dog" - #15

1972 "Rock and Roll" - #47

1973 "Over the Hills and Far Away" - #51

1973 "D'yer Mak'er" - #20

1975 "Trampled Underfoot" - #38

1979 "Fool in the Rain" - #21

1982 "Darlene" - Main #4

1982 "Ozone Baby"- Main #14

1982 "Poor Tom"- Main #18

1990 "Traveling Riverside Blues" - Main #7

1993 "Baby Come On Home" - Main #4

1997 "The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair" - Main #4

 

 

Factoid: In April 2007, Hard Rock Park (now Freestyle Music Park) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, announced it had secured an agreement with the band to create "Led Zeppelin - The Ride", synchronised to the music of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love". The coaster stands 155 feet (47 m) tall, features six inversions, and spirals over a lagoon. The ride officially opened with the park on May 9, 2008. The ride is currently "Standing but not operating" (SBNO) due to Hard Rock Park filing for bankruptcy. In February 2009, the park was sold to new owners FPI MB Entertainment. On May 4, 2009, the ride was renamed "The Time Machine," with hit songs from five decades replacing Led Zeppelin.

 

"Immigrant Song"

 

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[knightni]

2. The Who

 

 

13 of 24 lists - 207 points - highest ranking #1 Milkman delivers

 

 

The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964. The primary lineup consisted of guitarist Pete Townshend, vocalist Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They became known for energetic live performances including the pioneering spectacle of instrument destruction. The Who have sold about 100 million records and have charted 27 top forty singles in the United Kingdom and United States with 17 top ten albums.

 

The Who rose to fame in the UK with a series of top ten hit singles, boosted in part by pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline, beginning in January 1965 with "I Can't Explain". The albums My Generation (1965), A Quick One (1966) and The Who Sell Out (1967) followed, with the first two hitting the UK top five. They first hit the US Top Forty in 1967 with "Happy Jack" and hit the top ten later that year with "I Can See for Miles". Their fame grew with memorable performances at the Monterey Pop and Woodstock music festivals. The 1969 release of Tommy was the first in a series of top ten albums in the US, followed by Live at Leeds (1970), Who's Next (1971), Quadrophenia (1973), The Who By Numbers (1975), Who Are You (1978) and The Kids Are Alright (1979).

 

Moon died at the age of 32 in 1978, after which the band released two studio albums, the UK and US top five Face Dances (1981) and the US top ten It's Hard (1982), with drummer Kenney Jones, before disbanding in 1983. They re-formed at events such as Live Aid and for reunion tours such as their 25th anniversary tour (1989) and the Quadrophenia tours of 1996 and 1997. In 2000, the three surviving original members discussed recording an album of new material, but their plans temporarily stalled upon Entwistle's death at the age of 57 in 2002. Townshend and Daltrey continue to perform as The Who, and in 2006 they released the studio album Endless Wire, which reached the top ten in the UK and USA.

 

The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, their first year of eligibility. Their display there describes them as "Prime contenders, in the minds of many, for the title of World's Greatest Rock Band." The Los Angeles Times wrote that during their tenure as a quartet, the band "rivaled The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones as the most vital rock voice of youth." Time Magazine wrote in 1979 that "No other group has ever pushed rock so far, or asked so much from it." They received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Phonographic Industry in 1988, and from the Grammy Foundation in 2001. In 2008 surviving members Townshend and Daltrey were honoured at the 31st Annual Kennedy Center Honors.

 

In the early 1960s, Townshend and Entwistle started a trad jazz band called The Confederates. Townshend played banjo and Entwistle played the French horn, which he had learned to play in his school band. Daltrey met Entwistle walking down the street with a bass guitar slung over his shoulder and asked him to join his band called The Detours, which he had formed the year before. After a few weeks, Entwistle suggested Townshend as an additional guitarist. In the early days the band played a variety of music suitable for the pubs and halls they performed in, then became influenced by American blues and country music, playing mostly rhythm and blues. The lineup was Daltrey on lead guitar, Townshend on rhythm guitar, Entwistle on bass, Doug Sandom on drums, and Colin Dawson vocals. After Dawson left, Daltrey moved to vocals and Townshend became sole guitarist. In 1964 Sandom left and Keith Moon became drummer.

 

The Detours changed their name to The Who in February 1964 and, with the arrival of Moon that year, the line-up was complete. However, for a short period in summer 1964, under the management of mod Peter Meaden, they changed their name to The High Numbers, releasing "Zoot Suit/I'm the Face", a single aimed at appealing to mod fans. When the single failed to chart, the band reverted to The Who. Meaden was replaced as manager by the team of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who saw the band play at the Railway Tavern, offered to manage them and bought Meaden out. They became popular among the British mods, a 1960s subculture involving cutting-edge fashions, scooters and music genres such as rhythm and blues, soul, and beat music.

 

In September 1964, during a performance at the Railway Tavern in Harrow and Wealdstone, London, Townshend accidentally broke the head of his guitar through the ceiling. Angered by sn*****s from the audience, he smashed the instrument on the stage. He picked up another guitar and continued the show. A large crowd attended the next concert, but Townshend declined to smash another guitar. Instead, Moon wrecked his drumkit after Townshend received catcalls from the crowd. Instrument destruction became a staple of The Who's shows for several years. The incident at the Railway Tavern is one of Rolling Stone magazine's "50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock 'n' Roll".

 

The band crystallised around Townshend as primary songwriter and creative force. Entwistle also made songwriting contributions, and Moon and Daltrey contributed occasional songs in the '60s and '70s.

 

The Who's first release, and first hit, was January 1965's "I Can't Explain", a record influenced by the Kinks, with whom they shared American producer Shel Talmy. The song was only played in a few markets in the USA, notably by DJ Peter C Cavanaugh on WTAC AM 600 in Flint, Michigan. "I Can't Explain" was a top 10 hit in the UK and was followed by "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", a song credited to Townshend and Daltrey.

 

The debut album My Generation (The Who Sings My Generation in the U.S.) was released the same year. It included "The Kids Are Alright" and the title track "My Generation". Subsequent hits, such as the 1966 singles "Substitute", about a young man who feels like a fraud, "I'm a Boy", about a boy dressed as a girl, and "Happy Jack", about a mentally disturbed young man, show Townshend's use of the themes of sexual tension and teenage angst.

 

Although successful as a singles band, Townshend wanted The Who's albums unified rather than collections of songs. Townshend said "I'm a Boy" was from a projected rock opera, the first sign of which came in the 1966 album A Quick One, which included the storytelling medley "A Quick One While He's Away", which they referred to as a mini-opera.

 

A Quick One was followed in 1967 by the single "Pictures of Lily" and The Who Sell Out - a concept album like an offshore radio station, complete with humorous jingles and commercials. It included a mini rock opera called "Rael" (whose closing theme ended up on Tommy) and The Who's biggest US single, "I Can See for Miles". The Who destroyed equipment at the Monterey Pop Festival that year and repeated the routine on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with explosive results as Moon detonated his drumkit. Years later, during filming of The Kids Are Alright, Townshend claimed that the event was the start of his hearing troubles. The drum kit had been loaded with an excessive amount of explosives due to Keith Moon bribing a stage hand. The resulting explosion was much more powerful than had been anticipated. Music channel VH1 listed the event at #10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Moments on Television.

 

In 1968, The Who headlined the first Schaefer Music Festival in New York City's Central Park and released the single "Magic Bus". In December, they took part in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, performing their mini-opera, "A Quick One While He's Away". Also that year, Townshend became the subject of the first Rolling Stone interview. Townshend said he was working on a full-length rock opera. This was Tommy, the first work billed as a rock opera and a landmark in modern music.

 

During this time the teachings of India's Meher Baba influenced Townshend's songwriting, continuing for many years. Baba is credited as "Avatar" on Tommy. In addition to commercial success, Tommy became a critical smash, Life Magazine saying, "...for sheer power, invention and brilliance of performance, Tommy outstrips anything which has ever come out of a recording studio," and Melody Maker declaring, "Surely The Who are now the band against which all others are to be judged."

 

The Who performed much of Tommy at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival that year. That, and the ensuing film, catapulted The Who's popularity in the USA. Though the festival became free, the Who demanded to be paid before performing despite banks and roads being closed 2–3 am on Sunday morning and only agreed to play when one of the promoters, Joel Rosenman, came up with a certified check for $11,200 ($68,597 in current dollar terms).

 

It was during the performance of The Who at Woodstock that one of the most notorious events of the concert took place. Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman sat on the stage with concert organizer Michael Lang during The Who's set. Hoffman had been working the medical tent since the festival's opening act and was under the influence of LSD. Hoffman had become increasingly determined to publicize the case of John Sinclair, who had been given a 10-year jail sentence for passing two marijuana cigarettes to an undercover narcotics officer. Hoffman jumped up and grabbed a microphone during a brief lull in The Who's performance of Tommy saying, "I think this is a pile of s***, while John Sinclair rots in prison!" Townshend replied, "f*** off! f*** off my f***ing stage!" and struck Hoffman with his guitar. Hoffman leaped off the stage and disappeared into the crowd.

 

In February 1970 The Who recorded Live at Leeds, thought by many critics to be the best live rock album of all time. The album, originally containing mostly the show's set closing hard rock songs, has been re-released in expanded and remastered versions. These versions remedy technical problems with the original and are expanded with portions of the performance of Tommy, as well as versions of earlier singles and stage banter. A double-disc version contains the entire performance of Tommy. The Leeds University gig was part of the Tommy tour, which not only included gigs in European opera houses but saw The Who become the first rock act at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. In March The Who released the UK top twenty hit "The Seeker".

 

In March 1971, the band began recording the available Lifehouse material, a new Townshend-penned rock opera, with Kit Lambert in New York, and then restarted the sessions with Glyn Johns in April. Selections from the material, with one unrelated song by Entwistle, were released as a traditional studio album, Who's Next. The album became their most successful album among critics and fans, but terminated the Lifehouse project. Who's Next reached #4 in the USA pop charts and #1 in the UK. Two tracks from the album, "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", are cited as pioneering examples of synthesizer use in rock music; both tracks' keyboard sounds were generated in real time by a Lowrey organ (though in "Won't Get Fooled Again", the organ was processed through a VCS3 synthesizer). Synthesizers can be heard elsewhere on the album, in "Bargain", "Going Mobile", and "The Song is Over". In October The Who released the UK top twenty hit "Let's See Action". On 4 November 1971 The Who opened the Rainbow Theatre in London and played for three nights. In 1972 they released the UK top ten and US top twenty single "Join Together" and the UK and US Top Forty "The Relay".

 

Who's Next was followed by Quadrophenia (1973), The Who's second completed double album rock opera. The story is about a boy named Jimmy, who struggles for self-esteem, with his family and others, and is mentally ill. His story is set against clashes between Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s in the UK, particularly at Brighton. The album became their highest charting cross-Atlantic success, peaking at #2 in the UK and US. The US tour started on 20 November 1973 at the San Francisco, California Cow Palace in Daly City where Moon passed out during "Won't Get Fooled Again" and, after a break backstage, again in "Magic Bus". Townshend asked the audience, "Can anyone play the drums? - I mean somebody good." An audience member, Scot Halpin, filled in for the rest of the show, a jam featuring "Smokestack Lightning", "Spoonful" and "Naked Eye".

 

In 1974 The Who released the outtakes album Odds & Sods, which featured several songs from the aborted Lifehouse project. Their 1975 album, The Who by Numbers, had introspective songs, lightened by "Squeeze Box", another hit single. Some critics considered By Numbers Townshend's "suicide note." A movie version of Tommy released that year was directed by Ken Russell, starred Daltrey and earned Townshend an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. In December, The Who set the record for largest indoor concert at the Pontiac Silverdome. In 1976, The Who played at The Valley in what was listed for over a decade in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's loudest concert.

 

On 18 August 1978, the band released Who Are You. It became their biggest and fastest seller to that date, peaking at #2 in the US, and was certified platinum in the US on the twentieth of September. This success was overshadowed by Moon's death September 7, 1978. He died in his sleep after an overdose of Heminevrin - prescribed to combat alcohol withdrawal - a few hours after a party held by Paul McCartney. The last album cover shows Moon in a chair with the words "not to be taken away"; the song "Music Must Change" has no drum track. Kenney Jones, of The Small Faces and The Faces, joined as Moon's successor.

 

On 2 May 1979, The Who returned to the stage with well-received concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in London, at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Wembley Stadium and five dates at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A small tour of the United States was marred by tragedy: on 3 December 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a crush at Riverfront Coliseum killed 11 fans. The band was not told until after the show because civic authorities feared crowd problems if the concert were cancelled. The band was shaken upon learning of the incident and requested assistance in subsequent venues for appropriate safety precautions for their following concerts.

 

Also in 1979, The Who released a documentary film called The Kids Are Alright and a film version of Quadrophenia, the latter a box office hit in the UK and the former capturing many of the band's most scintillating moments on stage, including their last performance with Keith Moon. In December, The Who became the third band, after the Beatles and The Band, featured on the cover of Time. The article, written by Jay Cocks, said The Who had "outpaced, outlasted, outlived and outclassed" all of their rock band contemporaries.

 

The band released two studio albums with Jones as drummer, Face Dances (1981) and It's Hard (1982). Face Dances produced a US top twenty and UK top ten hit with the single "You Better You Bet" and a string of MTV and AOR hits like "Another Tricky Day". Three videos from the album played on MTV the day it took to the air in August 1981. While both albums sold fairly well and It's Hard received a five-star review in Rolling Stone, some fans were not receptive to the new sound. "Athena" was a US top thirty hit and "Eminence Front" charted as well and became a favorite. However Townshend's life was a mess - his marriage had fallen apart due to his drinking and he had become a heroin user, something which shocked his friends due to his previous anti-drug stance. He cleaned up in early 1982, but Daltrey told him he would stop touring if it meant keeping Townshend alive. Shortly after It's Hard, The Who embarked on a farewell tour after Townshend said he wanted one more tour with The Who before turning it into a studio band. It was the highest grossing tour of the year, with sellout crowds in stadiums and arenas throughout North America.

 

Townshend spent part of 1983 trying to write material for the studio album still owed to Warner Bros. Records from a contract in 1980. By the end of 1983, however, Townshend declared himself unable to generate material appropriate for The Who and announced the breakup of the band in December. He then focused on solo projects such as White City: A Novel, The Iron Man (which featured Daltrey and Entwistle and two songs on the album credited to "The Who"), and Psychoderelict, a forerunner to the radio work Lifehouse.

 

On 13 July 1985, The Who—including Kenney Jones—reformed for a one-off at Bob Geldof's Live Aid concert at Wembley. The BBC transmission truck blew a fuse at the beginning of "My Generation", meaning the picture was lost completely, but the band kept playing. This caused most of "My Generation" and all of "Pinball Wizard" to be missed by the rest of the world. Transmission resumed with "Love, Reign O'er Me" and "Won't Get Fooled Again".

 

In February 1988 the band was honoured with the British Phonographic Industry's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Who played a short set at the ceremony (the last time Jones worked with The Who). In 1989 they embarked on a 25th anniversary The Kids Are Alright reunion tour which emphasised songs from Tommy. Simon Phillips played drums with Steve "Boltz" Bolton playing lead guitar, as Townshend relegated himself to strumming acoustic guitar in order to protect his hearing. Townshend did play electric guitar for several songs in the latter non-Tommy half of the shows. A horn section and backing singers were also added. Newsweek said, "The Who tour is special because, after the Beatles and the Stones, they're IT." There were sellouts throughout North America, including a four-night stand at Giants Stadium. In all, over two million tickets were sold. The tour included Tommy at Radio City Music Hall in New York and at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, with several guest stars at the latter performance. A 2-CD live album Join Together was released in 1990, stalling at #188 in the US. A video of the Universal Amphitheatre show was also released and went platinum in the US.

 

In 1990, their first year of eligibility, The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by U2, Bono saying, "More than any other band, The Who are our role models." The Who's display at the Rock Hall describes them as prime contenders for the title of "World's Greatest Rock Band". Only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones receive a similar accolade at the Rock Hall.

 

In 1991 The Who recorded a cover of Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" for a tribute album. This was the last time they released any studio work with Entwistle. In 1994 Daltrey turned 50 and celebrated with two concerts at Carnegie Hall. These included guest spots by Entwistle and Townshend. Although all three surviving original members of The Who attended, they did not appear on stage together except for the finale, "Join Together", with the other guests. Daltrey toured that year with Entwistle and with John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards, Zak Starkey on drums and Simon Townshend filling in for his brother. Pete Townshend allowed Daltrey to call this band The Who, but Daltrey declined. The live album recorded during these concerts, Daltrey Sings Townshend, was not a commercial success. Also in 1994 The Who released the box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B.

 

In 1996 Townshend, Entwistle and Daltrey performed Quadrophenia with guest stars at a concert in Hyde Park. Starkey was the drummer. The performance was narrated by Phil Daniels who played Jimmy the Mod in the film. Despite technical difficulties the show was a success and led to a six-night residency at Madison Square Garden. Townshend played acoustic guitar exclusively. These shows were not billed as The Who. The success of the Quadrophenia shows led to a U.S. and European tour through 1996 and 1997. Townshend played mostly acoustic guitar, but also electric guitar on select songs. In 1998 VH1 ranked The Who ninth in their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock 'n' Roll.

 

In late 1999, The Who performed as a five-piece for the first time in concert since 1985, with Bundrick on keyboards and Starkey on drums. The first show took place 29 October 1999 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden. From there, they performed acoustic shows at Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA on 30 and 31 October. Next, they played on 12 and 13 November at the House of Blues in Chicago, as a benefit for the Maryville Academy. Finally, two Christmas charity shows on 22 and 23 December at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London. These were the first full-length concerts with Townshend playing electric guitar for the duration of the show since 1982. The 29 October show in Las Vegas was partially on TV as well as the internet and would later see release as the DVD The Vegas Job. Reviews for the shows were good.

 

The success of 1999 led to a U.S. tour in 2000 and a UK tour in November. The tour started on 6 June at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation and ended with a charity show on 27 November at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer trust. With good reviews, all three members of The Who discussed a new album. Also that year, VH1 placed The Who eighth in the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. The band performed at The Concert for New York City on 20 October 2001, during which they played "Who Are You","Baba O'Riley", "Behind Blue Eyes", and "Won't Get Fooled Again" for the fire and police departments of New York City. The Who were also honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award that year.

 

The Who played five shows in England in 2002; in Portsmouth on 27 and 28 January and Watford on 31 January, in preparation for two shows for the Teenage Cancer Trust Benefit at the Albert Hall on 7 and 8 February. These were Entwistle's last shows with The Who. On June 27, just before their US tour was due to commence, Entwistle was found dead at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. The cause was a heart attack in which cocaine was a contributing factor. After a brief delay, the tour commenced in Los Angeles with bassist Pino Palladino. Most shows from the tour were released officially on CD as Encore Series 2002. In September, Q magazine named The Who as one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die". In November 2003, The Who landed seven albums in Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, more than any other artist with the exceptions of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

 

In 2004 The Who released "Old Red Wine" and "Real Good Looking Boy" (with Pino Palladino and Greg Lake, respectively, on bass guitar), as part of a singles anthology (The Who: Then and Now), and went on an 18-date tour playing Japan, Australia, the UK and the U.S. All shows were released on CD as part of Encore Series 2004. The band also headlined the Isle of Wight Festival. Also that year, Rolling Stone ranked The Who #29 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

 

The Who announced that spring 2005 would see their first studio album in 23 years (tentatively titled WHO2). Townshend continued working on the album, however, and posted a novella called The Boy Who Heard Music on his blog. This developed into a mini-opera called Wire & Glass which formed the kernel for the new Who album, and later a full opera which Townshend presented at Vassar College.

 

The Who performed on the London stage of the Live 8 concert in July 2005. The Who were also inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame that year. In 2006, The Who were first recipients of the Freddie Mercury Lifetime Achievement Award in Live Music at the Vodafone music awards.

 

Endless Wire was released on 30 October 2006 (31 October in the U.S.). It was the first full studio album of new material since 1982's It's Hard and contained the band's first mini-opera since "Rael" on 1967's The Who Sell Out. Endless Wire debuted at #7 on Billboard and #9 in the UK Albums Chart. On the eve of its release (29 October), The Who performed part of the mini-opera and several songs from the new album live as the closing act of the BBC Electric Proms at the Roundhouse in London.

 

In advance of the album, and to support it, The Who embarked upon their 2006-2007 tour. Shows were released on CD and DVD as part of Encore Series 2006. Starkey was invited to join Oasis in April 2006, and The Who in November 2006, but he declined, preferring to split his time between the two. On 24 June 2007, The Who topped the bill at the Glastonbury Festival.

 

In November 2007, the documentary Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who was released. The documentary includes footage not in earlier documentaries, including film from the 1970 Leeds University appearance and a 1964 performance at the Railway Hotel when they were The High Numbers. Amazing Journey was nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award.

 

The Who were honoured at the 2008 VH1 Rock Honors in Los Angeles. Taping of the show took place 12 July, followed by a network broadcast on 17 July. That same week, a 12-song best-of collection was released for the music video game Rock Band. The Who performed at the Rock Band party at the Orpheum Theater during the 2008 E3 Media and Business Summit. In October 2008, The Who embarked on a tour of four Japanese cities and nine North American cities. In December, The Who were recognised at the Kennedy Center Honors. After other musical celebrities performed their music, the finale was a surprise chorus of police and rescue first responders who had been touched by The Who's performance at The Concert for New York City after the shock of 9-11.

 

An Australia and New Zealand tour was completed in early 2009. In August, Townshend announced on The Who's website that he is working on a new musical titled Floss which follows the story of an aging rocker known as "Walter", some songs of which will debut on a new Who album proposed for 2010. Daltrey has announced that he plans to tour with The Who in 2010.

 

The National Football League announced during the November 26, 2009 CBS Sports broadcast of the Oakland Raiders-Dallas Cowboys game that The Who would perform at the halftime show of Super Bowl XLIV at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida on February 7, 2010.

 

 

The Who discography

 

1965 "I Can't Explain" - #93

1965 "My Generation" - #74

1966 "The Kids Are Alright" - #106

1966 "Happy Jack" - #24

1967 "Pictures of Lily" - #51

1967 "I Can See for Miles" - #9

1968 "Call Me Lightning" - #40

1968 "Magic Bus" - #25

1969 "Pinball Wizard" - #19

1969 "I'm Free" - #37

1970 "The Seeker" - #44

1970 "Summertime Blues" - #27

1970 "See Me, Feel Me" - #12

1971 "Won't Get Fooled Again" - # 15

1971 "Behind Blue Eyes" - #34

1972 "Join Together" - #17

1972 "The Relay" - #39

1973 "Love Reign O'er Me" - #76

1974 "The Real Me" - #92

1975 "Squeeze Box" - #16

1978 "Who Are You" - #14

1979 "Long Live Rock" - #54

1979 "5:15" - #45

1981 "You Better You Bet" - #18 - Rock #1

1981 "Don't Let Go the Coat" - #84

1982 "Athena" - #28 - Rock #3

1982 "Eminence Front" - #68 - Rock #5

1983 "It's Hard" - Rock #39

2006 "It's Not Enough"- Rock #37

 

Factoid: Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son, is the touring drummer for The Who. He was invited to officially join the band in 2004, but declined.

 

"Bargain"

 

http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=7-qppzolbw

[knightni]

1. The Beatles

 

 

19 of 24 lists - 391 points - highest ranking #1 knightni, whitesoxfan99, BigEdWalsh, Steve9347, MexSoxFan#1, RibbieRubarb, farmteam

 

 

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. In their heyday the group consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from folk rock to psychedelic pop, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. The nature of their enormous popularity, which first emerged as the "Beatlemania" fad, transformed as their songwriting grew in sophistication. The group came to be perceived as the embodiment of progressive ideals, seeing their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

 

With an early five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), The Beatles built their reputation in Liverpool and Hamburg clubs over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional outfit by music store owner Brian Epstein after he offered to act as the group's manager, and with their musical potential enhanced by the hands-on creativity of producer George Martin, The Beatles achieved UK mainstream success in late 1962 with their first single, "Love Me Do". Gaining international popularity over the course of the next year, they toured extensively until 1966, then retreated to the recording studio until their breakup in 1970. Each then found success in an independent musical career. McCartney and Starr remain active; Lennon was shot and killed in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001.

 

During their studio years, The Beatles produced what critics consider some of their finest material including the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), widely regarded as a masterpiece. Nearly four decades after their breakup, The Beatles' music continues to be popular. The Beatles have had more number one albums on the UK charts, and held down the top spot longer, than any other musical act. According to RIAA certifications, they have sold more albums in the US than any other artist. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the all-time top-selling Hot 100 artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with The Beatles at number one. They have been honoured with 7 Grammy Awards, and they have received 15 Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most important and influential people.

 

Aged sixteen, singer and guitarist John Lennon formed the skiffle group The Quarrymen with some Liverpool schoolfriends in March 1957. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist after he and Lennon met that July. When McCartney in turn invited George Harrison to watch the group the following February, the fourteen-year-old joined as lead guitarist. By 1960 Lennon's schoolfriends had left the group, he had begun studies at the Liverpool College of Art and the three guitarists were playing rock and roll whenever they could get a drummer. Joining on bass in January, Lennon's fellow student Stuart Sutcliffe suggested changing the band name to "The Beetles" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, and they became "The Beatals" for the first few months of the year. After trying other names including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Long John and The Beetles" and "The Silver Beatles", the band finally became "The Beatles" in August. The lack of a permanent drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany. Before the end of August they auditioned and hired drummer Pete Best, and the five-piece band left for Hamburg four days later, contracted to fairground showman Bruno Koschmider for a 48-night residency. "Hamburg in those days did not have rock'n'roll music clubs. It had strip clubs", says biographer Philip Norman.

 

Bruno had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.

 

Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool...It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance, and he arranged to send some bands over.

 

Harrison, only seventeen in August 1960, obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. Initially placing The Beatles at the Indra Club, Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller in October after the Indra was closed down due to noise complaints. When they violated their contract by performing at the rival Top Ten Club, Koschmider reported the underage Harrison to the authorities, leading to his deportation in November. McCartney and Best were arrested for arson a week later when they set fire to a condom hung on a nail in their room; they too were deported. Lennon returned to Liverpool in mid-December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg with his new German fiancée, Astrid Kirchherr, for another month. Kirchherr took the first professional photos of the group and cut Sutcliffe's hair in the German "exi" (existentialist) style of the time, a look later adopted by the other Beatles.

 

During the next two years, the group were resident for further periods in Hamburg. They used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances. Sutcliffe decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, so McCartney took up bass. German producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece to act as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings. Credited to "Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 in the Musikmarkt chart. The Beatles were also becoming more popular back home in Liverpool. During one of the band's frequent appearances there at The Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist. When the band appointed Epstein manager in January 1962, Kaempfert agreed to release them from the German record contract. After Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein", producer George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label. News of a tragedy greeted them on their return to Hamburg in April. Meeting them at the airport, a stricken Kirchherr told them of Sutcliffe's death from a brain haemorrhage.

 

The band had its first recording session under Martin's direction at Abbey Road Studios in London in June 1962. Martin complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested the band use a session drummer in the studio. Instead, Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join The Beatles, had already performed with them occasionally when Best was ill. Martin still hired session drummer Andy White for one session, and White played on "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You". Released in October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at number seventeen on the chart. After a November studio session that yielded what would be their second single, "Please Please Me", they made their TV debut with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places.

 

The band concluded their last Hamburg stint in December 1962. By now it had become the pattern that all four members contributed vocals, although Starr's restricted range meant he sang lead only rarely. Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership; as the band's success grew, their celebrated collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as lead vocalist. Epstein, sensing The Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing. Lennon recalled the manager saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking." Lennon said, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality ... it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage."

 

In the wake of the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception, reaching number two in the UK singles chart after its January 1963 release. Martin originally intended to record the band's debut LP live at The Cavern Club. Finding it had "the acoustic ambience of an oil tank", he elected to create a "live" album in one session at Abbey Road Studios. Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied on the album by the four tracks already released on the two singles. Recalling how the band "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", an Allmusic reviewer comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins." Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that—to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."

 

Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the British chart. This began a run during which eleven of The Beatles' twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 hit number one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit. It began an almost unbroken run of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of those released over the next six years. On its release in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks.[48] It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was topped by "Mull of Kintyre", performed by McCartney and his post-Beatles band Wings. The popularity of the Beatles' music brought with it increasing press attention. They responded with a cheeky, irreverent attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians and inspired even more interest.

 

The Beatles' iconic "drop-T" logo, based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter, also made its debut in 1963. The logo was first used on the front of Starr's bass drum, which Epstein and Starr purchased from Arbiter's London shop. The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February preceded three-week tours in March and May–June. As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold, dubbed "Beatlemania". Although not billed as tour leaders, they overshadowed other acts including Tommy Roe, Chris Montez and Roy Orbison, US artists who had established great popularity in the UK. Performances everywhere, both on tour and at many one-off shows across the UK, were greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans. Police found it necessary to use high-pressure water hoses to control the crowds, and there were debates in Parliament concerning the thousands of police officers putting themselves at risk to protect the group. In late October, a five-day tour of Sweden saw the band venture abroad for the first time since the Hamburg chapter. Returning to the UK, they were greeted at Heathrow Airport in heavy rain by thousands of fans in "a scene similar to a shark-feeding frenzy", attended by fifty journalists and photographers and a BBC Television camera crew. The next day, The Beatles began yet another UK tour, scheduled for six weeks. By now, they were indisputably the headliners.

 

Please Please Me was still topping the album chart. It maintained the position for thirty weeks, only to be displaced by With The Beatles which itself held the top spot for twenty-one weeks. Making much greater use of studio production techniques than its "live" predecessor, the album was recorded between July and October. With The Beatles is described by Allmusic as "a sequel of the highest order—one that betters the original by developing its own tone and adding depth." In a reversal of what had until then been standard practice, the album was released in late November ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded in order to maximize the single's sales. With The Beatles caught the attention of Times music critic William Mann, who went as far as to suggest that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963". The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of The Beatles' music, lending it respectability. With The Beatles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack.

 

Beatles releases in the United States were initially delayed for nearly a year when Capitol Records, EMI's American subsidiary, declined to issue either "Please Please Me" or "From Me to You". Negotiations with independent US labels led to the release of some singles, but issues with royalties and derision of The Beatles' "moptop" hairstyle posed further obstacles. Once Capitol did start to issue the material, rather than releasing the LPs in their original configuration, they compiled distinct US albums from an assortment of the band's recordings, and issued songs of their own choice as singles. American chart success came suddenly after a news broadcast about British Beatlemania triggered great demand, leading Capitol to rush-release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in December 1963. The band's US debut was already scheduled to take place a few weeks later.

 

When The Beatles left the United Kingdom on 7 February 1964, an estimated four thousand fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had sold 2.6 million copies in the US over the previous two weeks, but the group were still nervous about how they would be received. At New York's John F. Kennedy Airport they were greeted by another vociferous crowd, estimated at about three thousand people. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 74 million viewers—over 40 percent of the American population. The next morning one newspaper wrote that The Beatles "could not carry a tune across the Atlantic", but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum. Back in New York the following day, they met with another strong reception at Carnegie Hall. The band appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before returning to the UK on 22 February. During the week of 4 April, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five. That same week, a third American LP joined the two already in circulation; all three reached the first or second spot on the US album chart. The band's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Beatles' hairstyle, unusually long for the era and still mocked by many adults, was widely adopted and became an emblem of the burgeoning youth culture.

 

The Beatles toured internationally in June. Staging thirty-two concerts over nineteen days in Denmark, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, they were ardently received at every venue. Starr was ill for the first half of the tour, and Jimmy Nicol sat in on drums. In August they returned to the US, with a thirty-concert tour of twenty-three cities. Generating intense interest once again, the month-long tour attracted between ten and twenty thousand fans to each thirty-minute performance in cities from San Francisco to New York. However, their music could hardly be heard. On-stage amplification at the time was modest compared to modern-day equipment, and the band's small Vox amplifiers struggled to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans. Forced to accept that neither they nor their audiences could hear the details of their performance, the band grew increasingly bored with the routine of concert touring.

 

At the end of the August tour they were introduced to Bob Dylan in New York at the instigation of journalist Al Aronowitz. Visiting the band in their hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis. Music historian Jonathan Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting, before which the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's core audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with The Beatles' core audience of "veritable 'teenyboppers'—kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialized popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." Within six months of the meeting, "Lennon would be making records on which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona." Within a year, Dylan would "proceed, with the help of a five-piece group and a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, to shake the monkey of folk authenticity permanently off his back"; "the distinction between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated"; and The Beatles' audience would be "showing signs of growing up".

 

Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged United Artists' film division to offer The Beatles a motion picture contract in the hope that it would lead to a record deal. Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night had the group's involvement for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a boisterous mock-documentary of the Beatles phenomenon. The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success. The Observer's reviewer, Penelope Gilliatt, noted that "the way the Beatles go on is just there, and that's it. In an age that is clogged with self-explanation this makes them very welcome. It also makes them naturally comic." According to Allmusic, the accompanying soundtrack album, A Hard Day's Night, saw The Beatles "truly coming into their own as a band. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound, filled with ringing guitars." That "ringing guitar" sound was primarily the product of Harrison's 12-string electric Rickenbacker, a prototype given him by the manufacturer, which made its debut on the record. Harrison's ringing 12-string inspired Roger McGuinn, who obtained his own Rickenbacker and used it to craft the trademark sound of The Byrds.

 

Beatles for Sale, the band's fourth studio album, saw the emergence of a serious conflict between commercialism and creativity. Recorded between August and October 1964, the album had been intended to continue the format established by A Hard Day's Night which, unlike the band's first two LPs, had contained no cover versions. Acknowledging the challenge posed by constant international touring to the band's songwriting efforts, Lennon admitted, "Material's becoming a hell of a problem". Six covers were eventually included on the album. Released in early December, its eight self-penned numbers nevertheless stood out, demonstrating the growing maturity of the material produced by the Lennon-McCartney partnership.

 

In April 1965, Lennon and Harrison's dentist spiked their coffee with LSD while they were his guests for dinner. The two later deliberately experimented with the drug, joined by Starr on one occasion. McCartney was reluctant to try it, but eventually did so in 1966, and later became the first Beatle to discuss it publicly. Controversy erupted in June 1965 when Queen Elizabeth II appointed the four Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award. In protest—the honour was at that time primarily bestowed upon military veterans and civic leaders—some conservative MBE recipients returned their own insignia.

 

The Beatles' second film, Help!, again directed by Lester, was released in July. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McCartney said, "Help! was great but it wasn't our film—we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong." The accompanying soundtrack, the band's fifth studio album, again contained a mix of original material and covers, but with more emphasis than before on Lennon as lead singer and songwriter. Help! saw the band making increased use of vocal overdubs and incorporating classical instruments into their arrangements, notably the string quartet on the pop ballad "Yesterday". Composed by McCartney, "Yesterday" would inspire the most recorded cover versions of any song ever written. The LP's closing track, "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", became the last cover the band would include on an album. With the exception of Let It Be's brief rendition of the traditional Liverpool folk song "Maggie Mae", all of their subsequent albums would contain only self-penned material.

 

On 15 August, The Beatles' third US visit opened with the first major stadium concert in history when they performed before a crowd of 55,600 at Shea Stadium, New York. A further nine successful concerts followed in other US cities. Towards the end of the tour the group were introduced to Elvis Presley, a foundational musical influence on the band, who invited them to his home. Presley and the band set up guitars in his living room, jammed together, discussed the music business and exchanged anecdotes. September saw the launch of an American Saturday morning cartoon series featuring the Beatles and echoing A Hard Day's Night's slapstick antics. Original episodes appeared for the next two years, and reruns aired through 1969.

 

Rubber Soul, released in early December, was hailed by critics as another major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music. Biographer and music critic Ian MacDonald observes that with Rubber Soul, The Beatles "recovered the sense of direction that had begun to elude them during the later stages of work on Beatles for Sale". After Help!'s foray into the world of classical music with flutes and strings, Rubber Soul's introduction of a sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of rock music. The album also saw Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting increasingly supplemented by distinct compositions from each (though they continued to share official credit). Their thematic reach was expanding as well, embracing more complex aspects of romance and other concerns. As their lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study them for deeper meaning. There was speculation that "Norwegian Wood" might refer to cannabis. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" ranked Rubber Soul at number five, and the album is today described by Allmusic as "one of the classic folk rock records". According to both Lennon and McCartney, however, it was "just another album". Recording engineer Norman Smith saw clear signs of growing conflict within the group during the Rubber Soul sessions; Smith later said that "the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious" and "as far as Paul was concerned, George could do no right."

 

In June 1966, Yesterday and Today—one of the compilation albums created by Capitol Records for the US market—caused an uproar with its cover, which portrayed the smiling Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls, accompanied by raw meat and mutilated plastic dolls. A popular, though apocryphal, story was that this was meant as a response to the way Capitol had "butchered" their albums. Thousands of copies of the album had a new cover pasted over the original; an uncensored copy fetched $10,500 at a December 2005 auction. During a tour of the Philippines the month after the Yesterday and Today furore, The Beatles unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. When presented with the invitation, Epstein politely declined on behalf of the group, as it had never been his policy to accept such official invitations. The group soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed to taking "no" for an answer. The resulting riots endangered the group and they escaped the country with difficulty.

 

Almost as soon as they returned home, they faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the Ku Klux Klan) over a comment Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave. Lennon had offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now". The comment went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine Datebook printed it five months later—on the eve of the group's final US tour—it created a controversy in the American South's "Bible belt". South Africa also banned airplay of Beatles records, a prohibition that would last until 1971. Epstein publicly criticised Datebook, saying they had taken Lennon's words out of context, and at a press conference Lennon pointed out, "If I'd said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it." Lennon said he had only been referring to how other people saw The Beatles, but "if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."

 

Rubber Soul had marked a major step forward; Revolver, released in August 1966 a week before the band's final tour, marked another. Pitchfork identifies it as "the sound of a band growing into supreme confidence" and "redefining what was expected from popular music." Described by Gould as "woven with motifs of circularity, reversal, and inversion", Revolver featured sophisticated songwriting and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelic rock. Abandoning the group photograph that had become the norm, its cover—designed by Klaus Voorman, a friend of the band since their Hamburg days—was a "stark, arty, black-and-white collage that caricatured the Beatles in a pen-and-ink style beholden to Aubrey Beardsley." The album was preceded by the single "Paperback Writer", backed by "Rain". The Beatles shot short promo films for both songs, described as "among the first true music videos", which aired on Top of the Pops and The Ed Sullivan Show.

 

Among Revolver's most experimental tracks was "Tomorrow Never Knows", for whose lyrics Lennon drew from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The song's creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the recording studio building, each manned by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data. McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" made prominent use of a string octet; it has been described as "a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song." Harrison was developing as a songwriter, and three of his compositions earned a place on the record. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Revolver as the third greatest album of all time. On the US tour that followed, The Beatles played none of its songs. The final show, at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on 29 August, was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring that included nearly 60 US concert appearances and over 1400 internationally.

 

Freed from the burden of touring, the band's creativity and desire to experiment grew as they recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in December 1966. Emerick recalled, "The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different. We had microphones right down in the bells of brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way round." Parts of "A Day in the Life" required a forty-piece orchestra. Nearly seven hundred hours of studio time were devoted to the sessions. They first yielded the non-album double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967; Sgt. Pepper followed in June. The musical complexity of the records, created using only four-track recording technology, astounded contemporary artists seeking to outdo The Beatles. For Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, in the midst of a personal crisis and struggling to complete the ambitious Smile, hearing "Strawberry Fields" was a crushing blow and he soon abandoned all attempts to compete. Sgt. Pepper met with great critical acclaim. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number one among its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and it is widely regarded as a masterpiece. Jonathan Gould describes it as

 

a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music on record could be. On the basis of this perception, Sgt. Pepper became the catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963.

 

Sgt. Pepper was the first major pop album to include its complete lyrics, which were printed on the back cover. Those lyrics were the subject of intense analysis; fans speculated, for instance, that the "celebrated Mr K." in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" might in fact be the surrealist fiction writer Franz Kafka. The American literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier wrote an essay, "Learning from the Beatles", in which he observed that his students were "listening to the group's music with a degree of engagement that he, as a teacher of literature, could only envy." Poirier identified what he termed the "mixed allusiveness" of the material: "It's unwise ever to assume that they're doing only one thing or expressing themselves in only one style ... one kind of feeling about a subject isn't enough ... any single induced feeling must often exist within the context of seemingly contradictory alternatives." McCartney said at the time, "We write songs. We know what we mean by them. But in a week someone else says something about it, and you can't deny it ... You put your own meaning at your own level to our songs". Sgt. Pepper's remarkably elaborate album cover also occasioned great interest and deep study. The heavy moustaches worn by the band swiftly became a hallmark of hippie style. Cultural historian Jonathan Harris describes their "brightly coloured parodies of military uniforms" as a knowingly "anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment" display.

 

On 25 June, the band performed their newest single, "All You Need Is Love", to TV viewers worldwide on Our World, the first live global television link. Appearing amid the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem. Two months later the group suffered a loss that threw their career into turmoil. After being introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, they travelled to Bangor for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. During the retreat, Epstein's assistant Peter Brown called to tell them Epstein had died. The coroner ruled Epstein's death an accidental overdose, but it was widely rumoured that a suicide note had been discovered among his possessions. Epstein had been in a fragile emotional state, stressed by both personal issues and the state of his working relationship with The Beatles. He worried that the band might not renew his management contract, due to expire in October, based on discontent with his supervision of business matters. There were particular concerns over Seltaeb, the company that handled Beatles merchandising rights in the United States. Epstein's death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future. Lennon said later, "I didn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared." He also looked back on Epstein's death as marking the beginning of the end for the group: "I knew that we were in trouble then ... I thought, We've f***in' had it now."

 

Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, appeared as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967. In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically titled LP that also included tracks from the band's recent singles. Allmusic says of the US Magical Mystery Tour, "The psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of 'I Am the Walrus')", and calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative". It set a new US record in its first three weeks for highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the one Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums. Aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film, largely directed by McCartney, brought The Beatles their first major negative UK press. It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express, which described it as "a great deal of raw footage showing a group of people getting on, getting off, and riding on a bus". The Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit", while the Guardian labelled it "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". It fared so dismally that it was withheld from the US at the time. In January, the group filmed a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, a fantasia featuring a cartoon version of The Beatles. The group's only other involvement with the film was the contribution of several unreleased studio recordings. Released in June 1968, it was well received for its innovative visual style and humour in addition to its music. It would be seven months, however, before the film's soundtrack album appeared.

The Beatles, wearing identical dark-grey button-down shirts. They are clean-shaven, except for Starr, who has a mustache. Lennon, wearing mutton chops, holds a folded telescope. All are smiling, except for McCartney, who looks pensive.

 

In the interim came The Beatles, a double LP popularly known as the White Album for its virtually featureless cover. Creative inspiration for the album came from an unexpected quarter when, with Epstein's guiding presence gone, the group turned to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as their guru. At his ashram in Rishikesh, India, a three-month "Guide Course" became one of their most creative periods, yielding a large number of songs including most of the thirty recorded for the album. Starr left after ten days, likening it to Butlins, and McCartney eventually grew bored with the procedure and departed a month later. For Lennon and Harrison, creativity turned to questioning when Yanni Alexis Mardas, the electronics technician dubbed Magic Alex, suggested that the Maharishi was attempting to manipulate the group. After Mardas alleged that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to women attendees, Lennon was persuaded and left abruptly, taking the unconvinced Harrison and the remainder of the group's entourage with him. In his anger Lennon wrote a pointed song called "Maharishi", but later modified it to avoid a legal suit, resulting in "Sexy Sadie". McCartney said, "We made a mistake. We thought there was more to him than there was."

 

During recording sessions for the album, which stretched from late May to mid-October 1968, divisions and dissent started to drive the group apart. Starr quit the band for a period, leaving McCartney to perform drums on several tracks. Lennon's romantic preoccupation with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono contributed to tension within the band and he lost interest in co-writing with McCartney. Flouting the group's well-established understanding that they would not take partners into the studio, Lennon insisted on bringing Ono, anyway disliked by Harrison, to all of the sessions. Increasingly contemptuous of McCartney's creative input, he began to identify the latter's compositions as "granny music", dismissing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as "granny s***". Recalling the White Album sessions, Lennon gave a curiously foreshortened summing-up of the band's history from that point on, saying, "It's like if you took each track off it and made it all mine and all Paul's... just me and a backing group, Paul and a backing group, and I enjoyed it. We broke up then." McCartney also recalled that the sessions marked the start of the breakup, saying, "Up to that point, the world was a problem, but we weren't" which had always been "the best thing about The Beatles". Issued in November, the White Album was the band's first Apple Records album release. The new label was a subsidiary of Apple Corps, formed by the group on their return from India, fulfilling a plan of Epstein's to create a tax-effective business structure. The record attracted more than two million advance orders, selling nearly four million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks dominated the playlists of US radio stations. Despite its popularity, it did not receive flattering reviews at the time. According to Jonathan Gould,

 

The critical response... ranged from mixed to flat. In marked contrast to Sgt. Pepper, which had helped to establish an entire genre of literate rock criticism, the White Album inspired no critical writing of any note. Even the most sympathetic reviewers... clearly didn't know what to make of this shapeless outpouring of songs. Newsweek's Hubert Saal, citing the high proportion of parodies, accused the group of getting their tongues caught in their cheeks.

 

General critical opinion eventually turned in favor of the White Album, and in 2003 Rolling Stone ranked it as the tenth greatest album of all time. Pitchfork describes the album as "large and sprawling, overflowing with ideas but also with indulgences, and filled with a hugely variable array of material ... its failings are as essential to its character as its triumphs." Allmusic observes, "Clearly, the Beatles' two main songwriting forces were no longer on the same page, but neither were George and Ringo"; yet "Lennon turns in two of his best ballads", McCartney's songs are "stunning", Harrison is seen to have become "a songwriter who deserved wider exposure" and Starr's composition is "a delight".

 

By now the interest in Beatles lyrics was taking a serious turn. When Lennon's song "Revolution" had been released as a single in August ahead of the White Album, its messages seemed clear: "free your mind", and "count me out" of any talk about destruction as a means to an end. In a year characterized by student protests that stretched from Warsaw to Paris to Chicago, the response from the radical left was scathing. However, the White Album version of the song, "Revolution 1", added an extra word, "count me out ... in", implying a change of heart since the single's release. The chronology was in fact reversed—the ambivalent album version was recorded first—but some felt that The Beatles were now saying that political violence might indeed be justifiable.

 

The Yellow Submarine LP finally appeared in January 1969. It contained only four previously unreleased songs, along with the title track, already issued on Revolver; a song from Magical Mystery Tour; and seven instrumental pieces composed by Martin. Because of the paucity of new Beatles music, Allmusic suggests the album might be "inessential" but for Harrison's "It's All Too Much", "the jewel of the new songs... resplendent in swirling Mellotron, larger-than-life percussion, and tidal waves of feedback guitar... a virtuoso excursion into otherwise hazy psychedelia".

 

Although Let It Be was the band's final album release, most of it was recorded before Abbey Road. Initially titled Get Back, Let It Be originated from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney: to prepare new material and "perform it before a live audience for the very first time—on record and on film. In other words make a live album of new material, which no one had ever done before." In the event, much of the album's content came from studio work, many hours of which were captured on film by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Martin said that rehearsals and recording for the project, which occupied much of January 1969, were "not at all a happy ... experience. It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at their lowest ebb." Aggravated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for a week. He returned with keyboardist Billy Preston, who participated in the last ten days of sessions and was credited on the "Get Back" single—the only other musician to receive such acknowledgment on an official Beatles recording. The band members had reached an impasse on a concert location, rejecting among several concepts a boat at sea, the Tunisian desert and the Colosseum. Ultimately, the final live performance by The Beatles, accompanied by Preston, was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969.

 

Engineer Glyn Johns worked for months assembling various iterations of a Get Back album, while the band turned to other concerns. Conflict arose regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon favoured Allen Klein, who had negotiated contracts for The Rolling Stones and other UK bands during the British Invasion. McCartney's choice was John Eastman, brother of Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married on 12 March (eight days before Lennon and Ono wed). Agreement could not be reached, so both were appointed, but further conflict ensued and financial opportunities were lost.

 

Martin was surprised when McCartney contacted him and asked him to produce another album, as the Get Back sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he had "thought it was the end of the road for all of us... they were becoming unpleasant people—to themselves as well as to other people." Recording sessions for Abbey Road began in late February. Lennon rejected Martin's proposed format of "a continuously moving piece of music", and wanted his own and McCartney's songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second largely comprising a medley, was McCartney's suggested compromise. On 4 July, while work on the album was in progress, the first solo single by a member of The Beatles appeared: Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance", credited to the Plastic Ono Band. The completion of the Abbey Road track "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" on 20 August was the last time all four Beatles were together in the same studio. Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20 September, but agreed that no public announcement would be made until a number of legal matters were resolved.

 

Released six days after Lennon's declaration, Abbey Road sold four million copies within two months and topped the UK chart for eleven weeks. Its second track, the ballad "Something", was also issued as a single—the first and only song by Harrison to appear as a Beatles A side. Abbey Road received mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim. Allmusic considers it "a fitting swan song for the group" containing "some of the greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock record". MacDonald calls it "erratic and often hollow": "Had it not been for McCartney's input as designer of the Long Medley... Abbey Road would lack the semblance of unity and coherence that makes it appear better than it is." Martin singled it out as his personal favourite of all the band's albums; Lennon said it was "competent" but had "no life in it", calling "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" "more of Paul's granny music". Recording engineer Geoff Emerick noted that the replacement of the studio's valve mixing console with a transistorised one produced a less punchy sound, leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact.

 

For the still uncompleted Get Back album, the final new Beatles song, Harrison's "I Me Mine", was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. To complete the album, now retitled Let It Be, in March Klein gave the Get Back session tapes to American producer Phil Spector. Known for his Wall of Sound approach, Spector had recently produced Lennon's solo single "Instant Karma!" In addition to remixing the Get Back material, Spector edited, spliced and overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as "live". McCartney was unhappy with Spector's treatment of the material and particularly dissatisfied with the producer's orchestration of "The Long and Winding Road", which involved a choir and thirty-four-piece instrumental ensemble. He unsuccessfully attempted to halt the release of Spector's version. McCartney publicly announced his departure from the band on 10 April, a week before the release of his first, self-titled solo album. Pre-release copies of McCartney's record included a press statement with a self-written interview, explaining the end of his involvement with The Beatles and his hopes for the future.

 

On 8 May, the Spector-produced Let It Be was released. The accompanying single, "The Long and Winding Road", was the band's last; it was released in the United States, but not Britain. The Let It Be documentary film followed later in the month; at the Academy Award ceremony the next year, it would win the Oscar for Best Original Song Score. The Sunday Telegraph called it "a very bad film and a touching one ... about the breaking apart of this reassuring, geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless family of siblings." More than one reviewer commented that some of the Let It Be tracks sounded better in the film than on the album. Observing that Let It Be is the "only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews", Allmusic describes it as "on the whole underrated... McCartney in particular offers several gems: the gospel-ish 'Let It Be', which has some of his best lyrics; 'Get Back', one of his hardest rockers; and the melodic 'The Long and Winding Road', ruined by Spector's heavy-handed overdubs." McCartney filed a suit for the dissolution of The Beatles on 31 December 1970. Legal disputes continued long after the band's breakup, and the dissolution of the partnership did not take effect until 1975.

 

Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in 1970. Further albums followed from each, sometimes with the involvement of one or more of the others. Starr's Ringo (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's collaboration, Harrison staged The Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971 with sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974 (later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74), Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again.

 

Two double-LP sets of The Beatles' greatest hits compiled by Allen Klein, 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the Blue Album and Red Album respectively, each earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the United States and a Platinum certification in the United Kingdom. Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of Beatles compilation albums without input from the band members. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977). The first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows The Beatles played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours. After the international release of the original British albums on CD in 1987, EMI deleted this latter group of compilations—including the Hollywood Bowl record—from its catalogue.

 

The Beatles' music and enduring fame were commercially exploited in various other ways, outside the band members' creative control. The Broadway musical Beatlemania, a nostalgia revue featuring four musicians performing as The Beatles, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. The Beatles tried and failed to block the 1977 release of Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962. The independently issued album compiled recordings made during the group's Hamburg residency, taped on a basic recording machine with one microphone. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and "artistic fiasco". In 1979, the band sued the producers of Beatlemania, settling for several million dollars in damages. "People were just thinking The Beatles were like public domain", said Harrison. "You can't just go around pilfering The Beatles' material."

 

Lennon was shot and killed on 8 December 1980, in New York City. In a personal tribute Harrison wrote new lyrics for "All Those Years Ago", a song about his time with The Beatles recorded the month before Lennon's death. With McCartney and his wife, Linda, contributing backing vocals, and Starr on drums, the song was overdubbed with the new lyrics and released as a single in May 1981. McCartney's own tribute, "Here Today", appeared on his Tug of War album in April 1982.

 

The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, their first year of eligibility. Harrison and Starr attended the ceremony along with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his two sons, Julian and Sean. McCartney declined to attend, issuing a press release saying, "After 20 years, the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been, so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with them at a fake reunion." The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit by The Beatles concerning royalties, clearing the way to commercially package previously unreleased material.

 

Live at the BBC, the first official release of previously unissued Beatles performances in 17 years, appeared in 1994. That same year McCartney, Harrison and Starr reunited for the Anthology project, the culmination of work begun in the late 1960s by Neil Aspinall. Initially The Beatles' road manager, and then their personal assistant, Aspinall began to gather material for a documentary after he became director of Apple Corps in 1968. The Long and Winding Road, as Aspinall provisionally titled his Beatles history, was shelved, but as executive producer for the Anthology project Aspinall was able to complete his work. Documenting the history of The Beatles in the band's own words, the project saw the release of many previously unissued Beatles recordings; McCartney, Harrison and Starr also added new instrumental and vocal parts to two demo songs recorded by Lennon in the late 1970s. During 1995 and 1996 the project yielded a five-part television series, an eight-volume video set and three two-CD box sets. The two songs based on Lennon demos, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", were each released as singles. The CD box sets featured artwork by Klaus Voorman, creator of the Revolver album cover in 1966. The releases were commercially successful and the television series was viewed by an estimated 400 million people worldwide.

 

1, a compilation album of every Beatles number one British and American hit, was released on 13 November 2000. It became the fastest-selling album of all time, with 3.6 million sold in its first week and over 12 million in three weeks worldwide. It was a number one chart hit in at least 28 countries, including the UK and the US. As of April 2009, it had sold 31 million copies globally, and is the highest selling album of the decade in the United States.

 

Harrison died from lung cancer on 29 November 2001. McCartney and Starr were among the musicians who performed at the Concert for George, organized by Eric Clapton and Harrison's widow, Olivia. The tribute event took place at the Royal Albert Hall on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. As well as songs he composed for The Beatles and his own solo career, the concert included a celebration of Indian classical music, Harrison's interest in which had influenced the band. In 2003, Let It Be… Naked, a reconceived version of the album with McCartney supervising production, was released to mixed reviews. It was a top ten hit in both the UK and the US.

 

As a soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas Beatles stage revue Love, George Martin and his son Giles remixed and blended 130 of the band's recordings to create "a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period". The show premiered in June 2006, and the Love album was released that November. Attending the show's first anniversary, McCartney and Starr were interviewed on Larry King Live along with Ono and Olivia Harrison.[219] Also in 2007, reports circulated that McCartney was hoping to complete "Now and Then", a third Lennon demo worked on during the Anthology sessions. It would be credited as a "Lennon/McCartney composition" with the addition of new verses, and feature a new drum track by Starr and archival recordings of Harrison playing guitar.

 

Lawyers for The Beatles sued in March 2008 to prevent the distribution of unreleased recordings purportedly made during Starr's first performance with the group at Hamburg's Star-Club in 1962. In November, McCartney discussed his hope that "Carnival of Light", a 14-minute experimental recording The Beatles made at Abbey Road Studios in 1967, would receive an official release. McCartney headlined a charity concert on 4 April 2009 at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation with guest performers including Starr. The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game in the style of the Rock Band series, was released on 9 September 2009. On the same day, remastered versions of the band's twelve original studio albums plus Magical Mystery Tour and the compilation Past Masters were issued.

 

The Beatles discography

 

1962 "My Bonnie" - #26

1962 "Love Me Do" - #1

1962 "P.S. I Love You" - #10

1963 "From Me to You" - #41

1963 "She Loves You" - #1

1963 "Roll Over Beethoven" - #68

1963 "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - #1

1963 "I Saw Her Standing There" - #14

1964 "Please Please Me" - #3

1964 "All My Loving" - #45

1964 "Why" - #88

1964 "Twist and Shout" - #2

1964 "There's a Place" - #74

1964 "Can't Buy Me Love" - #1

1964 "You Can't Do That" - #48

1964 "Do You Want to Know a Secret" - #2

1964 "Thank You Girl" - #35

1964 "Sie Liebt Dich (She Loves You)" - #97

1964 "Ain't She Sweet" - #19

1964 "A Hard Day's Night" - #1

1964 "I Should Have Known Better" - #53

1964 "I'll Cry Instead" - #25

1964 "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" - #95

1964 "And I Love Her" - #12

1964 "If I Fell" - #53

1964 "Matchbox" - #17

1964 "Slow Down" - #25

1964 "I Feel Fine" - #1

1964 "She's a Woman" - #4

1965 "Eight Days a Week" - #1

1965 "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" - #39

1965 "Ticket to Ride" - #1

1965 "Yes It Is" - #46

1965 "Help!" - #1

1965 "I'm Down" - #101

1965 "Yesterday" - #1

1965 "Act Naturally" - #47

1965 "We Can Work It Out" - #1

1965 "Day Tripper" - #5

1966 "Nowhere Man" - #3

1966 "What Goes On" - #81

1966 "Paperback Writer" - #1

1966 "Rain" - #23

1966 "Yellow Submarine" - #2

1966 "Eleanor Rigby" - #11

1967 "Penny Lane" - #1

1967 "Strawberry Fields Forever" - #8

1967 "All You Need Is Love" - #1

1967 "Baby, You're a Rich Man" - #34

1967 "Hello, Goodbye" - #1

1967 "I Am the Walrus" - #56

1968 "Lady Madonna" - #4

1968 "The Inner Light" - #96

1968 "Hey Jude" - #1

1968 "Revolution" - #12

1969 "Get Back" - #1

1969 "Don't Let Me Down" - #35

1969 "The Ballad of John and Yoko" - #8

1969 "Something" - #1

1969 "Come Together" - #1

1970 "Let It Be" - #1

1970 "The Long and Winding Road" - #1

1976 "Got to Get You into My Life" - #7

1976 "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" - #49

1978 "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With a Little Help from My Friends" - #71

1982 "The Beatles Movie Medley" - #12

1995 "Baby It's You" / "I'll Follow the Sun" - #67

1995 "Free as a Bird" - #6

1996 "Real Love" - #11

 

 

Factoid: The official release of The Beatles' catalogue in a limited edition of 30,000 USB flash drives is planned for December 2009.

 

 

"All You Need Is Love"

 

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